THE GREATEST ADVENTURE
By:
March 4, 2025
Under the direction of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn, the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE series is reissuing notable proto-sf stories from the underappreciated era between 1900–1935.
In these forgotten classics, sf readers will discover the origins of enduring tropes like robots (berserk or benevolent), tyrannical supermen, dystopias and apocalypses, sinister telepaths, and eco-catastrophes.
With new contributions by historians, science journalists, and sf authors, the Radium Age book series will recontextualize the breakthroughs and biases of these proto-sf pioneers, and chart the emergence of a burgeoning literary genre.
Today marks the publication of the following Radium Age series title…
JOHN TAINE
Introduction by S.L. HUANG
(March 4, 2025)
A scientifically precipitated, out-of-control tale of evolution set in Antarctica—it predates Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness—by a mathematician of note who also wrote science fiction.
In The Greatest Adventure, an expedition to Antarctica discovers remnants of an elder race with advanced technology. These ancients had discovered the secret of developing new life-forms… but when the mutations threatened to run amok, their creators entombed their entire civilization in ice. Intrepid aviatrix Edith Lane and her comrades must flee through caverns inhabited by the mutated monsters… and when frozen spores begin to thaw out, the planet is threatened by malignant plant life! A tale of horror by John Taine — the pseudonym of mathematician Eric Temple Bell — that is not without moments of humor.
“The Greatest Adventure is both a rousing adventure and a pioneering work of environmental fiction reflecting concerns over extractivism, the role of science in warfare, and the future of scientific inquiry.” — Siobhan Maria Carroll
“Anyone who has enjoyed [Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World] will be amply rewarded by reading Taine’s The Greatest Adventure. Mr. Taine’s splendid imagination has given us quite a number of wonderful books.” — Amazing Stories (September 1929)
“A mixture of H. Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Roy Chapman Andrews, and a bottle of excellent gin.” — California Tech (1929)
“Generally considered one of John Taine’s better novels. Because of the strong theme and Taine’s known worrying about genetic engineering, perhaps intended as a cautionary tale as well as an adventure.” — Everett F. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years.
Advance publicity includes the following:
“What makes the Radium Age series so valuable is how it illuminates the origins of science fiction tropes we take for granted. The Greatest Adventure reveals the literary DNA of Lovecraft’s cosmic horror.” — Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing
ERIC TEMPLE BELL (1883–1960) was a mathematician who taught at the California Institute of Technology. The eponym of Bell polynomials and Bell numbers of combinatorics, his 1937 book Men of Mathematics would help to inspire Julia Robinson, John Forbes Nash Jr., Andrew Wiles, and other future mathematicians. Writing as “John Taine,” he published many proto-sf novels, several of which — including 1929’s The Greatest Adventure — involve scientifically precipitated, yet out-of-control evolution.
S.L. HUANG is a Hugo-winning, bestselling author who justifies an MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction. Huang is the author of the Cas Russell novels from Tor Books, including Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point, as well as the new fantasies Burning Roses and The Water Outlaws. Huang’s stories have appeared in Analog, F&SF, Nature, and elsewhere. Huang is also a Hollywood stunt performer and firearms expert, with credits including Battlestar Galactica and Top Shot.
Originally published in 1929. Cover illustrated and designed by Seth. See this book at The MIT Press.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF FROM THE MIT PRESS: VOICES FROM THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | J.D. Beresford’s A WORLD OF WOMEN | E.V. Odle’s THE CLOCKWORK MAN | H.G Wells’s THE WORLD SET FREE | Pauline Hopkins’s OF ONE BLOOD | J.J. Connington’s NORDENHOLT’S MILLION | Rose Macaulay’s WHAT NOT | Cicely Hamilton’s THEODORE SAVAGE | Arthur Conan Doyle’s THE LOST WORLD & THE POISON BELT | G.K. Chesterton’s THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL | MORE VOICES FROM THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | William Hope Hodgson’s THE NIGHT LAND | Hemendrakumar Roy’s THE INHUMANS | Charlotte Haldane’s MAN’S WORLD | Francis Stevens’s THE HEADS OF CERBERUS & OTHER STORIES | Edward Shanks’s THE PEOPLE OF THE RUINS | J.D. Beresford’s THE HAMPDENSHIRE WONDER | John Taine’s THE GREATEST ADVENTURE | Marietta Shaginyan’s YANKEES IN PETROGRAD | BEFORE SUPERMAN: SUPERHUMANS OF THE RADIUM AGE, ed. Joshua Glenn | & more to come.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.