Dr. Brett Edwards Profile picture
still do some stuff here . new accounts starting over at https://t.co/Jq0N7ExOeJ https://t.co/Zu0H3XmdN3

May 16, 2023, 15 tweets

I've got stuff to do. So obviously you are getting a thread on 19th and early 20th century biological weapon scifi this evening.

Most of these books are well over 100 years old. And yet, I still feel the need to say....

Let's start with La Guerre au vingtième siècle by Albert Robida (1883).

The book follows a protagonist wandering through an imagined future war. The writer opts for 1945. Bacteriological weapons are just one type or weapon system they pull from their head.

Actually not bad my dude.

Other than the rather dapper steam punk outfit above (which reminds me of this actual kit from a couple of decades later) there are some other gems.

Oh year. There are also mediums. Psychic mediums.

They are the last thing you want after surviving 'concentrates and microbes of malignant fever, farcin, dysentery, measles, acute odontalgia and other diseases.'....

Or arreee theyyy?

If this has piqued your interest this, and other works are reviewed here :

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Quite inexplicably. There is also actually quite a good list on wiki too.. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologica…

And I will add others here as I dig them up.

Listed in the links above is the classic short story from H. G. Wells. Which deals with those pesky 19th century anarchists

'The Stolen Bacillus' (1895)
encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclope…

You can read it in 15 minutes. It's a classic. If you haven't I really don't want to ruin the punchline.

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