The MIT Press's Radium Age series continues to unearth fascinating proto-science fiction from the early 20th century. Series editor Joshua Glenn (who I'm fortunate to count as a friend and who listeners might recognize from his numerous appearances on Boing Boing's Gweek podcast) has curated another excellent pair of releases for Spring 2025.
The new editions feature more stunning cover art by Seth, one of my favorite cartoonist/illustrators. His distinctive style, with its bold lines and noir-influenced aesthetics, perfectly captures the otherworldly atmosphere of these pioneering works. (Check out all 20 of Seth's covers here.)
This time we get John Taine's The Greatest Adventure (1929), an Antarctic expedition tale that predates (and possibly influenced) H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, and J.D. Beresford's The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), an early exploration of superhuman intelligence.
What makes the Radium Age series so valuable is how it illuminates the origins of science fiction tropes we take for granted. The Greatest Adventure reveals the literary DNA of Lovecraft's cosmic horror, while The Hampdenshire Wonder tackles transhumanism decades before it became a preoccupation of science fiction and posthumanist philosophy.
Both books come with new introductions – S.L. Huang for the Taine volume and Ted Chiang for Beresford's work.
Previously:
• The Radium Age science fiction library
• Science fiction's Radium Age: prewar stories of postscarcity, peace and justice
• Radium Age science fiction novel by Jack London: The Scarlet Plague
• Gweek 071: Adrian Tomine
