THE TRIUMPH OF THE MACHINES
By:
October 4, 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.
I had a vision of a far-off age:
Steel-bosomed saurians, in a snorting
band,
Went rumbling, flashing through a
flame-red land,
And wide, green valleys blackened at their
rage.
Meadow and stream were but a
blood-marked stage
Where lightning plunged, and fiery
whirlwinds fanned
Huge clanking reptiles, gray and
iron-manned,
Which prowled like dragons from earth’s
primal page.
“Are these the dinosaurs of some dead
past?”
I murmured; and a mournful voice replied:
“Monsters still unbegotten, which shall cast
Flame and destruction over field and tide,
When man, their maker, in world-shaking
pride,
Shall bring the Age of Lizards back at last!”
— from the September 1929 issue of Amazing Stories. (After Gernsback.)
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.