HOLD BACK!
By:
November 25, 2025
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.
Oh men, living men, vivid men, ocean and
fire,
don’t give any more life to the machines!
Draw it away, draw it away, for these
horrible machine-people
can’t live any more, except for a spell, when
the living cease to accept them as
brothers
and give them life.
Machines of iron must be tended by hands
of flesh
and robots must have encouragement
from men of the vivid life
or they break down.
Oh men of life and of living,
withdraw, withdraw your flow
from the grinning and insatiable robots.
— From More Pansies (1932), published posthumously.
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.