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.

Given the popular and scholarly interest in the First World War it is surprising how little contemporary literary work is available. This five-volume reset edition aims to redress this balance, making available an extensive collection of newly-edited short stories, novels and plays from 1914–19.

The period between World War I and World War II was one of intense change. Everything was modernizing, including our technology for making war—witness machine guns, trench warfare, biological agents, and ultimately The Final Solution. This modernization and eye toward the future was reflected in many facets of pop culture, including fashion, home-wear design, and the popular literature of the time. In sci-fi, a specific genre emerged—that of the ‘future war.’ Fred Krome has collected many of these future war stories together for the first time in Fighting the Future War. Bolstered by a comprehensive introduction, and introduced with historical information about both the authors of the stories and the historical time period, these stories provide a view into the field of pulp science fiction writing, the issues that informed the time period between the world wars, and the way people envisioned the wars of tomorrow. Revealing anxieties about society, technology, race and politics, the genre of the future war story is important material for students of history and literature.

Going to War overturns conventional views of the role of public opinion, the armed forces, parliamentarians, NGOs and writers in the formation of British debates about impending wars. It shows the pressures and the reasons which have led to Britain's involvement in so many conflicts.

This timely book investigates fiction that speculates about wars likely to break out in the near or distant future. Ranging widely across periods and conflicts real and imagined, Future Wars explores the interplay between politics, literature, science fiction, and war in a range of classic texts. Individual essays look at Reagan's infamous “Star Wars” project, nuclear fiction, Martian invasion, and the Pax Americana. The use of future war scenarios in military planning dates back to the nineteenth century, and Future Wars concludes with a US Army officer's assessment of the continuing usefulness of future wars fiction.

This historiography demonstrates how theorists have rationalized killing the innocent in war. It shows how moral arguments about killing the innocent respond to material conditions, and it explains how we have arrived at the post-World War II convention.

The first comprehensive guide to British theatre's engagement with the First World War over the last century, providing accessible and lively coverage of theatre's role in the representation and remembrance of events, focusing on topics including regionality, politics, popular performance, Shakespeare, class, race and gender.