Just ahead of Part Twenty-Four of our current Tale for Our Time, a reminder that, as part of our weekend diversions at The Mark Steyn Club, we have a still newish weekly music show every Saturday. Hope you'll want to check that out.
Robert Hugh Benson's predictive novel of 1907 is remarkably prescient in its psychological insights into twenty-first-century western man, but some of the sci-fi elements aren't bad either. Joe Cressotti, a First Week Founding Member of the Steyn Club, writes:
I love the way Benson describes the flight over the Alps. It's impressive that he was able to conceive the views and sensations of flying without ever having done so himself. It's also a lovely tribute to the Lord of creation, especially read in juxtaposition to the host of terrorizing volors.
Very true, Joe. When Mr Benson first mentions his "volors" in the opening, one assumes that, because he's a priest and nor H G Wells, it's just a puddle-jumping flight of fancy. But his two accounts of flying over the Alps - in completely different circumstances - demonstrates how fully formed is his imaginative world. And I can't help wishing he'd ditched the writing and gone into air transportation - because I like the idea of taking a trip to O'Hare or LAX on a flying machine that permits you to stroll up the aisle having a quiet smoke as you gaze through the big picture windows en route to the dining car. Not like that on Delta or United.
That said, in tonight's episode of Lord of the World, after the volors set off to Rome, we are more earthbound - with Mabel completely unprepared for what awaits:
The dark was falling softly layer on layer; across the roofs to westward burned the smouldering fire of the winter sunset, and the interior was full of the dying light. She had slept a little in her chair that afternoon, and had awakened with that strange cleansed sense of spirit and mind that sometimes follows such sleep. She wondered later how she could have slept at such a time, and above all, how it was that she had perceived nothing of that cloud of fear and fury that even now was falling over town and country alike. She remembered afterwards an unusual busy-ness on the broad tracks beneath her as she had looked out on them from her windows, and an unusual calling of horns and whistles; but she thought nothing of it...
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Twenty-Four of our tale simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
If you've a friend who might be partial to our classic fiction outings, we've introduced a special Mark Steyn Club Gift Membership. You'll find more details here.
I'll see you back here tomorrow for Part Twenty-Five of Lord of the World.