The Dominion of the World 4: The Victims Victorious

The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the “Transatlantic Peril”, positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its outlandishness, hindsight has lent the world imagined by Gustave Guitton and Gustave Le Rouge (The Vampires of Mars) a certain prophetic quality. In the fourth and final volume of the series, Harry Madge’s brigade of psychic spies sent to infiltrate Europe on behalf of the secret cabal of American billionaires, led by William Boltyn, is sowing chaos and despair, but the invention of a new “psychic accumulator” by Arsène Golbert enables good will to triumph, banishing hatred, ambition, cupidity and egotism, and opening the doors to a new utopian society…