After sleeping for a century, Rousseau’s protagonist, Arnold Pennell, awakens — like the protagonist of H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Wakes (1910) — in a socialist, “scientific world freed of faith and humanitarianism.” He is horrified not only by the dazzling, skyscraper-dominated London of the future, but by Britain’s tyrannical utopian order, which is maintained though constant sloganeering and other forms of thought control. Having become an iconic figure to the people of the future, who have been waiting for a Messiah to restore to them their ancient liberties, Pennell leads a revolution — the goal of which is to help Russia restore a moralistic aristocracy in Britain. Serialized, from June–September 1917, in Everybody’s Magazine, The Messiah of the Cylinder is considered one of the first American dystopian stories. It is also one of the first sf stories to use the term “ray gun.” Bleiler says: “A more considerable work than is generally recognized, despite the pulp adventure aspects. One can find among the author’s ultraconservative values such Orwellian anticipations as omnipresent slogans, euphemistic terms for horrible institutions, the artificial language Spikisi, the mechanics of thought control, and the apparatus of the police state.” OK, it’s too Catholic, too pulp, too imitative… yet its fully realized presentation of a socialist dictatorship in the future is brilliant.
Creators/Key Contributors V. R. Emanuel (as Victor Rousseau)
First Appearance “The Messiah of the Cylinder” in Everbody’s Magazine (Jun–Sep 1917)
First Publisher A. C. McClurg & Co.
Appearance List The Messiah of the Cylinder (1917)
Sample Read The Messiah of the Cylinder (1917) [Internet Archive]
Description After sleeping for a century, Rousseau’s protagonist, Arnold Pennell, awakens — like the protagonist of H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Wakes (1910) — in a socialist, “scientific world freed of faith and humanitarianism.” He is horrified not only by the dazzling, skyscraper-dominated London of the future, but by Britain’s tyrannical utopian order, which is maintained though constant sloganeering and other forms of thought control. Having become an iconic figure to the people of the future, who have been waiting for a Messiah to restore to them their ancient liberties, Pennell leads a revolution — the goal of which is to help Russia restore a moralistic aristocracy in Britain. Serialized, from June–September 1917, in Everybody’s Magazine, The Messiah of the Cylinder is considered one of the first American dystopian stories. It is also one of the first sf stories to use the term “ray gun.” Bleiler says: “A more considerable work than is generally recognized, despite the pulp adventure aspects. One can find among the author’s ultraconservative values such Orwellian anticipations as omnipresent slogans, euphemistic terms for horrible institutions, the artificial language Spikisi, the mechanics of thought control, and the apparatus of the police state.” OK, it’s too Catholic, too pulp, too imitative… yet its fully realized presentation of a socialist dictatorship in the future is brilliant.
