Sign-In
Cart
Lord of the World
Paperback
Science FictionChristian FictionGeneral Fiction
Publisher Price: $16.99
ISBN13: 9781609441036
Publisher: Vertvolta Press
Published: Mar 25 2019
Pages: 294
Weight: 0.96
Height: 0.66 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Science fiction as a genre of literature was not differentiated in the minds of publishers from fantasy tales until nearly the middle of the Twentieth Century--and that sentence may inflame affectionados of the form but so be it. Is Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards a political fantasy or science fiction dealing with politics and economics? Good question. The answer is in the mind of the reader.
In the mind of the author of Lord of the World brewed a saga dealing with an uncertain future date when the world is split into warring factions of radical socialists, each in control of one or more continents. Benson calls them communists but he does not have the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist type communists in mind, just utopian socialists who have abolished most aspect of a capitalist society but retained a semblance of representative--if authoritarian--government. Throughout the world there is universal health care but it advocates euthanasia for those who are depressed, ill or injured. People fly from place to place on transports that double as bombers. A charismatic American politician manages to gain control of all of the continental factions, ending their internecine wars, and uniting them in the task of eliminating religion by bombing the principle headquarters of religious institutions. Survivors are pursued relentlessly. It is a well told tale by a contemporary of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Franz Kafka and Jules Verne.
Robert Hugh Benson's 1907 novel arrived in the same era as L. Frank Baum's Ozma of Oz, G.K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday, Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows, H. Rider Haggard's Yellow God; An Idol of Africa, and H.G. Well's War in the Air. It is a science fiction period piece but in November of 2013, Pope Francis said that it depicted, the spirit of the world which leads to apostasy almost as if it were a prophecy. Who knew the Pope read science fiction?
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Agee, Joel
Musil, Robert
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback