THE GIANT
By:
September 10, 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.
Fashioned like a god he lolls or sprawls
His bestial bulk on vineyard, temple, mart;
Drunk on too much life, he whines or bawls
His brutish will, and vomits forth his heart
On Science and all Art.
Small favours please him best; a paper
crown
Awakens well this tyrant’s childish glee;
He would be dignified, but apes the
clown,—
Enslaved by Ignorance, shouts “I am free,
No master beats me down!”
High-sounding adulation lulls his greed,
Oratory stills his restlessness;
Distrust of Intellect and Ease his creed,
Sometimes he knows the Simian’s dumb
distress:
“Am I a man, or less?”
— Excerpt from “The Giant,” found in Eric Temple Bell’s 1916 collection titled The Singer. Bell, a noted mathematician, was a prolific writer of Radium Age proto-sf novels — under the nom de plume John Taine.
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.