More Voices from the Radium Age

Introduction by Joshua Glenn
Edited by Joshua Glenn
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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.
Series Foreword vii
Introduction: Radium Age Ultra-Potentialities xiii
Joshua Glenn

The Last Days of Earth (1901) 1
George C. Wallis
The Land Ironclads (1903) 19
H.G. Wells
The Republic of the Southern Cross (1907) 51
Valery Bryusov
The Third Drug (1908) 79
E. Nesbit
A Victim of Higher Space (1914) 103
Algernon Blackwood
The People of the Pit (1918) 131
A. Merritt
The Thing from -- 'Outside' (1923) 155
George Allan England
The Finding of the Absolute (1923) 183
May Sinclair
The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis (1926) 207
Booth Tarkington

About

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.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Introduction: Radium Age Ultra-Potentialities xiii
Joshua Glenn

The Last Days of Earth (1901) 1
George C. Wallis
The Land Ironclads (1903) 19
H.G. Wells
The Republic of the Southern Cross (1907) 51
Valery Bryusov
The Third Drug (1908) 79
E. Nesbit
A Victim of Higher Space (1914) 103
Algernon Blackwood
The People of the Pit (1918) 131
A. Merritt
The Thing from -- 'Outside' (1923) 155
George Allan England
The Finding of the Absolute (1923) 183
May Sinclair
The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis (1926) 207
Booth Tarkington

The MIT Press Radium Age Series: A Science Fiction Primer for Students

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

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