Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future by Cicely Hamilton

A bleakly realistic apocalypse from the interwar period

If you read a lot of early science fiction, you come across many novels about the end of the world, its desolate aftermath, or the dystopian society that arises in its wake. While these books often make for fascinating reading, many of the futuristic fictions from over a century ago come across as tame, silly, or misguided in their depiction of the terrors of Armageddon. Not so with Theodore Savage, an apocalyptic novel by English writer, actress, and feminist Cicely Hamilton (1872–1952), published in 1922. For a novel written a century ago, this remarkable work of science fiction is surprisingly realistic and relentlessly bleak.

Compared to the scientific romances of the Victorian era, it was much easier for writers to conjure up images of mankind’s destruction and downfall after having lived through the horrors of World War I. In Theodore Savage, the apocalypse is triggered neither by an environmental catastrophe (as in After London by Richard Jefferies, 1885, or The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiell, 1901), nor a threat from space (Omega by Camille Flammarion, 1893, or The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912), nor an epidemic (The Last Man by Mary Shelley, 1826, or The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, 1912). The cause of the apocalypse in Hamilton’s novel is war, plain and simple. Mankind is responsible for its own destruction. A political crisis referred to as “the Karthanian imbroglio” sparks a world war. Airstrikes and gas attacks not only kill thousands but also spawn countless displaced persons who wander the countryside, desperate for food and shelter. Governments collapse. Millions die of starvation. A mild-mannered civil servant from London, Theodore Savage, is one of the survivors left to eke out a primitive existence amid the ruins of civilization.

Hamilton doesn’t pull any punches with her depiction of this non-nuclear Armageddon or its aftermath. Free from Victorian-era prudery, she does not shy away from scenes of brutality, such as people tearing each other to pieces over a morsel of food. Nor does she deny the likelihood of (gasp) extramarital sex. Still, there were limits in 1922. The neo-primitive lifestyle that she depicts stops just short of cannibalism. Overall, the world war and post-apocalyptic future that Hamilton renders is strikingly realistic. People behave the way human beings might actually behave under such harsh and extreme circumstances. Hamilton makes no concessions to an overly romanticized faith in humanity, as was often the case with earlier apocalyptic fiction. Theodore Savage reads as surprisingly contemporary. It calls to mind the recent television series The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, but without the zombies. No zombies are needed when animalistic man is portrayed in such bleak and brutal terms.

The philosophical subtext that underlies this dystopian story is one of scientific ethics. How far should mankind dare to venture in the pursuit of scientific knowledge before he ends up like Icarus flying too close to the sun? A cult of anti-intellectualism arises amid the fallout of civilization’s collapse. Hamilton manages to both condone and condemn a stance of voluntary ignorance in a way that allows the reader to weigh both sides of the issue. In the final chapter, Hamilton delivers somewhat of a sermon, spelling out her theories that the characters have acted out in the preceding story. I don’t agree with everything she has to say in this sermon, but I’m willing to forgive it because the book she built around those ideas is so well-written, thought-provoking, and compelling. Theodore Savage does not deserve the obscurity into which it has faded. More so than many better-known books by bigger sci-fi names, this novel can still move today’s reader and still has important points to make.
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