Episode 28: 'Young Strickland's Career' by J.D. Beresford
J.D. (John Davys) Beresford (17 March 1873 – 2 February 1947) followed in the footsteps of H.G. Wells as a pioneer of science-fiction, although his body of work includes literary criticism and what, broadly speaking, we might call horror and ghost stories, but what are often psychological and philosophical interrogations. Some of them deal with the hot topic questions of his era: theology, evolution, sexual equality. Some are cosmic, dreamlike and, frankly, almost impenetrable, while anticipating the “strange” writers of the future.
Young Strickland’s Career is a relatively straightforward
story, and a short one, taken from his 1921 collection Signs and Wonders. But it
shows Beresford once again using his fiction to deal with the notions of free will and predestination, and addressing world affairs, in
this instance staring, unblinking, at the very real horrors of a grand-scale
human tragedy.
It’s a shocking story that arrives at its black punchline not out of callousness, but to say something about man’s failure to avoid the worst of his “potentialities”.
On a separate note, J.D. was the father of Elisabeth Beresford, creator of The Wombles.
Keep womblin'
Jasper
******
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3798-gathering-darkness
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The recording was created using Audacity and BandLab. Podcast hosted by Anchor.
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