The Plutocratic Plot

by Brian M. Stableford (Translator, Adapter), Gustave Guitton, Gustave Le Rouge

The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the "Transatlantic Peril", positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its outlandishness, hindsight has lent the world imagined by Gustave Guitton and Gustave Le Rouge (The Vampires of Mars) a certain prophetic quality. In this first volume, A secret cabal of American billionaires, led by William Boltyn, would like nothing more than to crush Europe, or at least subject it to harsh economic domination, and eventually become masters of the world. To that end, they scheme to use a deadly array of highly advanced weapons invented by Engineer Hattison and an army of psychics under the command of the sinister Harry Madge. Their grand plan, however, is opposed by the heroic endeavors of a handful of Frenchmen...

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1899

About the author

Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

Reviews

[BrokenEye, the True False Prophet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm going to be honest, this book wasn't good (though it wasn't as bad as the translators made it out to be) but it WAS a lot of fun, and oddly prescient.

William Boltyn, an apparent stand-in for Chicago meatpacking tycoon Philip Danforth "Everything but the Squeal" Armour, believes that the Unites States should use its military might to enforce its economic agenda on the whole of the world, especially Europe. But as this story is both written and taking place before either of the World Wars, the Military Industrial Complex has yet to be invented and the American military is really nothing to right home about. Even more frustratingly for our villain, the isolationist congress has no interest in that changing any time soon. So what does he do? He calls a council of American billionaires including the curiously forenameless Thomas Edison stand-in Hattison, preacher-esque head of the American Steel Company, Fred Wilkinson (who, as the head of a company that its almost certainly US Steel, is likely J.P. Morgan or Charles Schwab), electric utility mogul Mr. Wood-Waller (who I've tennatively pegged as GE head Charles A. Coffin), an a bunch of other robber barons whose real world equivalents I couldn't pin down including cotton baron Harry Madge, who largely ignores his business in favor of his interest in Spiritualism, railway head Mr. Straps-Barker (who could be a few different people), distiller Sips-Rothson (see what he did there?), timber merchant Philip Adams, and gold mining tycoons Samson Myr and Juan Herald, and together they invent the Military Industrial Complex, decades before anyone in the real world thought of it. Only in this timeline the actual legitimate US Military is cut out of the deal or having snubbed Boltyn's ambitions earlier.

Nestled in the Rocky Mountains they build the sprawling and heavily compartmentalized factory town of Mercury Park, which sort of reminds me of stories I've read about Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the Manhattan Project, only instead of building a bomb they're doing the work of the entire Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The story is, however, quickly taken over by what probably should've been a subplot, but whatever. William Boltyn wants to marry off his daughter Aurora to Hattison's son Ned (neither of whom corresponds to any actual offspring of their fathers' real world counterparts) for money reasons. When they first meet, Aurora quicky falls in love with Ned, but Ned, who was never totally onboard with this whole "take over the world" thing and only got involved to please his father, is somewhat disgusted to discover that Aurora is a true believer and wants nothing to do with her. So Hattison sends his son off to Paris to steal Europe's military secrets,on the excuse of "proving himself to be a worthy suiter", hoping to string Boltyn along long enough that the sunk cost will prevent him from backing out of the partnership when he hears the arranged marriage is off. Ned is accompanied by Boltyn's comical butler Tom Punch, whose good nature and sincere devotion to fine food and finer liquor allow him to easily make friends with anyone from snooty Parisian Cordon Bleu chefs to cannibalistic California hillbilly bandits (????). Though the scene pops back into Mercury Park from time to time to remind you that it still exists, it focuses largely on Ned's life in Paris as he establishes a laboratory, meets a nice Parisian girl, makes the acquaintance of some philosophical French inventors, and eventually sees the error of his ways (as if he didn't already mostly see it before) and severs all ties with Boltyn's little conspiracy. At a quiet moment during his wedding to his Parisian love, Ned has the sobering realization that he'll probably have to deal with the Mercury Park at some point... in the sequel, because this book is over. Bye everyone!

Messrs. le Rouge and Guitton certainly seems to understand America to a degree (touching briefly on issues such as the pitfalls of zero regulation culture and the continued oppression of freed blacks in the years since the end of the Civil War, and of course the dangers of allowing too much power to fall into the hands of robber barons), which is strange, because they don't actually seem to know that much about it. Noticeable incidents include incorrectly naming the song Yankee Doodle as our National Anthem (and the suggestion that a meeting of ostentatious billionaires living in grandiose Xanadu-style mansions would consider the freaking banjo a sufficiently decorous instrument upon which to play it), and an incident in which an express train from Chicago somehow manages to pass a Southern style cotton plantation only a few miles east of the Rockies.

Since the focus of the story always seems to linger in places where new technologies are being invented, absurd invention abound. There are torpedoes that shoot across the ground rather than under the water. There's a submarine whose bow can be detached as ballast if the pumps fail and whose interior can be collapsed in order to preserve oxygen (the latter half of which the authors somehow managed to make sound like it made sense). There's a veritable preponderance of electric bullet trains that somehow exist in 1900, but only for billionaires. There's William Boltyn's fully automated slaughterhouses and canning plants, like Mrs. Tweedy's pie machine on steroids. And of course there's Harry Madge's fabulous floating psychic energy-powered automobile, which I'm just dying to see concept art for.

So, yeah. Pulpy as heck, but great fun.

[Bo · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there were some interesting parts of classic science fiction inventiveness in this book, there was just too much time dedicated to interpersonal relationships, or rather the thinking and despairing of such. Not to mention the book lacks almost completely in action, which, considering that it’s about a buildup to a war is kind of odd and anti-climactic. I’ll probably pick up part two sometime but I hope more stuff happens in that or I won’t read the final two books.