The Course of Empire: A Survey of the Imperial Theme in Early Anglophone Science Fiction

This article examines a range of early anglophone sf novels which engage with the theme of empire. Taking bearings from Wells's The War of the Worlds, it discusses the shifting relations between the US and Britain, sometimes dominated by imperial rivalry, sometimes showing a cooperation between "Anglo-Saxon" cultures against alien forces. The imperial theme can show itself as optimistically expansive, as in John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds, or can express the fear of invasion, most famously in Wells's novel in which alien conquest is directed against the imperial center of London. During the 1910s US anxieties over isolationism are articulated through narratives of attack by different European enemies. The racism often informing such empire fiction becomes most explicit in Yellow Peril stories in which the Chinese are shown as a malignant and anonymous mass threatening civilization itself.