THE END OF THE WORLD
By:
August 30, 2025
A series dedicated to poems, published c. 1900–1935, the Radium Age sf-adjacent themes of which include: dystopia and utopia, far-out mathematics and the fourth dimension, Afro-futurism, catastrophe, future war, new technologies, scientific breakthrough, dehumanization, cosmic awe, disenchantment and unseen forces, unknowable aliens and singularity. Research and selection by Joshua Glenn; thematic index here.
Now tide and time and life at last have
died.
The air is bitter thin. Known sounds are
mute.
Inexorable the silent stars shine bright.
The sky, no longer blue, is inky hued.
The tidal drag the spin of Earth has stayed,
So that our sphere is settling near the sun,
Which now hangs motionless and red and
plain.
Life has receded to the slimy mud
From whence it first emerged. A gloom
most sad
And chill pervades the air. Pink snow drifts
in,
Dyed by the dying sun. Upon the flat
An oily swell laps listlessly. God hid
The aim and end of his terrestrial plan:
For This He made the Earth and peopled it!
— First appeared in Science Fiction Digest, July 1933. An homage to Wells’ time traveler ”at the farthest forward point in time to which he penetrated.” Also reprinted in Forrest J Ackerman’s Gosh! Wow! (Sense of Wonder) anthology.
Science Fiction Digest was a legendary fanzine of the 1930s. Contributing editors included Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz and Forrest Ackerman.
The Omnibus of Time is a collection of science fiction short stories by Ralph Milne Farley. It was first published in 1950 by Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Top-Notch, Amazing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Weird Tales, Argosy, Fantasy Book and Science Fiction Digest. Farley revised stories to eliminate “many mathematico-physical footnotes,” which he compiled and rewrote as the essay “After Math” (included in this volume) presenting “the various scientific theories of time, and compar[ing] all my own various inconsistent theories and techniques.”
PS: Is the collection’s title a reference to Dorothy L. Sayers’s Omnibus of Crime, one wonders?
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.