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Robert Barr

The optimism for the wonders that new technology might bring was sometimes matched in fiction by the concern over how it might be used, or misused. The idea that food production could be increased and made synthetically may seem to solve the problem of world-wide famine, but it has its parallels today in our own concerns over genetic engineering. In the following story it was the raw materials for this improved food production that would soon lead the world to global disaster.

Robert Barr (1850-1912) was an important writer and editor. Born in Scotland he had gone to Canada with his family when still a child and later became a school teacher. In 1876, following his marriage, he became a writer for the Detroit Free Press before returning to England in 1881 to establish a London-based edition of the paper. These early days as a journalist had shown his determination as he would at times place himself in danger in order to get a story. In 1892, along with Jerome K. Jerome, he started the magazine The Idler. Barr and Jerome often disagreed over how the magazine should be run but Barr remained proprietor until his death in 1912, when The Idler died with him. Barr was as at home writing historical fiction or detective fiction as he was producing science fiction. He is probably best remembered today for his detective stories in The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont (1906), but his science fiction should also be remembered. “The Doom of London” (The Idler, November 1892) depicts a London suffocated by smog whilst “The Revolt of the — ” (The Idler, May 1894) portrays a future in which women are in charge. — M.A.

THE SCIENTISTS SENSATION

THE BEGINNING OF THE END was probably the address delivered by Sir William Crookes to the British Association at Bristol, on September 7th, 1898, although Herbert Bonsel, the young American experimenter, alleged afterward that his investigations were well on the way to their final success at the time Sir William spoke. All records being lost in the series of terrible conflagrations that took place in 1904, it is now impossible to give any accurate statement regarding Sir William Crookes’ remarkable paper; but it is known that his assertions attracted much attention at the time, and were the cause of editorial comment in almost every newspaper and scientific journal in the world. The sixteen survivors out of the many millions who were alive at the beginning of 1904 were so much occupied in the preservation of their own lives, a task of almost insurmountable difficulty, that they have handed down to us, their descendant, an account of the six years beginning with 1898, which is, to say the least, extremely unsatisfactory to an exact writer. Man, in that year, seems to have been a bread-eating animal, consuming, per head, something like six bushels of wheat each year. Sir William appears to have pointed out to his associates that the limit of the earth’s production of wheat had been reached, and he predicted universal starvation, did not science step in to the aid of a famine-stricken world. Science, however, was prepared. What was needed to increase the wheat production of the world to something like double its then amount was nitrate of soda; but nitrate of soda did not exist in the quantity required — viz., some 12,000,000 tons annually. However, a supposedly unlimited supply of nitrogen existed in the atmosphere surrounding the earth, and from this storehouse science proposed to draw, so that the multitude might be fed. Nitrogen in it free state in the air was useless as applied to wheat-growing, but it could be brought into solid masses for practical purposes by means of electricity generated by the waterfalls which are so abundant in many mountainous lands. The cost of nitrates made from the air by waterpower approached £5 a ton, as compared with £26 a ton when steam was used. Visionary people had often been accused of living in castles in the air, but now it was calmly proposed to feed future populations from granaries in the air. Naturally,