More Voices from the Radium Age - (Mit Press / Radium Age) by Joshua Glenn (Paperback)

About the Book

"More Voices of the Radium Age will showcase proto- and early sf stories by much-admired authors best known today for their non-sf work (E. Nesbit, author of Three Children and It and other popular children's fantasies, and Booth Tarkington, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Magnificent Ambersons); authors whose outsized success with readers would influence the subsequent development of the sf genre (H.G. Wells, who continued to make startling predictions in the early 20th century, and Abraham Merritt and George Allan England, who along with Edgar Rice Burroughs ushered in the crucial era of the pulp scientific romance); as well as writers who have now fallen into obscurity (George C. Wallis, the Russian Symbolist litterateur Valery Bryusov, "weird" horror master Algernon Blackwood, and Francis Stevens, "the woman who invented dark fantasy"). Note that Nesbit and Stevens are two of sf's only female writers pre-1926"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"A diverse, captivating collection. . . . Highlighting neglected voices in speculative and science fiction, More Voices from the Radium Age offers an entertaining, engrossing glimpse into the profound and innovative literature of the early twentieth century."
-Foreword Reviews

"A. Merritt's 'The People of the Pit' . . . could have served as the template for half of Lovecraft's contributions to Weird Tales. . . . Deliciously florid."
--Washington Post

About the Author

Joshua Glenn is a consulting semiotician and editor of the websites HiLobrow and Semiovox. The first to describe 1900-1935 as science fiction's "Radium Age," he is editor of the MIT Press's series of reissued proto-sf stories from that period. He is coauthor and coeditor of various books including the family activities guide Unbored (2012), The Adventurer's Glossary (2021), and Lost Objects (2022). In the 1990s, he published the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut.