Everyone knows that George Gordon, Lord Byron, was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, led a life of adventure that would today have got him blacklisted as a terrorist—he concealed arms and ammunition for the Carbonari secret society to use in attacks on Austrian rule in Italy, and died of fever while training Greeks rebelling against Turkish rule there, when both Austria and Turkey were the recognized governments.  In between these activities, along with a busy love life, he found time to be one of the great Romantic poets, certainly the biggest celebrity among them, and by far the most popular in terms of sales.

     What is not so well-remembered is that among his poems—though, admittedly, by no means the best known of them—are at least two which can be read as extraordinary examples of early science fiction.

     “Darkness” takes as its theme the disappearance of our sun.  The phenomenon is not explained in the poem, merely its results.  Perpetual darkness, lit only by the fires of anything that can be burned, including bit by bit all traces of civilization, the cities and all their contents, covers humanity.  There can be no crops, so food is soon exhausted, and even the last of the animals, which creep to the human fires for warmth, are devoured.  Finally, the last two struggling survivors of mankind encounter each other, over the makings of the last fire, and, as their frantic struggles finally succeed in making it flare up, both die of shock at the horrifically ravaged faces they each see on the other. 

     Melodramatic, not always convincing in detail—a faithful dog that remains with its master's body, and escapes devouring by other men or beasts, is an implausibly sentimental touch—it nevertheless conveys a powerful “what if” situation, a truly science fictional one, and a sense of wonder, too, albeit of the darkest and most hopeless kind.

     The poem has been interpreted as a prophetic anticipation of the theory of nuclear winter—i.e. that an all-out nuclear war would raise such clouds of dust into the atmosphere that sunlight would be lost for an indefinite period.  Likewise, it could fit the aftermath of a major asteroid strike—such dust-clouds from such a cause are theorized to have begun the downfall of the dinosaurs.  Sufficiently major volcanic eruptions could also thus blot out the sun for a period sufficient to wipe out much vegetation, including food crops, and thus induce mass starvation, and this indeed was a possibility of which Byron was aware, since in 1816—“the summer that never was”—dust tossed up by a large volcanic eruption at Tamora in the East Indies had led to months of darkening of the skies, un-seasonal freezing temperatures, and much reduction of harvests.

     A later, longer poem, actually a verse play, Byron's “Cain” of 1821, includes in its Act II, Scene I, which is headed “The Abyss of Space”, an effective early example of a voyage through outer space.  The context is that Lucifer, as part of attempting to persuade Cain to take the side of the fallen angels, or at least remain neutral between them and God, offers to give him the fuller knowledge of the Universe and its working that the Creator had denied Adam and Eve, and of which the fatal stolen apple had itself only given fragmentary understanding, insufficient to enlighten their children, particularly the knowledge-hungry Cain depicted by Byron.

     Lucifer gives Cain the ability to “tread on air…be borne on it”, and the two traverse outward to the point where it is seen as just a “small blue circle, swinging in far ether”, then shrinks to the size of a “little shining firefly”, before becoming too small to see.  They pass a variety of other worlds—“some displaying/ Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt/ With luminous belts, and floating moons”, before entering a starless zone, where the worlds are “huge dusky masses”.  In Scene II—“Hades”, they reach one of these “twilight” worlds, and Cain realizes it is full of “enormous shapes”.  Some, Lucifer explains as being “Intelligent../ superior” members of a larger predecessor race which was the dominant species of an earlier Earth, before the destruction of its surface.  Others are the enormous creatures of that phase, “Resembling somewhat the wild inhabitants/ Of the deep woods” of the Earth of Cain's time, but “ten-fold in magnitude and terror; taller than the cherub-guarded walls of Eden (…) tusks projecting like the trees stripp'd of/ Their bark and branches.”

     These science-fictional elements are present in the poem, not so much for their own sake, but as, in effect, props to illustrate Lucifer's various arguments deployed in the attempt to convert Cain's viewpoint, and in particular the argument that the Creator's interference is the source of continuing degeneration of intelligent life, Cain being far inferior to the giant prior-Earth intelligences, and Cain's descendents, in turn, bound to degenerate still further unless Cain rebels.  Nevertheless, that they ARE science-fictional is undeniable, not just in the picture, impressionistic rather than detailed as it is, of interstellar journeying, but particularly in this early use of what became a familiar trope of science fiction and science fantasy, that of current humanity having been preceded by still greater, higher civilizations, long since obliterated.

     For “Darkness” and for “Cain”, Byron richly deserves, although sadly seldom receives, an honored place in the memory bank of science fiction fans.