Vintage Sci Fi Podcast 8 The World’s Last Wonder V & VI
Welcome to Vintage Sci Fi Podcast 8. It’s great to have you!
What did you think about The World’s Last Wonder chapters 3 and 4? Things are starting to get exciting!
The World’s Last Wonder (1901) is Australia’s first space opera. From about 1871 onwards, Australia was enjoying a surge in newspaper-published invention opera featuring inventors with futuristic inventions and scientific explanations, with the invention the macguffin that drives the narrative forward. These stories appeared as an answer to the Great Invention Rush of the 1860s to the 1880s.
From about 1892 recognisable modern science fiction began appearing around the world, as inventors began to write them, complete with scientists, detailed scientific explanations, prophetic inventions, and futuristic situations and environments.
The World’s Last Wonder is a number of things. Australia’s first modern science fiction, Australia’s first space opera, and one of Australia’s last invention operas. In this sense it is a transitional story, featuring many of the hallmarks we recognised in the 20th century as modern science fiction, yet still featuring throwbacks such as gas-lamp lighting and space ‘cars’ instead of space ‘ships’.
Chapters V and VI feature a discussion about the actual book Cellular Cosmogony, detailed explanations of orbits, the effects of decreasing and increasing gravity, a flyby of the moon, and a discussion on the dangers of meteoric matter striking the space car.
Enjoy