The Angel of the Revolution

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror (1893) is a science fiction novel by the English writer George Griffith. It was his first published novel and remains his most famous work. It was first published in Pearson's Weekly and was prompted by the success of "The Great War of 1892" in Black and White magazine, which was itself inspired by The Battle of Dorking.

A lurid mix of Jules Verne's futuristic air warfare fantasies, the utopian visions of News from Nowhere and the future war invasion literature of Chesney and his imitators, it told the tale of a group of self-styled 'terrorists' who conquer the world through airship warfare. Led by a crippled, brilliant Russian Jew and his daughter, the 'angel' Natasha, 'The Brotherhood of Freedom' establish a 'pax aeronautica' over the earth after a young inventor masters the technology of flight in 1903. The hero falls in love with Natasha and joins in her war against established society in general and the Russian Czar in particular [1].

It is characterised by what Michael Moorcock called its "controlled imaginative flight", essentially socialist message and a strongly romantic air. Griffith's "pro nihilist" stance was examined in a piece entitled "Terrorism in the Late Victorian Novel" by Barbara Arnett Melchiori which appeared in the The Modern Language Review. A sequel, The Syren of the Skies appeared in Pearson's Weekly and was published in book form as Olga Romanoff in 1894.

The title of the novel was a conspiratory name of a female character Natasha, daughter of the mastermind of the revolutionary organization. Her unparalleled beauty and her devotion to the cause made the name quite fitting.

The story begins on September 3, 1903, with young man, Richard Arnold, twenty-six old scientist devoted heart and soul to the invention of flying machine, finally realizing his dream in the form of air-ship model that can fly on its own. However, living completely for his dream, he ended with no money to sustain even his next day's life, let alone do something practical with his revolutionary invention. The circumstances made him wander around the streets of London, until a stranger overheard his muttering about flying machine that he wouldn't want to put in hands of tyrants or for the use in war and destruction. The stranger introduced himself as Maurice Colston, and soon both men realized they share the same distaste for autocracy and the status quo as it was, placing themselves "at war with Society".

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