NIGHT NOTE
By:
October 3, 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.
A little moon was restless in Eternity
And, shivering beneath the stars,
Dropped in the hiding arms of the western
hill.
Night’s discord ceased:
The visible universe moved in an endless
rhythm:
The wheel of the heavens turned to the
pulse of a cricket in the grass.
— Found in Modern American Poetry (revised and enlarged edition), ed. Louis Untermeyer, 1919 and 1921. Before that it was published in his 1919 collection The Solitary; it may have appeared in the Seven Arts journal before that, I’m not sure.
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.