THE EVOLUTION OF AN ACE
By:
April 4, 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.
The First Fancy
A wee lad watched, one summer day,
A brilliant oriole on its way,
A brown bee homing with its loot,
A wasp that flew from fruit to fruit.
“What fun,” he cried, “what fun to fly!
Oh, if I could! Sometime I’ll try.”
Discouragement
A youth strolled through a fern-sweet glen
and cool,
Beside a limpid brook made dreamy pause.
Splendid in azure and in glistening gauze
Hovered the dragonflies above pool;
Kingfishers swooped to harvest from a
school
Of lively minnows rose with laden jaws.
“Strange ——” mused the stripling, “curious
how the laws
Of flight still circumvent us. Man’s a fool.
Hundreds of years we’ve watched and
longed. We boast
Ourselves creation’s lords. A moth, a gnat
Knows more than we do. See that buzzard
coast!
Maddening — his ease to soar and glide
like that!
But has man ever done it? Never once.
The smallest midge outdoes him. Man’s a
dunce.
Success
Came years of slow experiment.
The constant urge, the smouldering fire
Of purpose. Then — the wonder wrought!
The bright shape of a long desire.
A distant humming in the sky —
A flash of wings upon the blue —
A graceful turn, dip, a rise —
A speed no condor ever knew.
A miracle too frequent now
To win more than a casual glance,
When two decades ago to fly
Seemed the far goal of rich romance.
Soon common as the swallow’s dash,
The linnet’s drop from bough to bough,
Will be the soaring plane, nor cause
The bored pedestrian to pause,
The laborer to check his plough.
And man, to his ambition true,
Will turn his mind to conquests new.
— Amazing Stories (March 1931).
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.