2025 read #57: Voices from the Radium Age, edited by Joshua Glenn.

Voices from the Radium Age, edited and introduced by Joshua Glenn

213 pages

Published 2022

Read from August 26 to August 27

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

You ever go to a bookstore in a new city and feel the inhibitions of penury lift enough that you spend way more than you should on shiny new books? That’s what happened when my partner R and I took a roadtrip to Rhode Island last weekend. Part of that overspend: this volume and its follow-up, two anthologies devoted to the forgotten period of sci-fi, the era between the scientific romances and the start of the “golden age,” which editor Glenn dubs the Radium Age.

Spoiled by the contextualization provided by the British Library Tales of the Weird series, I was pleasantly surprised by the historical and biographical detail in Glenn’s introduction. More historical anthologies should make the effort.

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“Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905). Bengali feminist Hossain pens the utopia of Ladyland, where women walk freely in the city while men are shut away and secluded for the public good. Ladyland’s other benefits include solar power, flying cars, and a two hour workday, all thanks to the efforts of its lady scientists. As with most classical utopias, the story is little more than a guided tour of Ladyland and its wonders, with some words about how it originated. Still, it was a pleasant read. B-

“The Voice in the Night” by William Hope Hodgson (1907). When I picked up this book, I was excited for another Hodgson story, but alas, I forgot I’d already read and reviewed this one in the British Library’s Evil Roots anthology. There, I called it “Deliciously creepy.”

“The Machine Stops” by E. M. Forster (1909). A hugely influential story about a distant future where everyone lives in identical hexagonal compartments, having their needs met and their social interactions mediated through the Machine. It’s an early example of “ease makes the race weak” sci-fi, which is unfortunate, but it also seems to have eerily prefigured aspects of our current era. The Machine doesn’t display video when people call each other, it displays a “good enough for practical purposes” simulacrum. Likewise, food and other necessities rendered by the Machine are “good enough.” Given the way countless contemporary people have settled for allowing GenAI — an elaborate, wasteful version of autocomplete fed by theft — do their fact-finding, their socializing, their writing, even their thinking for them, and don’t seem to understand why that’s bad, “Machine” has an uncomfortable resonance today. It’s also an especially apt metaphor for life under technofeudalist capitalism: “The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds — but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” B+

“The Horror of the Heights” by Arthur Conan Doyle (1913). Bearing in mind his many faults, I have to admit that Doyle was a consummate yarn-spinner. In his hands, even a “These are the facts of the case”-style framing device somehow works. I was immediately absorbed by this airborne thriller, in which a daring pilot becomes convinced that an invisible menace inhabits the unexplored “jungles” of the upper atmosphere, and sets out to confront it. Entertaining! B

“The Red One” by Jack London (1918). Archetypal man’s-life weird adventure pulp, unfortunately with all the horrific racism and sexism that comes with it. Fever-crazed Bennett, fleeing across Guadalcanal from cannibals, chases a distant unearthly sound. Would’ve been a much cooler story if London had been able to contain his throbbing bigotry-boner for even a moment. If I had to guess, I’d say this was a major inspiration for Sphere. F+

“The Comet” by W. E. B. Du Bois (1920). A Black bank messenger appears to be the only survivor after Earth passes through the tail of a comet. Superb use of science fiction as social commentary. Grim and beautiful. A-

“The Jameson Satellite” by Neil R. Jones (1931). The namesake Jameson, hoping to preserve his mortal remains for the lifetime of the Earth, designs an orbiting satellite as his coffin. Forty million years later, a shipful of robots, their metal bodies controlled by organic brains, happens upon the Jameson Satellite and revives Jameson, placing his brain inside a machine. The quaint early sci-fi conceit comes out half-baked thanks to dull writing and stiff dialogue. Maybe C-?

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And that’s it! All in all, one of the better anthologies of old stories I’ve ever encountered. I’m excited to read the next volume!