The literature of future wars is an exciting and popular genre embracing classics such as The War of the Worlds and mass-market bestsellers such as The Amtrak Wars. Here sci-fi meets the spy thriller, the war novel meets the novel of dystopia, quality fiction meets the bestseller. Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Erskine Childer's The Riddle of the Sands, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 are typical in combining critical and commercial success. This new edition of Voices Prophesying War shows how the genre developed, accounts for its success, and describes how it is still changing. The first examples of such fiction are as much concerned with politics as with war. The Anonymous Reign of George VI, published in 1763 and set in 1918 describes the triumphant imperialism of an English monarch who still leads his troops into battle on horseback. A century later the first recognizable classic of the genre, The Battle of Dorking, played on the theme of unpreparedness for war, describing a Prussian invasion of the British Isles. Imaginary invasions by the French, Germans, Americans, Russians, Soviets, and, of course, Martians, followed in huge numbers. Throughout the nineteenth century novelists wrote with increasing sophistication on the technology of war; often, as in the case of Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells, they were in advance of the generals and scientists, and their prophesies were fulfilled, in terrible fashion, by two world wars. Since the Second World War American authors have come to the fore, and the nuclear age has produced such classics as Nevil Shute's On the Beach. The Cold War has also given rise to a great many bestsellers, some, like General Sir John Hackett's The Third WorldWar, marking a return to an older theme - of predictions of war by professional soldiers. This new edition of Voices Prophesying War examines recent work in detail and includes a unique checklist of all major future war fiction (in English, French, and German) to have appeared since the eighteenth century.

What World War I meant for architecture and urbanism writ large More than one hundred years after the conclusion of the First World War, the edited collection States of Emergency. Architecture, Urbanism, and the First World War reassesses what that cataclysmic global conflict meant for architecture and urbanism from a human, social, economic, and cultural perspective. Chapters probe how underdevelopment and economic collapse manifested spatially, how military technologies were repurposed by civilians, and how cultures of education, care, and memory emerged from battle. The collection places an emphasis on the various states of emergency as experienced by combatants and civilians across five continents—from refugee camps to military installations, villages to capital cities—thus uncovering the role architecture played in mitigating and exacerbating the everyday tragedy of war.

According to the author all aircrews, tacticians and those who direct them have to realise the limitations of air power during conflicts. For years opinion has differed as to whether the aircraft has altered war strategies or merely the tactics of war. This volume explores the limits of airpower.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. How well did civilian morale stand up to the pressures of total war and what factors were important to it? This book rejects contentions that civilian morale fell a long way short of the favourable picture presented at the time and in hundreds of books and films ever since. While acknowledging that some negative attitudes and behaviour existed—panic and defeatism, ration-cheating and black-marketeering—it argues that these involved a very small minority of the population. In fact, most people behaved well, and this should be the real measure of civilian morale, rather than the failing of the few who behaved badly. The book shows that although before the war, the official prognosis was pessimistic, measures to bolster morale were taken nevertheless, in particular with regard to protection against air raids. An examination of indicative factors concludes that moral fluctuated but was in the main good, right to the end of the war. In examining this phenomenon, due credit is accorded to government policies for the maintenance of morale, but special emphasis is given to the ‘invisible chain’ of patriotic feeling that held the nation together during its time of trial.

This original study aims to provide a contribution to international relations and British political history. Its analysis of the birth of the British peace movement includes a historiography of British politics and many theories about international relations.

Who decides what is right or wrong, ethical or immoral, just or unjust? In the world of crime and spy fiction between 1880 and 1920, the boundaries of the law were blurred and justice called into question humanity's moral code. As fictional detectives mutated into spies near the turn of the century, the waning influence of morality on decision-making signaled a shift in behavior from idealistic principles towards a pragmatic outlook taken in the national interest. Taking a fresh approach to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's popular protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, this book examines how Holmes and his rival maverick literary detectives and spies manipulated the law to deliver a fairer form of justice than that ordained by parliament. Multidisciplinary, this work views detective fiction through the lenses of law, moral philosophy, and history, and incorporates issues of gender, equality, and race. By studying popular publications of the time, it provides a glimpse into public attitudes towards crime and morality and how those shifting opinions helped reconstruct the hero in a new image.

The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction provides an overview of the study of science fiction across multiple academic fields. It offers a new conceptualisation of the field today, marking the significant changes that have taken place in sf studies over the past 15 years. Building on the pioneering research in the first edition, the collection reorganises historical coverage of the genre to emphasise new geographical areas of cultural production and the growing importance of media beyond print. It also updates and expands the range of frameworks that are relevant to the study of science fiction. The periodisation has been reframed to include new chapters focusing on science fiction produced outside the Anglophone context, including South Asian, Latin American, Chinese and African diasporic science fiction. The contributors use both well- established critical and theoretical approaches and embrace a range of new ones, including biopolitics, climate crisis, critical ethnic studies, disability studies, energy humanities, game studies, medical humanities, new materialisms and sonic studies. This book is an invaluable resource for students and established scholars seeking to understand the vast range of engagements with science fiction in scholarship today.