George Griffith - Olga Romanoff or, The Syren of the Skies.pdf

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Olga Romanoff or, The Syren of the Skies
Griffith, George
Published: 1894
Type(s): Novels, Science Fiction, War
Source: http://gutenberg.net.au
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About Griffith:
George Griffith (full name George Chetwyn Griffith-Jones;
(1857–1906)) was a prolific British science fiction writer and noted ex-
plorer 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 ex-
tremely 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 ex-
uberance of execution.
"To-night that spark was to be shaken from the torch of Revolution,
and to-morrow the first of the mines would explode… the armies of
Europe would fight their way through the greatest war that the world
had ever seen." From Griffith's most famous novel 'The Angel of the
Revolution'.
He was the son of a vicar who became a school master in his mid
twenties. After writing freelance articles in his spare time, he joined a
newspaper for a short spell, then authored a series of secular pamphlets
including "Ananias, The Atheist's God:For the Attention of Charles Brad-
laugh". After the success of Admiral Philip H. Colomb's 'The Great War
of 1892' (itself a version of the more famous The Battle of Dorking, Grif-
fith, then on the staff of Pearson's Magazine, submitted a synopsis for a
story entitled 'The Angel of the Revolution'. It remains his best and most
famous work. It was the first synthesis of the 'marvel' tale epitomised by
Jules Verne, featuring futuristic flying machines, compressed air guns
and spectacular areal combat, the 'future war' tales of Chesney and his
imitators and the political utopianism of Morris's News from Nowhere.
He wrote a sequel, serialised as 'The Syren of the Skies' in the magazine
and published as a novel under the title of its main character Olga
Romanoff
Although eternally overshadowed by H. G. Wells, Griffith's epic
fantasies of romantic anarchists in a future world of war dominated by
airship battlefleets and grandiose engineering provided a template for
steampunk novels a century before the term was coined. The influence of
books such as "The Angel of the Revolution" and the character of Olga
Romanoff on British fantasy writer Michael Moorcock is striking.
Though a less accomplished writer than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rud-
yard Kipling and H.G. Wells, his novels were as popular in their day and
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foreshadowed World War I and the Russian Revolutions and the con-
cepts of the air to surface missile and VTOL aircraft. He wrote several
tales of adventure set on contemporary earth, while 'The Outlaws of the
Air' depicted a future of aerial warfare and the creation of a Pacific is-
land utopia. Sam Moskowitz described him as "undeniably the most
popular science fiction writer in England between 1893 and 1895."
His science fiction depicted grand and unlikely voyages through our
solar system in the spirit of Wells or Jules Verne, though his explorers
donned space suits remarkably prescient in their design. "Honeymoon in
Space' saw his newly married adventurers exploring planets in different
stages of geological and Darwinian evolution on an educational odyssey
which drew heavily on earlier cosmic voyages by Flammarion, Wells,
Lach-Szyrma, and Edgar Fawcett. Its illustrations by Stanley Wood have
proved more significant, providing the first depictions of slender, super
intelligent aliens with large, bald heads - the archetype of the famous
Greys of modern science fiction.
As an explorer of the real world he shattered the existing record for
voyaging around the world, completing his journey in just 65 days, and
helped discover the source of the Amazon river. He died of cirrhosis of
the liver, at the age of 48, in 1906.
Source: Wikipedia
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PROLOGUE. THE PROPHECY OF NATAS
These are the last words of Israel di Murska, known in the days of strife
as Natas, the Master of the Terror, given to the Children of Deliverance
dwelling in the land of Aeria, in the twenty-fifth year of the Peace,
which, in the reckoning of the West, is the year nineteen hundred and
thirty.
MY life is lived, and the wings of the Angel of Death overshadow me
as I write; but before the last summons comes, I must obey the spirit
within me that bids me tell of the things that I have seen, in order that
the story of them shall not die, nor be disguised by false reports, as the
years multiply and the mists gather over the graves of those who, with
me, have seen and wrought them.
For this reason the words that I write shall be read publicly in the ears
of you and your children and your children's children, until they shall
see a sign in heaven to tell them that the end is at hand. No man among
you shall take away from that which I have written, nor yet add any-
thing to it; and every fifth year, at the Festival of Deliverance, which is
held on the Anniversary of Victory,1 this writing of mine shall be read,
that those who shall hear it with understanding may lay its warnings to
heart, and that the lessons of the Great Deliverance may never be forgot-
ten among you.
The 8th of December, on which day, in the year 1904, the armies of the
Anglo Saxon Federation and the aerial navy of the Terrorists defeated
and almost annihilated the hosts of the Franco-Slavonian League, then
besieging London under the command of Alexander Romanoff, last of
the Tsars of Russia, and so made possible the universal disarmament
which took place the following year.—The Angel of the Revolution,
chap. xlvi.
It was in the days before the beginning of peace that I, Natas the Jew,
cast down and broken by the hand of the Tyrant, conceived and created
that which was known as the Terror. The kings of the earth and their ser-
vants trembled before my invisible presence, for my arm was long and
my hand was heavy; yet no man knew where or when I should
strike—only that the blow would be death to him on whom it should fall,
and that nowhere on earth should he find a safe refuge from it.
In those days the earth was ruled by force and cunning, and the na-
tions were armed camps set one against the other. Millions of men, who
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had no quarrel with their neighbours, stood waiting for the word of their
rulers to blast the fair fields of earth with the fires of war, and to make
desolate the homes of those who had done them no wrong.
In the third year of the twentieth century, Richard Arnold, the English-
man, conquered the empire of the air, and made the first ship that flew
as a bird does, of its own strength and motion. He joined the Brother-
hood of Freedom, then known among men as the Terrorists, of whom I,
Natas, was the Master, and then he built the aerial fleet which, in the day
of Armageddon, gave us the victory over the tyrants of the earth.
At the same time, Alan Tremayne, a noble of the English people, into
whose soul I had caused my spirit to enter in order that he might serve
me and bring the day of deliverance nearer, caused all the nations of the
Anglo-Saxon race to join hands, from the West unto the East, in a league
of common blood and kindred; and they, in the appointed hour, stood
between the sons and daughters of men and those who would have en-
slaved them afresh.
The chief of these was Alexander Romanoff, last of the Tsars, or
Tyrants, of Russia, whose armies, leagued with those of France, Italy,
Spain, and certain lesser Powers, and assisted by a great fleet of war-bal-
loons that could fly, though slowly, wherever they were directed, swept
like a destroying pestilence from the western frontiers of Russia to the
eastern shores of Britain; and when they had gained the mastery of
Europe, invaded England and laid siege to London.
But here their path of conquest was brought to an end, for Alan
Tremayne and his brothers of the Terror called upon the men of Anglo-
Saxondom to save their Motherland from her enemies, and they rose in
their wrath, millions strong, and fell upon them by land and sea, and
would have destroyed them utterly, as I had bidden them do, but that
Natasha, who was my daughter and was known in those days as the An-
gel of the Revolution, pleaded for the remnant of them, and they were
spared.
But the Russians we slew without mercy to the last man of those who
had stood in arms against us, saving only the Tyrant and his princes and
the leaders of his armies. These we took prisoners and sent, with their
wives and their children to die in their own prison-land in Siberia, as
they had sent thousands of innocent men and women to die before them.
This was my judgment upon them for the wrong that they had done to
me and mine, for in the hour of victory I spared not those who had not
known how to spare. Now they are dead, and their graves are nameless.
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