BEYOND THE SUNS
By:
April 24, 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 sailed sun-high
While the world went by.
The naked dead
Swept on ahead,
Turning and wheeling
And backward reeling,
Unfit to rise
To the star-swept skies.
And beyond the earth,
In its livid shade,
They who wait for birth,
Of the air afraid,
Nebulous, tremulous,
Shapeless, dim,
Cowering unemulous,
Clung to its rim.
And the land and ocean
I could not see,
For the restless motion
Of souls unfree,
Whose travail and strife
In the dust of life
Pale vapors spun
To defy the sun.
— An excerpt from “Beyond the Suns.” From Monroe’s 1914 collection, You and I. However, the collection includes poems first published as early as 1905.
From the section of the book titled “Other Worlds.”
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.