SPUTTERINGS

By: Blaise Cendrars
July 18, 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.

The rainbowesque dissonances of the
     Tower in its wireless
Noon
Midnight
Shit is said in all corners of the universe

Sparks
Chrome yellow
We’re in contact
The transatlantics approach from all shores
Go away
Every watch is set
And bells ring
Paris-Midi announces that a German
     professie was eaten by cannibals in the
     Congo
Well done
This evening L’Intransigeant published
     poems for post cards
It’s stupid when all the astrologers
     burglarize the stars
You don’t see any more there
I question the sky
The Meteorological Institute announces
     bad weather

There is no futurism
There is no simultaneity
Bodin burned every witch
There is nothing
There are no more horoscopes and you
     have to work
I’m upset
The Spirit
I’m going to take a trip
And I send this poem to my friend R…

— 1913. One of the author’s “Nineteen Elastic Poems.” Inspired by the Orphist art movement. Translated by Ron Padgett. Found in The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (1982; Paul Auster, ed.)

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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.