ABSTRACT
The strain of early science fiction that deals with high technology and end-of-the-world cataclysms probably draws on the tradition of epic battles. Matthew Phipps Shiel (18651947) was a forerunner of science fiction's world cataclysms. His Yellow Danger (1898) and The Lord of the Sea (1901) both envision future high-technology battles between major political powers. In Shiel's The Purple Cloud (1901), almost the entire world population is killed by the release of gasses from beneath the earth's surface.
