MEN LIKE GODS
By:
August 16, 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.
Men wanted to be like gods
so they became like machines
and now even they’re not satisfied.
***
When men think they are like gods
they are usually much less than men
being conceited fools.
— Two separate poems from More Pansies (1932), published posthumously. Note that Men Like Gods is a 1923 utopian fantasy by H.G. Wells — one that Aldous Huxley would cite as an inspiration for Brave New World — i.e., Wells’s utopia struck Huxley as being rather dystopian. What I’m saying is that we could read these poems as being a similarly negative response to Wells’ utopianism.
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.