VACUUM

By: Lee Wilson Dodd
June 20, 2024

A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.

Paul Klee’s *Ventriloquist and Crier in the Moor* (1923)

…

Old Jemmy Colton, being sombre-drunk,
Brain-seared with a black fire of prophecy,
Began a mad tale of the End of Things:—

“Look forward, say, two hundred years —
     what then?
Supposing the world lasts two hundred
     years;
Though, in some wrecked and arid form,
     it may
Last billions. Never mind. Two hundred
     years
From now will find us, I predict, no wiser,
No better — far more happy. … I predict
A swift change in the social state of man.
No, no, Selina; not your Revolution —
That’s a child’s toy to what I see before us!
Well; I see this:

     Man has outrun his strength —
The accumulated knowledge of mankind
Already crushes him. Science has forged
A vast, accelerating mechanism,
That, lacking brains to rule it, thrashes on
Toward unimagined chaos. If you have read
Old Henry Adams, and could stumble after
The forked and subtle lightnings of his
     mind,
You seize my thought, for it derives from
     him.
Yet I see further, being inspired tonight,
Or being drunk — or bored — or… well, no
     matter.
Nevertheless the Veil parts to my glance
And I stare forward, shuddering. And I see
A dull and coddled race of slaves, ruled
     over
By a small group of Super-scientists:
Earth’s last, unbreakable Monopoly,
The Monopoly of Mind, being theirs —
     theirs only!
These demi-gods — a handful — rule the
     world.
As for the populace, it lives as silk-worms
Live on their leaves, for Science has set free
The Energy of the Atom and harnessed it;
And — paid by some two hours of daily
     routine —
Doles out the luxuries men struggle for
No longer, since all men at last possess
     them.
A Golden Age of Bland Stupidity:
A billion clouds ruled over, cared for,
     despised
By fifty Minds — the Masters! …”

— Excerpt from “Vacuum” (Poetry, Vol. 23, No. 3; December 1923).

Fascinating use of the term “Minds” to describe the demigod-like benignant future rulers of humankind — because this is Iain M. Banks’s vision of the future human “Culture,” too… except his Minds are benign. Although at least one character in each book usually doubts this.

***

VACUUM

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