Grahame Baker-Smith’s 2017 Folio illustration for War of the Worlds.
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Introduction
It was perhaps the most famous description of a (space) alien in English literature. The narrator felt an “utter terror [grip] him” as a thing from a nightmare emerged slowly, slowly from the pit that its smoking spacecraft had cratered in the Earth. As its body “bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.” A pair of huge, fathomless dark eyes regarded him intensely, “steadfastly. (more…)
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H. G. Wells is best known for being one of the founding fathers of science fiction, along with his French counterpart Jules Verne. While he was a wordsmith by trade, he had a strong influence on the medium of film almost from the beginning. (more…)
Kay Nielsen draft of a shipwreck, ca. 1940
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It was a dark and soon-to-be stormy night on the Gulf Coast some years ago, when my other half and I sat on our porch chairs, gazing toward the sea. He held a cigarette — a bad (thankfully short-lived) habit he’d picked up during his year-long research sabbatical in Valladolid; paired with his fedora, I’m sure he knew that it lent him a (pretentious) air reminiscent of interwar Europe (more…)
Douglas Reed
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The long-awaited prosperity promised by the Industrial Revolution finally arrived with the Edwardian Age of productive leisure. But, alas, it was not to be for long. The freedom it granted was fleeting. Today, as the fabled American middle class fades like the morning dew, those who are running just to stand still, as the Red Queen prophesied, are the lucky ones.
Lopsided money distribution was one of the factors which encouraged C. H. Douglas to devise the yet-to-be implemented Social Credit Dividend, which was to be based on the inheritance of natural resources and inventions from previous generations. (more…)
C. H. Douglas, the British Social Credit pioneer.
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There is drawn no boundary,
No hard, wretched earth-clod bars our way,
And we sail across the sea,
And we wander countries far away.
–“Human Pride,” Karl Marx
When President Trump issued an executive order temporarily banning immigrants from seven countries, he quickly found out that the ability to associate with people of one’s choice was not so easy – even for the denizens of a superpower. His order was quickly challenged in court and worldwide demonstrations demanded the right of entry to America for all, even if the Americans don’t want to associate with particular people. (more…)
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My last article documented the funding of the March 1917 Revolution in Russia.[1] The primary financier of the Russian revolutionary movement 1905–1917 was Jacob Schiff, of Kuhn Loeb and Co., New York. (more…)
