Voices Prophesying War, 1763-1984

by Ignatius Frederick Clarke

In 1918, the American colonists were loyal subjects of the British crown, the British army crushed the Russians at Vienna with a roar of musketry and cavalry charges, the British navy unveiled its secret weapon (fireships), and the British king--after personally leading his men in battle--claimed the title of King of France. Or so went a less-than-accurate prediction from 1763 entitled The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 . It was the first of a long line of fiction forecasting the shape of wars to come.
In Voices Prophesying War , I.F. Clarke provides a fascinating history of this unusual genre--a strand of fiction that has revealed more about contemporary concerns than the direction of the future. The real surge of fiction about future wars, he writes, took place after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Clarke skillfully evokes the context of fear and political tension that gripped Britain after the German victory as he describes a wave of stories that predicted a foreign conquest of England. Starting with The Battle of Dorking (an account of a German invasion that was later translated and issued by the Nazis in 1940), forecasts of a future catastrophic war led to an invasion scare and a demand for military reforms. The French, too, fought fictional wars with Germany over Alsace-Lorraine (and occasionally with Britain), taking revenge in print for their humiliating defeat in 1871. The tense years just before World War I spawned another surge of fiction predicting the next great war, (leading G.K. Chesterton to publish a hilarious parody, The Swoop! or, How Clarence Saved England , depicting an attack by eight separate enemies on an England so indifferent that the newspapers report the invasion with the cricket scores). But Clarke shows how the predictions were taken seriously by the public and the military authorities. In 1906, Field Marshal Lord Roberts collaborated on an invasion scare story to promote his campaign for a larger army (and the newspaper that published it had him reroute the invaders, to take them through its strongest markets). Ironically, the most accurate predictions (including a story about unrestricted submarine warfare by Arthur Conan Doyle) were derided as implausible. Clarke follows the genre though to the present day, looking at how the Cold War shaped speculative war fiction and even science fiction accounts of conflict in the distant future. The end of the Cold War, he notes, has left writers floundering in their search for a believable enemy.
No author, he writes, was as remarkably prescient as H.G. Wells, who foresaw atomic bombs as early as 1913. But, as Clarke shows, writers have yet to give up trying to predict the wars to come--offering a window into the fears of the present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Military Fiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1966

About the author

Ignatius Frederick "Ian" Clarke was a British scholar and professor of English, known for his work on science fiction as a bibliographer, historian and editor, and also, with his wife Margaret, as a translator of early French science fiction.

Reviews

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far back as 1763 there were writers imagining what the next war would be like. The "future war" genre really began to flourish with 1871's "The Battle of Dorking," an entertaining story as well as a critique of Britain's military failings. Imitators and knockoffs followed in a steady stream; H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds was strongly influenced by the genre.
This is a good look at an obscure genre. This second edition expands the topic through the 1980s but I don't find that adds very much to the subject. Still, very interesting in its specialized way.

[Aaron Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book. For anyone interested in the history of Speculative Fiction as well as the start of science fiction, this is a foundational book. The central theme is on future warfare and whether literature was used to either prepare or correctly predicted trends that were born out in major conflicts post writing.

Prior to WWI Clarke's points are well researched and make his case for him.

The Interwar period chapters are more difficult as the topics continually come back to pre-WWI writings and this is where the book loses points in my mind. He retreads a lot of ground from his previous chapters. Maybe he believed his book would be used as a reference and people would go to specific chapters.

Post Nuclear weapons Clarke's points I don't think are as salient. WHich could be an indication of his point that future war has become so devastating that it was more how do we recover.

Finally, after the end of the Cold War, this book was updated, and it adds a nice bit of additional information to those of us curious about future war.

The final negative point is I think he made a case that authors were no longer writing certain ways, but then highlighted the opposite from specific authors.

I picked up this book for a paper I am writing and I found it immensely helpful, and it now sits on my book shelf, and while I largely focused on the negatives, it was a wonderfully researched and written book that taught me many things about the genre of speculative fiction, and societal and governmental interactions with literature.

[Craig]

I enjoyed the original edition which ended in 1984 so much that when I discovered this revised edition I had to have a look. Professor Clarke extended his original work to 3749, which SF buffs will recognise as including "A Canticle for Leibowitz". For anyone with any interest in history a worthwhile read.