More Voices from the Radium Age

No cover — Joshua Glenn: More Voices from the Radium Age (2023, MIT Press)

English language

Published Aug. 13, 2023 by MIT Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-262-54643-0

(1 review)

An essential collection of proto-science fiction stories that reveals the diverse literary milieu out of which the sci fi genre emerged.

A planetary escape pod, an alien body-snatcher, an underground Alaskan city, and a war between the sexes in Atlantis! These are just a few of the outré elements you'll find in More Voices from the Radium Age, a showcase of proto-science fiction edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn. This volume brings together well-known and lesser-known writers in an inclusive collection that features E. Nesbit and May Sinclair, two of the genre's first female writers.

More Voices from the Radium Age also introduces readers to writers who have fallen into obscurity, including proto-sf pioneer George C. Wallis, the Russian Symbolist Valery Bryusov, and "weird" horror master Algernon Blackwood. It also includes H.G. Wells, who continued to make startling predictions in the early 20th century, and Abraham Merritt and George Allan …

An essential collection of proto-science fiction stories that reveals the diverse literary milieu out of which the sci fi genre emerged.

A planetary escape pod, an alien body-snatcher, an underground Alaskan city, and a war between the sexes in Atlantis! These are just a few of the outré elements you'll find in More Voices from the Radium Age, a showcase of proto-science fiction edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn. This volume brings together well-known and lesser-known writers in an inclusive collection that features E. Nesbit and May Sinclair, two of the genre's first female writers.

More Voices from the Radium Age also introduces readers to writers who have fallen into obscurity, including proto-sf pioneer George C. Wallis, the Russian Symbolist Valery Bryusov, and "weird" horror master Algernon Blackwood. It also includes H.G. Wells, who continued to make startling predictions in the early 20th century, and Abraham Merritt and George Allan England, two of the biggest names in the era of the pulp scientific romance.

An essential collection for any sci fi fan, More Voices from the Radium Age is a wild and darkly cathartic ride through the anxieties, fantasies, and nightmares that ultimately shaped the genre we now know as science fiction.

1 edition

Soh Kam Yung reviewed More Voices from the Radium Age by Joshua Glenn

Another interesting set of stories from the dawn of SFF.

3 stars

Another set of interesting stories from what the editor calls the Radium Age, when SFF was just beginning to be formed from speculative ideas. Stories that I found interesting from the anthology are by H. G. Wells, Valery Bryusov, Algernon Blackwood and A. Merritt.

"The Last Days of Earth (1901)" by George C. Wallis: a couple prepare to leave a cold and dying Earth. But their journey would be interrupted by an unexpected event.
"The Land Ironclads (1903)" by H. G. Wells: a war correspondent on the front line sees a battle between rifles, cannons and mounted calvary against cyclists and land ironclads (metal war machines with artillery). An interesting futuristic note is the use by the ironclad gunners of control by wire to operate the guns.
"The Republic of the Southern Cross (1907)" by Valery Bryusov: the Antarctic becomes an independent country, with its capital at the South Pole. …

Another set of interesting stories from what the editor calls the Radium Age, when SFF was just beginning to be formed from speculative ideas. Stories that I found interesting from the anthology are by H. G. Wells, Valery Bryusov, Algernon Blackwood and A. Merritt.

"The Last Days of Earth (1901)" by George C. Wallis: a couple prepare to leave a cold and dying Earth. But their journey would be interrupted by an unexpected event.
"The Land Ironclads (1903)" by H. G. Wells: a war correspondent on the front line sees a battle between rifles, cannons and mounted calvary against cyclists and land ironclads (metal war machines with artillery). An interesting futuristic note is the use by the ironclad gunners of control by wire to operate the guns.
"The Republic of the Southern Cross (1907)" by Valery Bryusov: the Antarctic becomes an independent country, with its capital at the South Pole. Life there is strictly regimented and controlled. But then an uncontrollable epidemic hits.
"The Third Drug (1908)" by E. Nesbit: escaping from robbers, a man stumbles into the house of a doctor, who proceeds to give him a series of drugs in an attempt to turn him to a superman, with inhuman knowledge about the world.
"A Victim of Higher Space (1914)" by Algernon Blackwood: a doctor gets a visit from an unusual patient: for the patient is both there and neither there, caught by an ability to see higher dimensions and is now a part of them. And the patient wishes to stop visiting those higher dimensions.
"The People of the Pit (1918)" by A. Merritt: two voyagers north to find a legendary mountain with flowing gold instead encounter an eerie, evil light that urges them towards the mountain. Instead, they rescue a man who has been to the mountain and seen the pit that lies below it; and the inhabitants of the pit.
"The Thing from—‘Outside’ (1923)" by George Allan England: an expedition to the north struggles to escape as 'something' invisible pursues them and slowly drives them mad.
"The Finding of the Absolute (1923)" by May Sinclair: a man dies, only to find himself in a heaven where his thoughts can span all space and time.
"The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis (1926)" by Booth Tarkington: a story about the Atlantis, about how two factions fought each other until they caused Atlantis to sink. Only here, the two factions are men and women, fighting over equality and the right of women to wear veils.

Subjects

Literature