CREDO

By: Walter Everette Hawkins
January 11, 2026

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 am an Iconoclast.
I break the limbs of idols
And smash the traditions of men.

     I am an Anarchist.
I believe in war and destruction —
Not in the killing of men,
But the killing of creed and custom.

     I am an Agnostic.
I accept nothing without questioning.
It is my inherent right and duty
To ask the reason why.
To accept without a reason
Is to debase one’s humanity
And destroy the fundamental process
In the ascertainment of Truth.

     I believe in Justice and Freedom.
To me Liberty is priestly and kingly;
Freedom is my Bride,
Liberty my Angel of Light,
Justice my God.

     I oppose all laws of state or country,
All creeds of church and social orders,
All conventionalities of society and system
Which cross the path of the light of
     Freedom
Or obstruct the reign of Right.

— 1920. From the revised 1920 edition of his 1909 poetry collection Chords and Discords.

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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.