APOCALYPSE THEN - HiLo Books' Radium SF series

So, now we've survived another doomsday prediction, what better way to relax than with visions of the apocalypse from the golden days of vintage SF?  And there's no more stylish way to do it than with the new series of "Radium SF" paperbacks from HiLo Books. With their vibrant, moody cover art, and discerning selection, these already look as if they're in collect-the-set territory. It's particularly welcome to see that they've just published Edward Shanks' The People of the Ruins (1920), a bleak overlooked classic of panic, chaos, class warfare, and mayhem in London and beyond. The author was better known in his day as a gentle poet, friend and lieutenant of Georgian luminary John Squire, and creator of ornate, old-fashioned verse in a mannered style, such as The Queen of China. But he also wrote "modern" novels that are quite different, and reveal a more robust and trenchant character, with a clear-eyed view of the arty  bohemians, flappers and cads of the Roaring Twenties. Shanks was a great admirer of M.P. Shiel, and published an appreciation of him in Squire's journal The London Mercury, and there can be little doubt his SF satire was influenced by Shiel's enthusiasm for extravagant, world-shaking plots.

Other titles in the Radium SF series so far are better-known works by Haggard, Kipling, Conan Doyle and Jack London, but the pensive and neglected John Beresford's obscurer Goslings is due in 2013. One drawback is that some of the books, including the Shanks title, are abridged, but at least that may help draw contemporary readers towards writers whose work might otherwise look too daunting.  This looks like a bold and enthusiastic imprint that could bring us even more catastrophe classics in the future, now that it looks like we still have one.