In these forgotten classics in MIT Press’ Radium Age series, students will discover the origins of enduring tropes like tyrannical supermen, dystopian wastelands, sinister telepaths, and eco-catastrophes. According to the Los Angeles Review of Books, the series “challenges readers to reconsider the science fiction of the early 20th century… By returning to an international tradition of scientific speculation via fiction from after the Poe-Verne-Wells era and before science fiction’s Golden Age, the Radium Age series [demonstrates] the breadth, richness, and diversity of the literary works that were responding to a vertiginous historical period.”
Under the direction of Joshua Glenn, the MIT Press’s Radium Age is reissuing notable science fiction stories from the underappreciated era between 1900 and 1935. With new contributions by historians, science journalists, and science fiction authors, the Radium Age book series recontextualizes the breakthroughs and biases of these proto–science fiction classics, and charts the emergence of a burgeoning genre.
