“LAST NIGHT…”
By:
March 20, 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.
Last night,
walking on the heath,
she and I,
alive,
condescended toward the stars.
For then we knew.
quite surely
that all the pother of the universe
was but a prelude to that summer night
and our uniting,
and all the ages to come
but a cadence
after our loving.
Nestled down into the heather,
We laughed,
and took joy of one another,
justifying the cosmic enterprise for ever
by the moments of our caressing,
while the simple stars
watched
unseeing.
Thus lovers, nations, worlds, nay galaxies,
conceive themselves the crest of all that is.
— Untitled poem from Olaf Stapledon’s 1932 proto-sf novel Last Men in London, written by its protagonist, Paul. “I could detect in him day by day, almost hour by hour, new buds and growing points of sensitivity, of percipience, hitherto suppressed by the long winter of his frustration. Even during the rapturous holiday itself, when his whole interest was centred on the one being and on his love-play with her, he was at the same time exfoliating into a new and vital cognizance of more remote spheres. On their last day he wrote this poem.”
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.