SLSL Intro "The Apocalyptic Showdown"

[Dave Monroe]

"My reading at the time also included many Victorians,
allowing World War I in my imagination to assume the
shape of that attractive nuisance so dear to
adolescent minds, the apocalyptic showdown." (SL,
"Intro," p. 18)

Cf. ...

"A pose I found congenial in those days--fairly
common, I hope, among pre-adults--was that of somber
glee at any idea of mass destuction or decline.  Th
modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been
known to cash in on such visions of death made
large-scale or glamorous." (SL, "Intro," p. 130)


"many Victorians"

The Victorian Web

http://65.107.211.206/victov.html

>From I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars,
1763-3749, 2nd. ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1992
[1966]), Ch. 1, "The Warfare of the Future: The
Opening Phase, 1763-1871," pp. 1-26 ...

"During the evening of 2 September 1871, the British
Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, spoke to the
Working Men's Liberal Association at Whitby in
Yorkshire.  His theme was the state of the nation and
of the world; and towards the end of his speech he
warned his audience and the country against the
dangers of alarmism.  The occasion was most unusual in
British politics, since the cause of teh warning was a
piece of fiction that had appeared four months earlier
in the May issue of Blackwood's Magazine, one of the
most influential of the Victorian monthly journals....
 paying unwilling tribute to the effectiveness of The
Battle of Dorking, a short story about an imagine
dfuture German invasion of the British Isles which had
alarmed the nation .... had established teh tale of
the war-to-come as the most favoured means of
presenting arguments for--or against--new political
alliances, changes in the organization and equipment
of armies, technological innovations in naval vessels,
or even schemes for colonial expansion.  The anonymous
author [Lieutenant-Colonel George Tomkyns Chesney] had
written the first hot story in the cold war of new
armaments and conscript armies." (p. 1)

"... he chose to present his fears for the future of
his country in a highly dramatic and totally realistic
projection.  And then ... Chseney's admonitory tale of
disaster and defeat went on to provide both form and
technique for the many forecasts of coming wars and
future battles that began to appear in ever-increasing
numbers throughout the new industrial nations." (p. 2)

   "And yet Chesney was certainly not the first writer
to describe and imaginary war of the future ....
before Chesney's innovatory story the tale of the
war-to-come was generally presented in political
rather than military terms.  Writers looked on war as
a customary and acceptable process in European
society.  In their imagination they projected the
weapons and tactics of their time into a future that
was simply the old world reshaped to suit their
individual purposes.  Before The Battle of Dorking, no
author of an imaginary war of the future ever
suggested that the deliberate use of new weapons and
technological devices could have a decisive effect on
the outcome of a battle or war.
   "It will be evident, therefore, that any account of
the origin and course of these imaginary wars will
also be a history of the changing attitudes to war
itself.... all these stories have been immediate
responses to the perceived dangers or promising
opportunities that awaited the nations-in-arms .... 
These begin with the nationalistic, often aggressive,
and generally heroic tales of coming battles and
future campaigns in that last age of innocence before
the first great technological war in world history. 
The end in fear and trembling with the post-Hiroshima
projections of the horrors that threaten all living
things ...." (pp. 3-4)

   "Once ... it was generally agreed that the advance
of science would put an end to all strife ...." (p. 4)

   "Two world wars changed that simple faith." (ibid.)

"Ever since Hiroshima a common fear has united the
peoples of planet earth, and an immense literature has
developed to describe how the end could come for all
humankind." (p. 5)

"The earliest account of a future war appeared in The
Reign of George VI, 1900-1925, an anonymous story of
1763...." (p. 5)

   "The emergent technology of the industrial
revolution was one factor that helped to establish the
tale of imaginary warfare as a political and literary
device...." (p. 6)

"... the shape of the future in the tales of future
warfare will always conform to the pattern of
contemporary expectations." (p. 18)

Ch. 2, "The Break-in Phase: The Battle of Dorking
Episode," pp. 27-56 ...

   "Chesney was fortunate enough to have found the
right moment for discharging his frightening forecast
upon the British people, since most of the year 1871
was pased in a mood of foreboding and anxiety for the
future...." (p. 28)

"Why does the device of the imaginary war spread
throughout Europe from 1871 onwards?  Although it is
apparent that the starting-point for this new type of
fiction is an urgent sense of anxiety over some
problem of the day ....  Behind the European reception
and imitation of The Battle of Dorking stand the
varied and often concealed influences of the new
sciences and the even newer technologies: first, in
the facilities that the electric telegraph offered for
teh rapid dissemination of news; second, and more
profoundly, in the general expectation of change
engendered both by the fact of technological
development and by theories of progress and
evolutionary development.... the world had become a
much smaller place ...." (p. 45)

   "The new literature of the future was the
imaginative and adaptive response of a society that
had learnt to think in terms of origins, growth, and
evolutionary advances...." (p. 48)

   "The sudden emergence of tales about the future,
which were based on Darwinism and on the idea of
progress, followed on the [Franco-Prussian] war of
1870; and in that war two great nations had
demonstrated the fact of technological progress in a
savage struggle to survive." (p. 49)

"The war of 1870 had altered the power system in
Europe, and in a more general way it was considered to
have revealed the working of the Darwinian mechanism
for the rise and decline of species." (p. 51)

   "Already in 1871 the First World War was being
prepared in fact and in fiction.... the nations took
note that if they were to survive they would have to
have the biggest armies and the most murderous weapons
possible...." (p. 510

"... in 1887 ... the anonymous Plus d'Angleterre ....
translated into English as Down with England .... an
apocalyptic vision of triumph and revenge ....
   "As with all these tales, the plot of Plus
d'Angelterre satrted from a recognized fact in
history.  On this occasion the point of origin was the
ill feeling between the French and British over the
occupation of Egypt in 1882...." (p. 53)

"... there were occasional stories that had caught the
theme of the great globe, world communications, and
the need to arrange the human race to suit the
convenience of a dominant group.... Three Hundred
Years Hence, first published in 1881 by William
Delisle Hay....  It is an epic tale on the great
Victorian theme of unending progress; and yet there
are elements drawn from Darwinism and the whole
complex of evolutionary ideas that help a citizen of
the post-Hiroshima world to understand how ordinary
men could contemplate without a blink the tales of
death and destruction that poured from the presses of
Europe between 1871 and 1914.
   "The author has a whole chapter on what he calls
'The Fate of the Inferior Races.'... his ideas look
forward to the Nuremburg rallies ...." (pp. 54-5)

Ch. 5, "From the Somme and Verdun to Hiroshima and
Nagasaki," pp. 131-63 ...

"... the circumstances of 1871 were in many ways
repeated in the excitement caused by the appearance of
The Riddle of the Snds in 1903.... Erskine Childers
had devised the perfect myth in which to convey the
anxieties and anticipations of a people beginning to
be alarmed by the new menace from overseas." (p. 119)

Ch. 6, "From the Flame Deluge to the Bad Time," pp.
164-217 ...

"When the atomic bombs burst over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki ... they realized the worst anticipations of
future war fiction ...." (p. 164)

"Checklist of Imaginary Wars, 1753-1990," pp. 224-62


"the apocalyptic showdown" 

Cf. ...

Fashoda
85; town (now Kodok) in southeast Sudan, 400 miles
south of Khartoum on the White Nile river, "Far up the
Bahr-el-Abyad, in the heathen jungle"; it was founded
by the Egyptian government in 1867; In July 1898,
French General Marchand, coming from the West Coast of
Africa, occupied Fashoda in an attempt to control the
Upper Nile. Britain, which controlled the area,
threatened war and the French withdrew. The next year,
the Sudan became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium; 89-93;
106; 166; 189; 386

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/f.html

Suez Canal
79; In 1956, Egyptian president Nasser seized the Suez
Canal, which was under British-French control.
Anglo-French forces intervened, but differences of
opinion in Britain, the United States and elsewhere,
combined with veiled Russian threats, caused the
British and French to back down; 186; 428; "We [the
U.S.] voted in the Security Council with Russia and
against England and France on this Suez business."
431, 448

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/alpha/s.html

Et alia.  And see as well ...

George Chesney, The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences
of a Volunteer (1871) ...

http://www.blackmask.com/books63c/dorking.htm

After the Battle of Dorking: The Battle of Dorking
   Controversy.  Ed. Anonymous.  London: Cornmarket
   Reprints, 1972.

Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (1903) ...

http://www.bluemoment.com/riddle.html

http://www.rtpnet.org/robroy/books/rec/rs.html



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