BEFORE SUPERMAN
By:
August 19, 2025
Under the direction of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn, the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series is reissuing notable proto-sf stories from the underappreciated era between 1900–1935.
In these forgotten classics, sf readers will discover the origins of enduring tropes like robots (berserk or benevolent), tyrannical supermen, dystopias and apocalypses, sinister telepaths, and eco-catastrophes.
With new contributions by historians, science journalists, and sf authors, the Radium Age book series will recontextualize the breakthroughs and biases of these proto-sf pioneers, and chart the emergence of a burgeoning literary genre.
Today marks the publication of the following Radium Age series title…
SUPERHUMANS OF THE RADIUM AGE
Edited & Introduced by JOSHUA GLENN
(August 19, 2025)
Introducing the weird and wonderful ancestors of today’s comic-book and cinematic superheroes….
Science-fictional narratives about superhumans — humans who’ve evolved into creatures stronger, smarter, and more gifted than we have any reason to be — first showed up during the genre’s emergent Radium Age. Originally published between 1902 and 1928, the stories and excerpts anthologized by Joshua Glenn feature the likes of Thomas Dunbar, one of the first lab-created superhumans — dreamed up by a teenaged Gertrude Barrows, later well-known to sf fans as “Francis Stevens.” Thanks to George Bernard Shaw and H. Rider Haggard, meanwhile, we’ll make the acquaintance of Zoo and Yva — superwomen who contemplate the extermination of us mere mortals. Alfred Jarry’s André Marcueil, a scientist who develops a super-sexual capacity, is punished for this transgression; and Marie Corelli’s Young Diana, having been rendered super-alluring via a rejuvenation experiment, seeks revenge on a sexist society.
Hugo Gernsback gives us Ralph 124C 41+, a benevolent super-genius inventor who dwells atop a New York skyscraper. But M.P. Shiel tells the story of Hannibal Lepsius, a homeschooled prodigy turned amoral tech-bro; and Karel Čapek gives us Rudy Marek, an inventor who, having developed wonder-working powers, wonders whether civilization will survive his latest invention. Thea von Harbou’s genius scientist, Rotwang, is even less conscientious in his scheming; as is Arthur Conan Doyle’s ever-irascible Professor Challenger, here in one of his final outings. Finally, Jean de La Hire’s Nyctalope, a popular French super-powered crimefighter character, makes an appearance; and so does Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes… though reduced to miniature size.
Radium Age superhumans… assemble!
JOSHUA GLENN is a consulting semiotician and editor of the websites HiLobrow and Semiovox. The first to describe 1900–1935 as science fiction’s “Radium Age,” he is editor of the MIT Press’s series of reissued proto-sf stories from that period. He is coauthor and co-editor of various books including, most recently, Lost Objects (2022).
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS is best known for his stories featuring Tarzan of the Apes, one of fiction’s all-time most successful characters. He was also a prolific proto-sf author whose popular Barsoom series, beginning with A Princess of Mars (1912/1917), would prove influential on science fiction’s planetary romance subgenre.
KAREL ČAPEK (1890–1938) was a Czech litterateur and anti-totalitarian absurdist who achieved his most memorable effects when working in a science-fictional mode. He is best known for his 1921 proto-sf play, R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, and his novels The Absolute at Large (1922), Krakatit (1924), and War with the Newts (1936).
MARIE CORELLI (Mary Mackay, 1855–1924) wrote popular bestsellers, many of which featured sf elements (interstellar travel, advanced technology), and all of which aimed to reconcile Christian teachings with Western esotericism. In addition to The Young Diana (1918), her Radium Age proto-sf writing includes the novel The Secret Power (1921).
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and author who in 1887 introduced Sherlock Holmes, arguably the best-known fictional detective. Doyle’s proto-sf series of Professor Challenger adventures include The Lost World (1912) and The Poison Belt (1913); both have been reissued in a single volume by The MIT Press.
HUGO GERNSBACK (1884–1967) was an American editor and magazine publisher. Amog his publications—which gave E.E. “Doc” Smith, Fletcher Pratt, Edmond Hamilton, Jack Williamson, and others their start—was the pioneering sf magazine, Amazing Stories, as well as Wonder Stories. It was Gernsback who popularized the term “science fiction.”
H. RIDER HAGGARD (1856–1925) was an English author known for adventure fiction and science-fantasy romances set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa. Considered a pioneer of the Lost World subgenre, he is best remembered for King Solomon’s Mines (1885), She (1886–1887), and these novels’ various sequels, prequels, and crossovers.
THEA VON HARBOU (1888–1954) was a German writer best known for the screenplays she developed with director Fritz Lang. Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Harbou’s 1925 novelization were written simultaneously; she also collaborated with Lang on the proto-sf films The Girl in the Moon (1929) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933).
ALFRED JARRY (1873–1907) was a French absurdist writer and philosopher best known for the play Ubu roi (1896) and its sequels, and for his development of the mock-science of ’pataphysics, which he’d adumbrate entertainingly via Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (1911). His most science-fictional work is Le surmâle (1901).
JEAN DE LA HIRE (Adolphe d’Espie, 1878–1956) was a prolific French author of popular fiction. His works of proto-sf interest include La Roue Fulgurante (1908) and L’Europe future (1916). He is best known for the proto-superhero Nyctalope sequence, seventeen stories in all—from Le Mystère des XV (1911) to L’Énigme du Squelette (1955).
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856–1950) was an Irish-born playwright, critic, and political activist who espoused utopian socialism and “creative evolution” (via eugenics). In addition to his proto-sf play Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch (1921), his works of sf interest include Man and Superman (1903) and Buoyant Billions (1948).
M.P. SHIEL (1865–1947) was a Montserrat-born British writer whose proto-sf works include The Purple Cloud (1901), The Lord of the Sea (1901), The Last Miracle (1906), The Isle of Lies (1909), and The Young Men Are Coming! (1937). He has received attention as a writer of partial Black ancestry, and as a novelist of Caribbean origin.
FRANCIS STEVENS (Gertrude Barrows Bennett, 1884–1948) was the first American woman to publish widely in fantasy and science fiction; she was an important influence on A. Merritt and others. Her proto-sf novel The Heads of Cerberus (1919) and several proto-sf stories were reissued by The MIT Press in a collection edited by Lisa Yaszek.
Originally published 1902–1928. Cover illustrated and designed by Seth. See this book at The MIT Press.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF FROM THE MIT PRESS: VOICES FROM THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | J.D. Beresford’s A WORLD OF WOMEN | E.V. Odle’s THE CLOCKWORK MAN | H.G Wells’s THE WORLD SET FREE | Pauline Hopkins’s OF ONE BLOOD | J.J. Connington’s NORDENHOLT’S MILLION | Rose Macaulay’s WHAT NOT | Cicely Hamilton’s THEODORE SAVAGE | Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE LOST WORLD & THE POISON BELT | G.K. Chesterton’s THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL | MORE VOICES FROM THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | William Hope Hodgson’s THE NIGHT LAND | Hemendrakumar Roy’s THE INHUMANS | Charlotte Haldane’s MAN’S WORLD | Francis Stevens’s THE HEADS OF CERBERUS & OTHER STORIES | Edward Shanks’s THE PEOPLE OF THE RUINS | J.D. Beresford’s THE HAMPDENSHIRE WONDER | John Taine’s THE GREATEST ADVENTURE | Marietta Shaginyan’s YANKEES IN PETROGRAD | BEFORE SUPERMAN: SUPERHUMANS OF THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | E. and H. Heron’s FLAXMAN LOW: OCCULT DETECTIVE | Irene Clyde’s BEATRICE THE SIXTEENTH | & more to come.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.