THE MAN IN THE MOON
By:
November 20, 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.
I was listening to the strains of a guitar leaking through a yellow window in a painting of a night landscape when I heard a spring pop loose in a clock and a huge automatized diorama of Mr. Moon began to rise in the distance
It stopped about one meter above the ground and a man wearing an opera hat jumped nimbly down Whoa! As I was watching he lit a cigarette and started down the street-lined street I followed him The trees cast such interesting silhouettes on the street that all of my attention was taken up by the shadows when I realized the man walking right of me had vanished I pricked up my ears but I didn’t hear anything remotely resembling the sound of someone’s footsteps I came back to the place where I had started and discovered that the moon had at some point risen high in the sky and the pinwheels were flitting as they spun in the quiet nighttime breeze
— From the author’s 1001 Second Stories, all written in the early 1920s. English translation by Jeffrey Angles.
Since its publication by Kinseido in 1923, this book has been published by several publishers in various bindings. Shown here is a 2022 “jewel box” edition that contains just a few stories.
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.