THE NEW OLYMPIANS
By:
October 31, 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.
(Dedicated to Commander Scott and the crew of the R 34, the first airship to cross the Atlantic)
Who shall chant for them a worthy paean,
They who out-soared Olympus, made a path
Above the clouds, charted the Empyrean,
Defied the lightning and the thunder’s wrath,
And spanned the heaving chasm of the sea —
Where is the Homer for this Odyssey?
Awake! ye Muses, for the Age of Gold
Has come again, and gods with men conspire;
Deft Science has fulfilled those fables old:
Prometheus, who once stole celestial fire,
Has brought to men the peerless gift of wings,
They scale the skies beyond the flight of bird,
The lark no longer at the gate of heaven sings,
For man mounts upward singing till his song is all unheard!
— An excerpt from the full poem, which one can find in the author’s collection The Beckoning Skyline (1920).
British airship pilot and engineer George Herbert “Lucky Breeze” Scott took charge of the new rigid airship R34, built in Scotland, on its completion in 1919 and was ordered to “prepare for a voyage to the United States of America.” Scott commanded the R34 on its return Atlantic crossing in 1919, which marked the first transatlantic flight by an airship and the first east–west transatlantic flight by an aircraft of any kind. Scott was hailed for his achievements as an aviator, most notably the R34’s Atlantic crossing, which, according to the Times’s obituary, “immediately placed Great Britain at the head of airship construction and achievement.” He took part in a second return Atlantic crossing, this time by the R100, in 1930. He was killed later that year aboard the R101.
PS: Nevil Shute was chief calculator (and later deputy chief engineer) on the design of the R100 and a passenger on that ship’s transatlantic flight.
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.