Product Description

Described by Fulton Sheen as one of the three greatest depictions of the advent of the demonic in world literature, Lord of the World is science fiction with a difference. The West has succumbed to a sort of international socialism. The forces of secular materialism, relativism and state control are everywhere triumphant. Protestantism is no more, and Catholicism which had made some major advances in the first half of the twentieth century has been devastated by the development of new psychologies and the exodus of intellectuals in the wake of an Ecumenical Council. Euthanasia has become an instrument of the state, Esperanto the universal second language. Nevertheless, although organised religion has largely collapsed in the face of institutional secularism, a vague, humanistic religiosity militantly hostile to the exclusive and supernatural claims of the Church is present everywhere. Finally, the East, which has amalgamated into a single, pantheistic bloc, continues to pose a military threat. Enter Julian Felsenberg diplomat, scholar, guru, Antichrist...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53258 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

The Catholic Times, 20 January, 2002
"Though it precedes them, the book is the genre of Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and Huxley's 'Brave New World'."

About the Author
Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose conversion to Catholicism caused a stir. He became a great apologist for the faith, in spiritual works as well as works of the imagination.

Excerpted from Lord of the World (Catholic Writers Series) by Robert Hugh Benson, Ralph McInerny. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Book I - THE ADVENT

CHAPTER I

I

OLIVER BRAND, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking out of the window over the top of his typewriter.
His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur or the Surrey Hills, now cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a Communist the view was an inspiriting one.
Immediately below the wide windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for perhaps a hundred feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of men were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked race-courses, each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk twenty feet below the surface of the ground, swept up to a meeting a mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his left was the First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the Railroad Guide, that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and Hastings district. Each was divided lengthways by a cement wall, on one side of which, on steel rails, ran the electric trams, and on the other lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on which ran, first the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap Government line at thirty, with stations every five miles. This was further bordered by a road confined to pedestrians, cyclists and ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move more than twelve miles an hour.
Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house- roofs, with short towers here and there marking public buildings from the Caterham district on the left to Croydon in front, all clear and bright smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the low suburban hills against the April sky.
There was surprisingly hills little sound, considering the pressure of the population; and , with the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a train fled north or south, and the occasional sweet chord of the great motors as they neared or left the junction, there was little to be heard in this study except a smooth, soothing murmur that filled the air like the murmur of bees in a garden.
Oliver loved every hint of human life - all busy sights and sounds - and was listening now smiling faintly to himself as he stared out into the clean air. Then he set his lips, laid his fingers on the keys once more, and went on speech-constructing.

He was very fortunate in the situation of his house. It stood in an angle of one of those huge spider-webs with which the country was covered, and for his purposes was all that he could expect. It was close enough to London to be extremely cheap, for all wealthy persons had retired at least a hundred miles from the throbbing heart of England; and yet it was quiet as he could wish. He was within ten minutes of Westminster on the one side, and twenty minutes of the sea on the other; and his constituency lay before him like a raised map. Further, since the great London termini were but ten minutes away, there were at his disposal the First Trunk lines to every big town in England. For a politician of no great means, who was asked to speak at Edinburgh on one evening and in Marseilles on the next, he was as well placed as many man in Europe.

Customer Reviews

A study in donalism
This book is very prescient and a great introduction to the damage caused by modernism in general and donalism in particular.