A collection of science fiction stories from the early twentieth century by authors ranging
from Arthur Conan Doyle to W. E. B. Du Bois. This collection of science fiction stories from
the early twentieth century features work by the famous (Arthur Conan Doyle creator of
Sherlock Holmes) the no-longer famous ( weird fiction pioneer William Hope Hodgson) and the
should-be-more famous (Bengali feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain). It offers stories by writers
known for concerns other than science fiction (W. E. B. Du Bois author of The Souls of Black
Folk) and by writers known only for pulp science fiction (the prolific Neil R. Jones). These
stories represent what volume and series editor Joshua Glenn has dubbed the Radium Age the
period when science fiction as we know it emerged as a genre. The collection shows that nascent
science fiction from this era was prescient provocative and well written. Readers will
discover among other delights a feminist utopia predating Charlotte Perkins Gilman s Herland
by a decade in Hossain s story Sultana s Dream a world in which the human population has
retreated underground in E. M. Forster s The Machine Stops an early entry in the
Afrofuturist subgenre in Du Bois s last-man-on-Earth tale The Comet and the first appearance
of Jones s cryopreserved Professor Jameson who despairs at Earth s wreckage but perseveres in
a metal body to appear in thirty-odd more stories.
