Tsar Wars, Epsiode Two: Syren of the Skies

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The Empire Strikes Back, The Force, And A Death All Written In 1893. "Our empire is not bounded by the roofs of subterranean caverns, but only by the limits of the planet's atmosphere. We can soar beyond the clouds and dive beneath the seas. We have realised what he called the Vril force as a sober, scientific fact; and if I thought that you, for instance, were my enemy, I could strike you dead without so much as laying a hand on you. And if a dozen like you tried to overcome me by superior brute force, they would all meet with the same fate." Over a century of peace follows the Armageddon of 1904 detailed in Tsar Wars Episode Angel of the Revolution. The fifth generation of the Brotherhood of Freedom enforces the peace with flying ships and the mighty Vril-Force-until the last living child of the Tsar's line, Olga Romanoff, "beautiful beyond description and evil beyond comprehention," strikes back in revenge and plunges the world back into war. Will the arrival of a Death Star throw the world into total chaos? Tsar Wars Episode Syren Of The Skies was originally published in 1894 under the title Olga Romanoff, or Syren of the Skies by Tower. This publication includes the complete original text and illustrations.

Genres: Science Fiction, 19th Century

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1894

About the author

George Griffith (1857 – 1906), full name George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones, was a prolific British science fiction writer and noted explorer who wrote during the late Victorian and Edwardian age. Many of his visionary tales appeared in magazines such as Pearson's Magazine and Pearson's Weekly before being published as novels. Griffith was extremely popular in the United Kingdom, though he failed to find similar acclaim in the United States, in part due to his revolutionary and socialist views. A journalist, rather than scientist, by background, what his stories lack in scientific rigour and literary grace they make up for in sheer exuberance of execution.

Reviews

[Norman Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1894, a year after The Angel of the Revolution A Tale of the Coming Terror, Olga Romanoff, or, The Syren of the Skies continues the saga of the ultimate Anglo-Saxon utopia, Aeria, in the years 2030-2037. After the leaders of Aeria relinquish their control of the world to individual countries after 125 years of peace enforced by Aeria's domination of the air, the beautiful but thoroughly evil Olga Romanoff begins her quest to regain the power of her ancestors, the Tsars of Russia, who had fallen to Natas and his ally, Richard Arnold, conquerer of the empire of the air. Using a mind-control love potion, Olga enslaves Aeria's top two engineers, Alan Arnold (the direct descendant of Richard Arnold) and Alexis Masarov, and builds her fleet of aircraft and submarines in preparation for war. But Olga underestimates the wills of Alan and Alexis, who escape and mount a counterattack. Will Alan and Alexis be able to stop Olga and her new ally Sultan Khalid the Magnificent and save the Aerians before an even greater terror arrives to destroy the world?

This is a reasonably entertaining book, despite the characters being somewhat two-dimensional. George Griffith has a clear bias towards socialism, but his steampunky depictions of aerial strategies and tactics keeps you interested. Griffith does a good job of predicting scientific breakthroughs like sonar and radar, as well as the political machinations of world cartels. The last third of the book takes a giant left turn into implausibility, but things are satisfactorily resolved.

[mica · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yug. Did not enjoy this.

This is a science fiction very much of its time, and I found it frustrating and amusing in turns. Amusing because without a sense of irony, Griffith labels his villains tyrants and war-hungry despots while his heroes have essentially ruled the planet for a century and a quarter. Frustrating because this book is every damn bit as racist and sexist as one should probably expect from a British man in the late Victorian era - which I kind of figured it would be going in, but still made my skin just crawl. The frustration won out for me in the end.

The entire narrative wraps up with a kind of deus ex-machina, with an asteroid coming to hit earth and boil away all surface water and kill all life, so in the end, nothing any of the characters really did for 3/4 of this book really mattered, which is just a bewilderingly silly way to write a book, in my opinion.

[Janne Wass · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I finally concluded Griffith's most famous work, the sprawling future war epic "Olga Romanoff", originally serialised as "The Syren of the Skies". The title change for its 1885 novelisation speaks to its immense popularity: by 1895 the titular villain was already a household name in Britain.

The book picks up 120 years after the events portrayed in Griffith's "Angel of the Revolution", in which the pseudo-socialist cabal, the Terrorists, declared an Anglo-Saxon world domitation with the aid of their terrible air ships. Now a master race calling themselves the Aerians, the rulers relinquish their hold over the world, again permitting other nations to rule over their own armies. But they have not counted on the wrath of Olga Romanoff, the last descendant of the deposed and humiliated Russian Czar, who herself has found the secret to creating air ships matching the Aerians'. Along with the king of Africa, she plots to rule the world, enslaving men with her love potion and slaying the rest with her submarines and airships. Against this wrath stand the two descendants of the heroes of the original books, heirs to the predidency of Aeria and North America, respectively. But Alas! Onn the eve of the final battle, the Aerians receive word from Mars of the approach of a comet which will destroy all life on Earth.

While a highly imaginative tale of the future, Griffith's novel, like its predecessor, is bogged down by long-winded and dry tactical exposes on the raging war and its inane romantic, Victorian romantic subplot. Unfortunately Griffith's elitist, Anglo-Saxon imperialist attitudes, somehow oddly intermingled with socialist tendencies, and his bizarre depictions of women, have aged his works very badly, as opposed to those written by his main competition, H.G. Wells.

[Martyn Vaughan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a direct sequel to "The Princess Of The Revolution" and describes the peaceful world established by the AngloSaxons at the end of the Great European War detailed in the first book.It is the 2020s & the benevolent dictators, safely ensconced in their African stronghold of Aeria, naively decide that the rest of the world can now be trusted to run their own affairs. Almost immediately, the eponymous Olga pops up in an attempt to re-establish Tsarist Russia, allying with the leader of the Islamic world. Griffith in cataloguing these threats shows how little has changed since 1894. So the AngloSaxons are forced once again to take up the burden of restoring world peace, which is more difficult as they no longer are the only force with aircraft. As before, the war is described in excruciating detail and the reader fears it will never end, when a new player arrives on the scene in the form of a comet of incandescent gas. The AngloSaxons retreat to their secret base and wall themselves up inside a mountain, leaving the Russians & Islamists to win the war. However, their victory is short-lived as Earth passes through the comet and the surface temperature reaches 1000 degrees. The Aerians however, emerge after the cometary passage in time to find Olga also survived but has gone mad. The implication is that the AngloSaxons can now safely rebuild the world as all the inferior races have been incinerated. However, it is difficult to see how even they can achieve this for surely they are the only living things left on a sterilised planet!

[Maik Civeira · Rating 1 out of 5]

Éste es un libro aún más aburrido y menos interesante que su predecesor. Se sitúa 100 años después de la revolución narrada en la primera parte. El mundo occidental vive en paz y armonía, organizado en una Federación, que controlan los descendientes de la Hermandad (que son venerados casi como semidioses) gracias a las máquinas voladoras cuyo secreto sólo ellos conocen.

Pero la última descendiente del zar Alejandro de Rusia, que ha vivido en secreto por años, se infiltra entre la Hermandad, logra seducir a uno de sus líderes y roba el secreto del vuelo. Después se alía con el sultán de Egipto para formar un nuevo Califato e inicia una guerra total contra la Federación. Mientras tanto, un cometa mortal se acerca a la Tierra... En fin, una historia sin pies ni cabeza y todavía más sosa que la anterior.