The Roots of Modern SF

It's a common belief that modern science fiction as a genre began with the publication of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories in 1926 and came to maturity in Astounding in the 1940s under the editorship of John W. Campbell. That's true, at least as far as the commercial development of SF, but ignores the many literary predecessors going back at least as far as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

MIT Press is launching a series of books, published under the banner of The Radium Age that will shed some light on the early works that influenced modern authors. Although it includes works by Wells and Doyle, most of the title will be unfamiliar to modern readers. 

MIT Press is launching a new project today: it's publishing a new series, The Radium Age, which'll be edited by Joshua Glenn, which will examine the works that came before the Golden Age of science fiction — works that he believes held a great influence on the genre that followed, and which have largely been forgotten.

The first installment, Voices from the Radium Age, comes out today. Edited by Glenn, it's a collection of shorter works by authors like Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, W. E. B. Du Bois, and more, all published between 1905 and 1931. After that, the press will release J.D. Beresford's A World of Women, originally published in 1913.

Other installments will hit bookstores later in the year. May brings E.V. Odle's 1920 novel The Clockwork Man, and H.G. Wells' The World Set Free, August will see Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins and Nordenholt's Million by J.J. Connington, and Rose Macaulay's What Not will debut in October. Other titles, like Theodore Savage by Cicely Hamilton, and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and The Poison Belt will come in 2023.

This is an interesting project. When I was in university studying English literature, I read a few books from that era but other than Wells, no works of science fiction and fantasy were on the curriculum. Maybe the series will help to change that.

And the covers are gorgeous. 

Thanks to Andrew Liptak and his Transfer Orbit newsletter for bringing this to my attention. I highly recommend subscribing.