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Nordenholt's Million
Famine sweeps across the world when a lab accident unleashes a virulent strain of bacteria that transforms healthy fields into barren wastelands. With the fate of the human race at stake, wealthy financier Stanley Nordenholt establishes a stronghold in central Scotland and assumes dictatorial powers to save what remains of the planet's starving population. This gripping tale of survival explores some of the moral dilemmas that arise in the wake of catastrophic events as well as their social, cultural, and political consequences.
A precursor to the latter-day tales from the golden age of science fiction, this compelling novel was published by a noted British chemist in 1923. Acclaimed by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "realistic, reasoned, sociologically observed, and credible," it offers an ever-relevant warning against the exploitation of disaster as a pretext for the suspension of freedom, democracy, and justice.
A precursor to the latter-day tales from the golden age of science fiction, this compelling novel was published by a noted British chemist in 1923. Acclaimed by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "realistic, reasoned, sociologically observed, and credible," it offers an ever-relevant warning against the exploitation of disaster as a pretext for the suspension of freedom, democracy, and justice.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 1, 2025
At first I found this book to be too boring and strange, but it got better. Like all of the recommendations from Joshua Glenn's Radium Age sci-fi collection, I was glad I read it in the end.
I was inspired to check out this apocalyptic story from 1923 due to the recent bird flu. The second largest producer of American eggs is in Indiana where I live, but bird flu has seriously increased the price of eggs, and grocery shelves once full of more cartons than could be sold are now practically empty. As eggs become more scarce, bakeries are impacted, raising the price of other staples. And of course, chickens aren't the only ones affected, and we are finding beef cows even having to be sacrificed as the virus transfers to other species. It's scary to think how the bloated American food supply is so fragile.
But what if something really disruptive to the food chain would occur? The results would be catastrophic, as depicted in this interesting story, where bacteria become mutated and remove all of the nitrogen from the earth soil. Without nitrogen, all of the plants in the world die and the soil becomes as barren as though tilled with salt. Billions of people face starvation. Is this the end of the human race?
Multimillionaire tycoon Nordenholt takes matters into his own hands by setting up a colony of one million people who have been selected to survive. Most of the world's rations are allocated to them while they work feverishly to reverse the process that has condemned the planet. In order to protect the colony from looting by the rest of the desperate population, he centralizes the colony in northern England and surrounds it with fortifications. Then he spreads a disinformation campaign to convince the world that the colony has been infected with plague.
This novel explores not only global fragility but the brutal reality of a benevolent dictatorship. Nordenholt is essentially a supervillain who is humanity's only hope for survival. It also balances the benefits of a global economy, where once isolated parts of the world can be reached by train, ship, and the burgeoning power of air travel, with the risk that no place is safe from disease hitching a ride across previously impassible seas, mountains, swamp, and jungle.
The structure and writing style are a bit clunky, but the real reason to read this is because of the brilliant speculative concepts. I feel like this novel is more timely today than ever.
I can't really say much more without spoilers. I will say that it's worth exploring if you have the patience. But it is definitely a flawed novel. I felt the first third to be a bit pedantic, as is a lot of science fiction, but it almost led me to not finish. There's also a few offhand racial slurs that are like nails on a chalkboard, though not unusual for the time. When the book finds its stride, it gets quite brutal and tense, but it can get a little too ridiculous. I can't help but think that if indeed the entire world, even the rainforests, were to become desert, the results would be even more calamitous than the author was able to foresee, and the doom of the human species could not be forestalled by any colony that might succeed in recultivating a patch of land.
But I get the point, and so will you. This is definitely one of those fictional situations where I know I would not survive in real life, or at least not with my sanity.
Thanks to Joshua Glenn and MIT press for delivering another innovative but almost lost science fiction story from the Radium-age for modern audiences to rediscover.
SCORE: 3 beakers of nitrogen-fixing bacteria out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Refugium
I was inspired to check out this apocalyptic story from 1923 due to the recent bird flu. The second largest producer of American eggs is in Indiana where I live, but bird flu has seriously increased the price of eggs, and grocery shelves once full of more cartons than could be sold are now practically empty. As eggs become more scarce, bakeries are impacted, raising the price of other staples. And of course, chickens aren't the only ones affected, and we are finding beef cows even having to be sacrificed as the virus transfers to other species. It's scary to think how the bloated American food supply is so fragile.
But what if something really disruptive to the food chain would occur? The results would be catastrophic, as depicted in this interesting story, where bacteria become mutated and remove all of the nitrogen from the earth soil. Without nitrogen, all of the plants in the world die and the soil becomes as barren as though tilled with salt. Billions of people face starvation. Is this the end of the human race?
Multimillionaire tycoon Nordenholt takes matters into his own hands by setting up a colony of one million people who have been selected to survive. Most of the world's rations are allocated to them while they work feverishly to reverse the process that has condemned the planet. In order to protect the colony from looting by the rest of the desperate population, he centralizes the colony in northern England and surrounds it with fortifications. Then he spreads a disinformation campaign to convince the world that the colony has been infected with plague.
This novel explores not only global fragility but the brutal reality of a benevolent dictatorship. Nordenholt is essentially a supervillain who is humanity's only hope for survival. It also balances the benefits of a global economy, where once isolated parts of the world can be reached by train, ship, and the burgeoning power of air travel, with the risk that no place is safe from disease hitching a ride across previously impassible seas, mountains, swamp, and jungle.
The structure and writing style are a bit clunky, but the real reason to read this is because of the brilliant speculative concepts. I feel like this novel is more timely today than ever.
I can't really say much more without spoilers. I will say that it's worth exploring if you have the patience. But it is definitely a flawed novel. I felt the first third to be a bit pedantic, as is a lot of science fiction, but it almost led me to not finish. There's also a few offhand racial slurs that are like nails on a chalkboard, though not unusual for the time. When the book finds its stride, it gets quite brutal and tense, but it can get a little too ridiculous. I can't help but think that if indeed the entire world, even the rainforests, were to become desert, the results would be even more calamitous than the author was able to foresee, and the doom of the human species could not be forestalled by any colony that might succeed in recultivating a patch of land.
But I get the point, and so will you. This is definitely one of those fictional situations where I know I would not survive in real life, or at least not with my sanity.
Thanks to Joshua Glenn and MIT press for delivering another innovative but almost lost science fiction story from the Radium-age for modern audiences to rediscover.
SCORE: 3 beakers of nitrogen-fixing bacteria out of 5
WORD OF THE DAY: Refugium
September 8, 2016
I received a free copy from Netgalley for a fair and honest review.
At first, I thought this would be interesting as it sounds like an end of the world story. The premise of a world blighted by an asteroid seemed interesting and I was looking forward to see the effects of it. I was also hoping that it would be similar in vein to HG Wells. But what you get is a story about how Nordenholt made his fortune.....banker's wet dream. At one point I tried speed reading thru the pages hoping that this would get better. I really wanted to finish this but I just was not enjoying it. And honestly I am not going to suffer thru a book that I am not enjoying anymore.
DNF at 30% so dry and uninteresting.
At first, I thought this would be interesting as it sounds like an end of the world story. The premise of a world blighted by an asteroid seemed interesting and I was looking forward to see the effects of it. I was also hoping that it would be similar in vein to HG Wells. But what you get is a story about how Nordenholt made his fortune.....banker's wet dream. At one point I tried speed reading thru the pages hoping that this would get better. I really wanted to finish this but I just was not enjoying it. And honestly I am not going to suffer thru a book that I am not enjoying anymore.
DNF at 30% so dry and uninteresting.
October 7, 2016
Another book I picked up secondhand in my occasional mood when rediscovering lost authors seems a good idea.
I don't think this novel is specially worthy of re-promotion. In so far as an exploration of a world in which, within a month, a superfast breeding nitrophage consumes all land-based nitrogen and destroys plant life entirely (except inexplicably, in certain areas of the USA) may be considered sci-fi, then this sci-fi piece is very decently respectable. However, perhaps because its author is a scientist turning his hand to fiction and lacks the conventional skills of a novelist, it doesn't grip.
Certainly, the science side of it seems perfectly well managed - though why the bacteria can't consume air-borne nitrogen kept puzzling me - but the characters are one-dimensional carriers of the narrative. Nordenholt is the comfortingly masterful pragmatist, a brilliant logistician and a single-minded manipulator of the human psyche, shown at his most calculating in eradicating danger posed by the Reverend John. He also bears the guilt of eradicating most of the UK's population, and alienating his ward Elsa's faith in him. The narrator, Jack Flint, takes on the role of Nordenholt's sidekick, gifted with management skills, but not, to start with, the tenacity to execute the necessary, ruthless actions that the author envisages as requisite for human survival of any kind. He falls, unnecessarily, in love with Elsa - rather a pointless distraction, I felt, from what the novel is about and that is the achievement of a return to a nitrogenised world. From this point of view, Elsa's presence is unnecessary as well, although her unstinting love for her Uncle Stanley (Nordenholt) - and his for her - before she discovers the truth about what he's done allows us to see Nordenholt as more than a heartless machine.
Other characters are few and far between: the novel quickly becomes Jack Flint's notebook diary rewritten for its imaginary post-apocalyptic society as a record of how the human race was saved.
The style is unexceptional, though I quite enjoyed the fluidity of the prose, but there are one or two passages which held my attention more than other rather plodding ones: descriptions of London on its last legs and the battle for access to one of those unexplained green spaces in America, for example; and the moments when the organisation of the Nitrogen Area and the personnel that Nordenholt has selected for it are detailed. These interested me.
Not a great novel, but, being written in 1923, a curiosity. The subject matter - loss of soil-based nitrogen - could have been used by a writer of any era. I wonder why Connington (real name Professor A. W. Stewart) chose it. And his choice of Nordenholt as his leading character - why that name? Did the author sense that a crisis of the kind he describes just wouldn't be managed successfully by the English / British? Certainly, the government he depicts are splendidly useless: they maintain calm, for a while, but have no idea what is really required for human survival, and even if they had they would not be ruthless enough to implement it. Nordenholt removes them from the Nitrogen Area almost as soon as they arrive on the basis that their continued presence would interfere with the execution of what he knows must happen to restore the circumambient habitat. The British are, perhaps, too nice, too comfortable. No, a German-Nordic type is the only one who can be trusted in such an emergency. Hmmm.... Now there's food for thought.
Finally, I found myself impressed by occasional verbal rareties: conspectus, abscissae, pilocarpine, preconcerted, choreomania and phalanstery.
I don't think this novel is specially worthy of re-promotion. In so far as an exploration of a world in which, within a month, a superfast breeding nitrophage consumes all land-based nitrogen and destroys plant life entirely (except inexplicably, in certain areas of the USA) may be considered sci-fi, then this sci-fi piece is very decently respectable. However, perhaps because its author is a scientist turning his hand to fiction and lacks the conventional skills of a novelist, it doesn't grip.
Certainly, the science side of it seems perfectly well managed - though why the bacteria can't consume air-borne nitrogen kept puzzling me - but the characters are one-dimensional carriers of the narrative. Nordenholt is the comfortingly masterful pragmatist, a brilliant logistician and a single-minded manipulator of the human psyche, shown at his most calculating in eradicating danger posed by the Reverend John. He also bears the guilt of eradicating most of the UK's population, and alienating his ward Elsa's faith in him. The narrator, Jack Flint, takes on the role of Nordenholt's sidekick, gifted with management skills, but not, to start with, the tenacity to execute the necessary, ruthless actions that the author envisages as requisite for human survival of any kind. He falls, unnecessarily, in love with Elsa - rather a pointless distraction, I felt, from what the novel is about and that is the achievement of a return to a nitrogenised world. From this point of view, Elsa's presence is unnecessary as well, although her unstinting love for her Uncle Stanley (Nordenholt) - and his for her - before she discovers the truth about what he's done allows us to see Nordenholt as more than a heartless machine.
Other characters are few and far between: the novel quickly becomes Jack Flint's notebook diary rewritten for its imaginary post-apocalyptic society as a record of how the human race was saved.
The style is unexceptional, though I quite enjoyed the fluidity of the prose, but there are one or two passages which held my attention more than other rather plodding ones: descriptions of London on its last legs and the battle for access to one of those unexplained green spaces in America, for example; and the moments when the organisation of the Nitrogen Area and the personnel that Nordenholt has selected for it are detailed. These interested me.
Not a great novel, but, being written in 1923, a curiosity. The subject matter - loss of soil-based nitrogen - could have been used by a writer of any era. I wonder why Connington (real name Professor A. W. Stewart) chose it. And his choice of Nordenholt as his leading character - why that name? Did the author sense that a crisis of the kind he describes just wouldn't be managed successfully by the English / British? Certainly, the government he depicts are splendidly useless: they maintain calm, for a while, but have no idea what is really required for human survival, and even if they had they would not be ruthless enough to implement it. Nordenholt removes them from the Nitrogen Area almost as soon as they arrive on the basis that their continued presence would interfere with the execution of what he knows must happen to restore the circumambient habitat. The British are, perhaps, too nice, too comfortable. No, a German-Nordic type is the only one who can be trusted in such an emergency. Hmmm.... Now there's food for thought.
Finally, I found myself impressed by occasional verbal rareties: conspectus, abscissae, pilocarpine, preconcerted, choreomania and phalanstery.
December 5, 2025
I could start this review in a lot of ways - I could discuss how this book is the earliest novel (to my knowledge) about an agricultural apocalypse, how this is definitely my favorite of the three Radium Age books I've read before, or this novel's distinctively British dryness and wide-lens scope that never ceased to charm me. But at the end of the day, the long and short of it is that *Nordenholt's Million* is an interesting novel that I'd recommend to any serious fan of end-of-the-world SF, although I don't know if the average contemporary reader would much appreciate its wry tone and the rich-saviour stereotype, especially since the book's text itself doesn't moralize about authoritarianism as much as the contemporary reader would like (even though it does forgo some philosophical discussion for the sake of a character beat, which is a very contemporary thing to do). Anyways, I'll get to that and more, but first I'll review a bit about what the book is actually about.
Like many Victorian or shortly post-Victorian British works, *Nordenholt's Million* is told in the first person. Its narrator, Jack Flint, is an industrialist who made the process of building cars more efficient, and in the charmingly British way he just happens to be present at a parasitic "scientist"'s house when a freak spurt of ball lightning hits a clutch of denitrifying bacteria cultures he has sitting there. Flint thinks nothing of it and spends part of the next day thinking about how airways are making the world a smaller place. At the same time, the park outside the scientist's flat suffers from a strange Blight which starts cropping up elsewhere in the country before eventually popping up along the British airways. Crops (and all other plants) are dying everywhere, and governments start panicking; a meeting is called between Nordenholt and the prime minister and other officials where Nordenholt blasts them for a lack of foresight and reveals that he purchased large amounts of grain from America before their anti-export laws were put forth. He then makes a proposal: allow him to arrange an area of Scotland, Clyde Valley, to hold five million people (out of Britain's fifty million), supplied with enough food to last them a year, during which top intellectuals will work to find a solution to the Blight. He basically strong-arms the government because none of them can think for themselves and then Nordenholt calls Flint to his house to introduce his concept of the Breaking Strain - finding the point at which any person or situation will snap and fail to function - and to offer him the position of his chief of operations in the compound. Flint has to accept, and then we see - from the outside - Nordenholt's campaigning and how he chooses who shall enter Clyde Valley. He ...
At first, Nordenholt ...
The most notable thing about this book is definitely its style. It won't be too surprising to you if you've read other late 1800s/early 1900s British fiction (especially SF from the likes of Wells or other Radium Age-published authors like *The Clockwork Man*'s E. V. Odle), but it's certainly different from more contemporary styles. There's a singular narrator that a lot of things (a charmingly unrealistic amount of things) revolve around who occasionally diverts the story away from its live happenings and towards asides about the state of the world. Flint's glimpses into the rest of the global situation include a lot of knowledge that Flint couldn't have actually had in the moment, so there were some heavy dashes of a narrator-from-the-future. I always like that sort of thing, and the plot, for the most, flows from beat to beat surprisingly well. Setting up Clyde Valley takes a lot of logistical prep, and since I always like reading about logistics, I was almost disappointed that Connington didn't go more in-depth with them; give us more details and statistics about the kind of entertainment you prepared to occupy the masses and keep them complacent, talk more about food distribution, give all the details! But I expect that's an unpopular opinion... once Clyde Valley is established, Nordenholt's ultimate plan for Jack Flint is revealed, and he's sent on his ghastly excursion, the progression of the Nitrogen Area from peace to... something less peaceful... is passed on really nicely, and it really feels like Connington is showing us highlights from a much richer history here. The disasters the colony faces aren't just disasters - they have implications for the Area's past and future. With all of that being said, one of the book's proposed challenges - - is swept under the rug in a very British way. It just gets forgotten about off on the side, and while that didn't matter too much to me - it kind of made the book feel real just like the above-average flow of cause-and-effect did - it might matter to you.
What also may or may not matter to you is that this book is a trailblazer. While I could just be unaware of other agricultural apocalypse novels that were written before this book's 1923 publication, this was certainly one of the earliest books to focus on an apocalypse of starvation and civil unrest thanks to a bunch of plants dying. It would later be used in novels like John Christopher's *The Death of Grass*, but I think it's a rather forward-looking kind of apocalypse. This isn't a plague like in *The Last Man* or *Earth Abides*, and it's not one of the endless dirge of nuclear holocaust novels since early successes in the genre like *A Canticle for Leibowitz*. It's more unique and scientific, and Connington does use some of his real-world experience as a scientist (as described in the afterword) to inform his concept of denitrifying bacteria. But it's not just a cool apocalyptic spark that he predicts: he foresees the vector as well with planes being one of the main reasons that the whole world is struck by this Blight, and I'd be willing to bet that since this was published around 4 years after British airways open, that this was one of the first works of fiction to connect the dots between disease and globalized flight. The creation and refinement of towards the end of the book is also kind of a big deal, and while I don't know all the 1920s context around that, it proves that Connington was in touch with the zeitgeist and utilized it. That's very cool, and he also uses historical events, like the so-called Dancing Plague of medieval Europe, to inform how contemporary Londoners would react to this period of intense strife. This was just an intellectually well-rounded book which makes me appreciate its subtleties and its place in the greater SF canon, which is why I'd highly recommend this to nerds like myself. On a scientific note, I'd like to see how there'd be any oxygen left to breath on the planet after all the plants die out, but... I suppose you can't just ask for everything...
Lastly, a word on the lens that most contemporary readers see this book through: that of a cautionary tale of rich "tech bros" and authoritarianism. Just like with *The Clockwork Man*, the last Radium Age MIT Press novel that I read, I feel like twenty-first century readers and critics exacerbate the politically-charged parts of these novels and almost dilute the original meanings of the work on them. Everyone talks about this book being about how Nordenholt gets to play God and choose which tenth of Britain gets to survive the end of the world and who is left to fend for themselves and most likely die and how Flint has to "grapple" with "the question of whether a noble end justifies dastardly means," but... Flint never deeply doubts Nordenholt. You could read into this and say that Flint never thinks that because Nordenholt is just a really good leader who can both rip his way through other people with verbal force manipulate people into thinking that his ideas and suggestions are their decisions to make (his leadership style could have been studied if I had a different aim for this review), but I'm going to take the approach of Occam's Razor and say that Connington wasn't out to criticize Nordenholt's way of doing things. I think the author thought that the end justified the means, and to prove it, I point to postured as a good thing in the novel. I think that you'll have to answer the question of "is five million living worth forty-five million people (or just billions) dying if the alternative if fifty million people dying?" yourself. With as with anything philosophical, your mileage may vary.
As your mileage may vary with this book. I'm giving it an 8/10 for all of its charm even if it wasn't the most enthralling thing while reading (I was excited to go back to it but not thrilled) because I really liked the narration, thought it was nice and innovative, and appreciate what there was for logistics, even though I might've given this book a higher rating if it was even more detailed. Thanks for reading this review, and if I haven't scared you away with any of this talk yet, I hope that you'll go and give *Nordenholt's Million* an honest thought. I'll see you for my next Radium Age review, *The World Set Free* by H. G. Wells - take care, and I'll see you around, provided there's still wheat to eat and air to breathe...
Like many Victorian or shortly post-Victorian British works, *Nordenholt's Million* is told in the first person. Its narrator, Jack Flint, is an industrialist who made the process of building cars more efficient, and in the charmingly British way he just happens to be present at a parasitic "scientist"'s house when a freak spurt of ball lightning hits a clutch of denitrifying bacteria cultures he has sitting there. Flint thinks nothing of it and spends part of the next day thinking about how airways are making the world a smaller place. At the same time, the park outside the scientist's flat suffers from a strange Blight which starts cropping up elsewhere in the country before eventually popping up along the British airways. Crops (and all other plants) are dying everywhere, and governments start panicking; a meeting is called between Nordenholt and the prime minister and other officials where Nordenholt blasts them for a lack of foresight and reveals that he purchased large amounts of grain from America before their anti-export laws were put forth. He then makes a proposal: allow him to arrange an area of Scotland, Clyde Valley, to hold five million people (out of Britain's fifty million), supplied with enough food to last them a year, during which top intellectuals will work to find a solution to the Blight. He basically strong-arms the government because none of them can think for themselves and then Nordenholt calls Flint to his house to introduce his concept of the Breaking Strain - finding the point at which any person or situation will snap and fail to function - and to offer him the position of his chief of operations in the compound. Flint has to accept, and then we see - from the outside - Nordenholt's campaigning and how he chooses who shall enter Clyde Valley. He ...
At first, Nordenholt ...
The most notable thing about this book is definitely its style. It won't be too surprising to you if you've read other late 1800s/early 1900s British fiction (especially SF from the likes of Wells or other Radium Age-published authors like *The Clockwork Man*'s E. V. Odle), but it's certainly different from more contemporary styles. There's a singular narrator that a lot of things (a charmingly unrealistic amount of things) revolve around who occasionally diverts the story away from its live happenings and towards asides about the state of the world. Flint's glimpses into the rest of the global situation include a lot of knowledge that Flint couldn't have actually had in the moment, so there were some heavy dashes of a narrator-from-the-future. I always like that sort of thing, and the plot, for the most, flows from beat to beat surprisingly well. Setting up Clyde Valley takes a lot of logistical prep, and since I always like reading about logistics, I was almost disappointed that Connington didn't go more in-depth with them; give us more details and statistics about the kind of entertainment you prepared to occupy the masses and keep them complacent, talk more about food distribution, give all the details! But I expect that's an unpopular opinion... once Clyde Valley is established, Nordenholt's ultimate plan for Jack Flint is revealed, and he's sent on his ghastly excursion, the progression of the Nitrogen Area from peace to... something less peaceful... is passed on really nicely, and it really feels like Connington is showing us highlights from a much richer history here. The disasters the colony faces aren't just disasters - they have implications for the Area's past and future. With all of that being said, one of the book's proposed challenges - - is swept under the rug in a very British way. It just gets forgotten about off on the side, and while that didn't matter too much to me - it kind of made the book feel real just like the above-average flow of cause-and-effect did - it might matter to you.
What also may or may not matter to you is that this book is a trailblazer. While I could just be unaware of other agricultural apocalypse novels that were written before this book's 1923 publication, this was certainly one of the earliest books to focus on an apocalypse of starvation and civil unrest thanks to a bunch of plants dying. It would later be used in novels like John Christopher's *The Death of Grass*, but I think it's a rather forward-looking kind of apocalypse. This isn't a plague like in *The Last Man* or *Earth Abides*, and it's not one of the endless dirge of nuclear holocaust novels since early successes in the genre like *A Canticle for Leibowitz*. It's more unique and scientific, and Connington does use some of his real-world experience as a scientist (as described in the afterword) to inform his concept of denitrifying bacteria. But it's not just a cool apocalyptic spark that he predicts: he foresees the vector as well with planes being one of the main reasons that the whole world is struck by this Blight, and I'd be willing to bet that since this was published around 4 years after British airways open, that this was one of the first works of fiction to connect the dots between disease and globalized flight. The creation and refinement of towards the end of the book is also kind of a big deal, and while I don't know all the 1920s context around that, it proves that Connington was in touch with the zeitgeist and utilized it. That's very cool, and he also uses historical events, like the so-called Dancing Plague of medieval Europe, to inform how contemporary Londoners would react to this period of intense strife. This was just an intellectually well-rounded book which makes me appreciate its subtleties and its place in the greater SF canon, which is why I'd highly recommend this to nerds like myself. On a scientific note, I'd like to see how there'd be any oxygen left to breath on the planet after all the plants die out, but... I suppose you can't just ask for everything...
Lastly, a word on the lens that most contemporary readers see this book through: that of a cautionary tale of rich "tech bros" and authoritarianism. Just like with *The Clockwork Man*, the last Radium Age MIT Press novel that I read, I feel like twenty-first century readers and critics exacerbate the politically-charged parts of these novels and almost dilute the original meanings of the work on them. Everyone talks about this book being about how Nordenholt gets to play God and choose which tenth of Britain gets to survive the end of the world and who is left to fend for themselves and most likely die and how Flint has to "grapple" with "the question of whether a noble end justifies dastardly means," but... Flint never deeply doubts Nordenholt. You could read into this and say that Flint never thinks that because Nordenholt is just a really good leader who can both rip his way through other people with verbal force manipulate people into thinking that his ideas and suggestions are their decisions to make (his leadership style could have been studied if I had a different aim for this review), but I'm going to take the approach of Occam's Razor and say that Connington wasn't out to criticize Nordenholt's way of doing things. I think the author thought that the end justified the means, and to prove it, I point to postured as a good thing in the novel. I think that you'll have to answer the question of "is five million living worth forty-five million people (or just billions) dying if the alternative if fifty million people dying?" yourself. With as with anything philosophical, your mileage may vary.
As your mileage may vary with this book. I'm giving it an 8/10 for all of its charm even if it wasn't the most enthralling thing while reading (I was excited to go back to it but not thrilled) because I really liked the narration, thought it was nice and innovative, and appreciate what there was for logistics, even though I might've given this book a higher rating if it was even more detailed. Thanks for reading this review, and if I haven't scared you away with any of this talk yet, I hope that you'll go and give *Nordenholt's Million* an honest thought. I'll see you for my next Radium Age review, *The World Set Free* by H. G. Wells - take care, and I'll see you around, provided there's still wheat to eat and air to breathe...
November 18, 2023
I find dawn-of-sci-fi literature fascinating, and so this particular and peculiar book appealed to me.
The story, of a financial titan who works tirelessly to save a remnant of humankind after a bacterial blight kills almost all of the world's plants? That premise could, if spun differently, be written today. It reads as most 100 year old fiction reads, meaning the pacing and emphases aren't kind to readers of more...er..."simple" fantasy. I enjoy the formality of the writing, and it flows well for early 20th century literature. But folks used to, er, "simpler" sci fi ain't gonna grok to it.
Alfred Walter Stewart, the physicist who wrote this book under the nom de plume "J.J. Connington" was steeped in the most advanced science of his era. Which is why, for example, there's much talk of harnessing nuclear power for the energy needs of those who remain alive. This is 1923, people, and you've got that era's equivalent of a hard-sci-fi author speculating...in an informed way...about harnessing atomic energy. It's like a modern writer talking about fusion, or interplanetary travel.
That Stewart represented and understood the best science of his time is a reminder that science can go rather badly off track. Because sure, he gets chemistry and physics, as well as anyone of his age. But the book is overtly racist, buying into the now debunked pseudoscience of race and eugenics. Only the strong get saved, eh? And the Ayn Randian character of the entrepreneur protagonist smacks of early fascism. Only the Ubermensch can save us, and that he does so by killing off the weak and the disposable is...oof. Given where this falls in history, the fascism and racism are a dark harbinger of horrors to come.
An interesting read, particularly in the context of its time.
The story, of a financial titan who works tirelessly to save a remnant of humankind after a bacterial blight kills almost all of the world's plants? That premise could, if spun differently, be written today. It reads as most 100 year old fiction reads, meaning the pacing and emphases aren't kind to readers of more...er..."simple" fantasy. I enjoy the formality of the writing, and it flows well for early 20th century literature. But folks used to, er, "simpler" sci fi ain't gonna grok to it.
Alfred Walter Stewart, the physicist who wrote this book under the nom de plume "J.J. Connington" was steeped in the most advanced science of his era. Which is why, for example, there's much talk of harnessing nuclear power for the energy needs of those who remain alive. This is 1923, people, and you've got that era's equivalent of a hard-sci-fi author speculating...in an informed way...about harnessing atomic energy. It's like a modern writer talking about fusion, or interplanetary travel.
That Stewart represented and understood the best science of his time is a reminder that science can go rather badly off track. Because sure, he gets chemistry and physics, as well as anyone of his age. But the book is overtly racist, buying into the now debunked pseudoscience of race and eugenics. Only the strong get saved, eh? And the Ayn Randian character of the entrepreneur protagonist smacks of early fascism. Only the Ubermensch can save us, and that he does so by killing off the weak and the disposable is...oof. Given where this falls in history, the fascism and racism are a dark harbinger of horrors to come.
An interesting read, particularly in the context of its time.
December 16, 2025
After a freak accident releases a virulent strain of bacteria that frees bound nitrogen from the soil, the world faces an ecological catastrophe as all the soil loses its fertility and plants wither and die. Global famine is an absolute certainty, and with it the possibility of global extinction. One man has the vision and the means to save a few million, and he sets up a restricted zone, with stores of food to last until they can manufacture enough fertilizer to restore the soil and produce new crops. But in order to do so, he must act unilaterally, as a dictator, to ensure success. And everyone outside his protected zone will die.
Written in 1923, this apocalyptic novel has aged surprisingly well. There are social elements in here that are a bit dated (the treatment of gender roles comes to mind), and even to my novice understanding, advances in science have highlighted some missed guesses, but overall, this book remains compelling. It explores the use of authoritarianism in times of crisis, and raises questions about whether necessary, but seemingly impossible choices can be made any other way. The choice here is saving some sliver of humanity, while cold-heartedly leaving the rest to die of starvation.
I don't believe that it is a coincidence that this book was published in 1923, only a few years after the global influenza pandemic. I'm sure that the author had that global disaster in mind as he contemplated his story. But the lack of general knowledge about viruses leads him to focus on bacteria as his mechanism for disaster, which makes sense in a world prior to the discovery of antibiotics. This book is also written before the rise of fascism and the atrocities that would result, so that the author's view of authoritarianism might not reflect the biases of a post-Holocaust reader. I found contemplating these aspects of the book almost as compelling as the story itself.
Written in 1923, this apocalyptic novel has aged surprisingly well. There are social elements in here that are a bit dated (the treatment of gender roles comes to mind), and even to my novice understanding, advances in science have highlighted some missed guesses, but overall, this book remains compelling. It explores the use of authoritarianism in times of crisis, and raises questions about whether necessary, but seemingly impossible choices can be made any other way. The choice here is saving some sliver of humanity, while cold-heartedly leaving the rest to die of starvation.
I don't believe that it is a coincidence that this book was published in 1923, only a few years after the global influenza pandemic. I'm sure that the author had that global disaster in mind as he contemplated his story. But the lack of general knowledge about viruses leads him to focus on bacteria as his mechanism for disaster, which makes sense in a world prior to the discovery of antibiotics. This book is also written before the rise of fascism and the atrocities that would result, so that the author's view of authoritarianism might not reflect the biases of a post-Holocaust reader. I found contemplating these aspects of the book almost as compelling as the story itself.
September 17, 2025
In his 1923 novel, Nordenholt’s Million, noted chemist Alfred Walter Stewart (writing as J. J. Connington) explores an unusual way to screw the ecology. A disastrous lab experiment releases a microbe that efficiently removes nitrogen from the soil, killing most plant life.
To prevent our extinction, industrialist Stanley Nordenholt creates a scientific survivalist community to research a solution and save a million of our brightest and hard-working best. Social order collapses as starvation depopulates the planet, but the Scottish enclave survives through Nordenholt’s draconian lifeboat ethics.
We follow events through the eyes of his right-hand man, who buys into the need for Nordenholt’s ruthless policies. The only female character in the story argues for an empathetic response, but Nordenholt attributes her emotional reaction to her overactive visual imagination, which makes her unable to respond rationally. It is never quite clear where the author stands on the ethical dilemma he describes. Nordenholt escapes any post-dystopian consequence by nobly dying of exhaustion at the end, but the girl dumps the right-hand man.
The introduction and afterword in the MIT Press edition are excellent.
To prevent our extinction, industrialist Stanley Nordenholt creates a scientific survivalist community to research a solution and save a million of our brightest and hard-working best. Social order collapses as starvation depopulates the planet, but the Scottish enclave survives through Nordenholt’s draconian lifeboat ethics.
We follow events through the eyes of his right-hand man, who buys into the need for Nordenholt’s ruthless policies. The only female character in the story argues for an empathetic response, but Nordenholt attributes her emotional reaction to her overactive visual imagination, which makes her unable to respond rationally. It is never quite clear where the author stands on the ethical dilemma he describes. Nordenholt escapes any post-dystopian consequence by nobly dying of exhaustion at the end, but the girl dumps the right-hand man.
The introduction and afterword in the MIT Press edition are excellent.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 13, 2025
Can a single “Great Man” really save the world? Do the ends justify the means, no matter how abhorrent those means are, or how many people will die in the process? Can we ever trust a dictatorship to be benevolent? In Nordenholt’s Million, the answer to all three of these questions is a resounding “Yes!” We must remember, though, that this was written in 1923, before WWII showed us so vividly how Social Darwinist theories can go horribly wrong. This is a fascinating book, even if some passages are cringe-worthy, and highly relevant today when countries like the United States are toying with authoritarianism.
February 25, 2025
A classic example of "not what you do but how you do it."
Credit where it's due: the subject matter is endlessly relevant, prophetic and ahead of its time in many aspects, yes.
But the writing is so tediously dull and the pacing far too leisurely to evoke any kind of tension or reason to care (mostly thanks to the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing).
I wanted to like this novel very much, if not for the author approaching a deeply engaging premise with all the enthusiasm of a jaded professor marking a ceiling-high stack of exam papers.
Credit where it's due: the subject matter is endlessly relevant, prophetic and ahead of its time in many aspects, yes.
But the writing is so tediously dull and the pacing far too leisurely to evoke any kind of tension or reason to care (mostly thanks to the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing).
I wanted to like this novel very much, if not for the author approaching a deeply engaging premise with all the enthusiasm of a jaded professor marking a ceiling-high stack of exam papers.
December 22, 2023
Interesting premise, made it halfway in, but just bleak and dry and not my jam at the present time. Probably good that it got reprinted because fascist movements catching on in the wake of a disaster is distressingly relatable and there'll be people who are into it, but I'm just bouncing off this thing. Moving on.
July 3, 2024
(2 February, 2023)
On its own, this is not so bad. OK end-of-civilisation story with shitty ending, big whoop, they're a dime a dozen. Now add fascism, racism, sexism, jingoism and elitism to the mix and the whole thing is even worse. What really got me to loathe this is 'Uncle Stanley' treats people as a means to an end and is lauded for it!
By the way, Hitler must have read this and followed Nordenholt's example; be seen as a saviour, check; engineer a coup, check; act unilaterally, check; create Hitler Youth and Brown Shirts, check; commit mass murder, check; et cetera...
Stanley and Flint, as most industrialists do, see individuals as numbers, and nothing more. The fact that these ass-hats don't do anything escapes them totally, what irony! Stewart, as Connington, cannot fathom a world without an upper upper upper echelon of supervisors so divorced from actual producers of goods and services, it's unreal.
We're told Nordenholt is a genius but one who indoctrinates youngsters, uses people for his own purposes, willfully creates a martyr, kills indiscriminately and thinks nothing of it and sees one's self as a paragon of the human species is definitely anything but that. As is my usual, don't tell me someone's smart, show me.
On its own, this is not so bad. OK end-of-civilisation story with shitty ending, big whoop, they're a dime a dozen. Now add fascism, racism, sexism, jingoism and elitism to the mix and the whole thing is even worse. What really got me to loathe this is 'Uncle Stanley' treats people as a means to an end and is lauded for it!
By the way, Hitler must have read this and followed Nordenholt's example; be seen as a saviour, check; engineer a coup, check; act unilaterally, check; create Hitler Youth and Brown Shirts, check; commit mass murder, check; et cetera...
Stanley and Flint, as most industrialists do, see individuals as numbers, and nothing more. The fact that these ass-hats don't do anything escapes them totally, what irony! Stewart, as Connington, cannot fathom a world without an upper upper upper echelon of supervisors so divorced from actual producers of goods and services, it's unreal.
We're told Nordenholt is a genius but one who indoctrinates youngsters, uses people for his own purposes, willfully creates a martyr, kills indiscriminately and thinks nothing of it and sees one's self as a paragon of the human species is definitely anything but that. As is my usual, don't tell me someone's smart, show me.
June 27, 2016
Disturbing. Maybe because of what happened in the real world shortly after this was written, I found the idea of a select few led by an all-powerful manipulator really scary.
Most of the characters were really unbelievable. They tended to be either ridiculously naive or nearly prophetic in their foresight. The politicians were funny, a bit exaggerated, but also amazingly true to life.
It wasn't all bad. The Sci-fi part was funny. Cutting edge for its day, now it's good for a few laughs in an otherwise depressing book. You'll love the 'invention' that saves the day.
Towards the end, he tried to lighten the mood, but it didn't really work for me. Too much totalitarianism and utopianism to be believable. That was a problem for me through the whole thing. However, the worst problem was the whole premise set up the main character to play god over most of humanity. Christianity was given rather tepid approval but was mostly ignored as irrelevant. I'd say he did a masterful job of painting a complete picture of doom. How terrible to go through life thinking as the main character in this book did. I'm so glad I don't have to look toward such a clay god as he did.
Thanks to Dover Publications and NetGalley for a chance to read this book for free and write a review.
Most of the characters were really unbelievable. They tended to be either ridiculously naive or nearly prophetic in their foresight. The politicians were funny, a bit exaggerated, but also amazingly true to life.
It wasn't all bad. The Sci-fi part was funny. Cutting edge for its day, now it's good for a few laughs in an otherwise depressing book. You'll love the 'invention' that saves the day.
Towards the end, he tried to lighten the mood, but it didn't really work for me. Too much totalitarianism and utopianism to be believable. That was a problem for me through the whole thing. However, the worst problem was the whole premise set up the main character to play god over most of humanity. Christianity was given rather tepid approval but was mostly ignored as irrelevant. I'd say he did a masterful job of painting a complete picture of doom. How terrible to go through life thinking as the main character in this book did. I'm so glad I don't have to look toward such a clay god as he did.
Thanks to Dover Publications and NetGalley for a chance to read this book for free and write a review.
August 12, 2016
A scary, morality story of what might happen when a bacterium is unleashed on the world.
The consequences are frightening in the extreme.
Very highly recommended.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Dover publications via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
The consequences are frightening in the extreme.
Very highly recommended.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Dover publications via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
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