Theodore Savage

(Paperback)

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From one of the earliest feminist science fiction writers, a novel that envisions the fall of civilization-and the plight of the modern woman in a post-apocalyptic wilderness. When war breaks out in Europe, British civilization collapses overnight. The ironically named protagonist must learn to survive by his wits in a new Britain. When we first meet Savage, he is a complacent civil servant, primarily concerned with romancing his girlfriend. During the brief war, in which both sides use population displacement as a terrible strategic weapon, Savage must battle his fellow countrymen. He shacks up with an ignorant young woman in a forest hut-a kind of inverse Garden of Eden, where no one is happy. Eventually, he sets off in search of other survivors . . . only to discover a primitive society where science and technology have come to be regarded with superstitious awe and terror. A pioneering feminist, Hamilton offers a warning about the degraded state of modern women, who-being "unhandy, unresourceful, superficial"-would suffer a particularly sad fate in a postapocalyptic social order.

Reviews

Included in Tor.com's "Cant Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for January and February 2023"

"Written in the Interwar Period, Theodore Savage is a terrifying and prescient science fiction novel thats unflinching in its portrayal of the fragile scaffolding that supports civilized society."
ForeWord Reviews, STARRED

"Prescient both to Hamiltons time and to the current moment of war, plague, and refugee crises, this novel deserves to be rediscovered. Readers will have much to chew on."
Publishers Weekly

"Decades later, scores of novels about the aftermath of nuclear war would deploy a similar gambit; few are quite this effective."
Los Angeles Review of Books

In Praise of the Radium Age Series:

Joshua Glenns admirable Radium Age series [is] devoted to early- 20th-century science fiction and fantasy.
The Washington Post

Long live the Radium Age.
The Los Angeles Times

Its an attractive crusade. [] Glenns project is well suited to providing an organizing principle for an SF reprint line, to the point where Im a little surprised that I cant think of other similarly high-profile examples of reprint-as-critical-advocacy.
The Los Angeles Review of Books

Neglected classics of early 20th-century sci-fi in spiffily designed paperback editions.
The Financial Times

New editions of a host of under-discussed classics of the genre.
Tor.com

Shows that proto-sf was being published much more widely, alongside other kinds of fiction, in a world before it emerged as a genre and became ghettoised.
BSFA Review

A huge effort to help define a new era of science fiction.
Transfer Orbit

An excellent start at showcasing the strange wonders offered by the Radium Age.
Maximum Shelfs

Author Bio

Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952) was an Anglo-Irish actress, author, and feminist campaigner best known for her 1909 treatise Marriage as a Trade. Her prewar plays include Diana of Dobson's (1908) and How the Vote Was Won (1909). After working in the north of France during World War I and witnessing how its violence affected civilians, she was inspired to write Theodore Savage (1922), a proto-sf novel presciently foregrounding modern warfare's destructive power. Susan R. Grayzel is Professor of History at Utah State University, where she researches and teaches about modern European history, women's and gender history, the history of the world wars, and war and culture. Her publications in these areas include Women's Identities at War (1999) and At Home and Under Fire (2012). Her latest book is The Age of the Gas Mask- How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War (Cambridge University Press, 2022).