THE VISION OF ARMAGEDDON
By:
September 14, 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.
High o’er the din of these war-shocked days
I rose in a wild ecstatic flight,
And down, with an all-embracing gaze,
I looked, and lo! to my frenzied sight
The earth lay stretched like a boundless plain,
Where the nations clashed in a deadly strife,
Till the verdant lands and the azure main
Turned red with the wine of human life.
‘Twas the Armageddon of Right and Wrong,
Where Death flies swift as the lightning’s gleam;
Where the weak go down before the strong,
Where the things men hold and the things they dream
Are flung in the fires of infernal fray,
And purged of their dross in flames of rage,
For the purer life of an after day,
And making of men for the Golden Age.
— Found in the author’s collection The Beckoning Skyline (1920).
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.