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The Last Revolution: A Novel
An inspiration to many for his style and prose, Lord Dunsany was a pioneer for fantasy fiction, inspiring such famous writers as H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman to name a few. Over sixty years since its first publication, The Last Revolution is now once again available to readers.
In a time before computers were a mainstay of our lives, Lord Dunsany tells the story which takes place in England about the revolution of self-reproducing machines. Known to have a profound distaste for the Industrial Revolution, The Last Revolution touches on a topic we know all too well What happens if the computers take over?
“Good morning Pender. I hear you have made a Frankenstein.” This is the line that narrator Pender hears from an inventor, and is soon playing a robot in a game of chess. Pender’s mood changes when he realizes that the computer he’s facing has an intelligence far superior to his own.
From the introduction of the robots, a tense atmosphere is noted as the robots fight for attention of their owners. Will these machines be able to coexist with their household counterparts, or will they rise as one and take the first steps against humanity?
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
In a time before computers were a mainstay of our lives, Lord Dunsany tells the story which takes place in England about the revolution of self-reproducing machines. Known to have a profound distaste for the Industrial Revolution, The Last Revolution touches on a topic we know all too well What happens if the computers take over?
“Good morning Pender. I hear you have made a Frankenstein.” This is the line that narrator Pender hears from an inventor, and is soon playing a robot in a game of chess. Pender’s mood changes when he realizes that the computer he’s facing has an intelligence far superior to his own.
From the introduction of the robots, a tense atmosphere is noted as the robots fight for attention of their owners. Will these machines be able to coexist with their household counterparts, or will they rise as one and take the first steps against humanity?
Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.
- GenresScience Fiction
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1951
12 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
Lord Dunsany
648 books803 followersEdward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 9, 2022
Pender is annoying throughout, no doubt. Yes, of course because he builds a machine brain that can out-think him and puts it in an armoured body - part tank, part crab with a hundred hands that can grab, rend, tear. But then he spends the rest of the book saying: (a) the now immanent robot invasion he has started (the smart robot goes off and makes more robots...) is not really his fault but can be blamed on any scientific inventions that came before what he did (Marconi, it seems, is the big name to pick on), and (b) spends the rest of the book saying "it's the last revolution". Which you created, dude.
Things get a bit Demon Seed-y (well maybe not quite that), or Saturn 3-y (like I can remember Saturn 3, or would want to refresh my memory), because the main robot hates humans, and is jealous of the woman in Pender's life. Although, I guess there's no real hint of robot lust here, and the book is the better for it. Nevertheless, dozens of smart machines that start learning to control other machines (damn that Marconi!) trap one mad, or silly (I mean, why does he suddenly see everything long-term immediately after inventing what could destroy humanity?) scientist and his pals in a shack and hang about in the nearby marsh clik-cliking plans to get rid of people starting with the shack-trapped. Then they get busy.
This is from 1951, and to get Terminator or Matrix vibes from this book was a delight. I wish Dunsany had stopped repeating a few themes and passages (characters whining about the end of the world when you think the here and now of being personally torn to pieces would be the focus), and instead made the whole thing scarier. It is scary, at times, but gradually it loses its The Mist vibe, and feels more like Killer Crabs by Guy N. Smith channelling Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt. In fact, I've been reading a lot of Radium Age (1904-1933, unless you want to argue about it) Science Fiction, and the feel of this novel is almost like something from 1910-1920. Which actually makes it more interesting - and it's oddly charming when a book like this is being brilliantly prophetic and alarm-bell-y about us creating AI that is smarter than us and soulless, but also clumsily dated at the same time. An author seeing what might be coming, but not quite able to see it exactly. But I did enjoy this fun try. And if this had been typical 1950s American "robot threat" SF - dare I say of a more American style (at least in the 1950s) - we would have been stuck in a lab with scientists and military types talking and talking, with cuts to cities overrun, and then back to the scientists and some sharper but dull gobbledygook that really explains how the robots work. I prefer the narrow, pastoral (well, swampy but initially peaceful) perspective - a small but plucky team of killer crab robots laying siege to a hut full of whiny, philosophical humans, who do at least take a paragraph or two out from the mooning to get me to identify with them before they might get burned up.
I do love how the robots get called monsters basically from the start. Not robots. Monsters. The author did get that right. And of the "do they really have time for this?!!" philosophizing, I did like the bits about scientists never really being able to see what the unending treadmill of great inventions will actually do to the world, say, in 50 years. We don't have the omniscience to really see what we are doing to the world when we create.
Anyway, a worthwhile neglected gem, and interesting to see where the author's head was at, so long after The King of Elfland's Daughter.
Things get a bit Demon Seed-y (well maybe not quite that), or Saturn 3-y (like I can remember Saturn 3, or would want to refresh my memory), because the main robot hates humans, and is jealous of the woman in Pender's life. Although, I guess there's no real hint of robot lust here, and the book is the better for it. Nevertheless, dozens of smart machines that start learning to control other machines (damn that Marconi!) trap one mad, or silly (I mean, why does he suddenly see everything long-term immediately after inventing what could destroy humanity?) scientist and his pals in a shack and hang about in the nearby marsh clik-cliking plans to get rid of people starting with the shack-trapped. Then they get busy.
This is from 1951, and to get Terminator or Matrix vibes from this book was a delight. I wish Dunsany had stopped repeating a few themes and passages (characters whining about the end of the world when you think the here and now of being personally torn to pieces would be the focus), and instead made the whole thing scarier. It is scary, at times, but gradually it loses its The Mist vibe, and feels more like Killer Crabs by Guy N. Smith channelling Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt. In fact, I've been reading a lot of Radium Age (1904-1933, unless you want to argue about it) Science Fiction, and the feel of this novel is almost like something from 1910-1920. Which actually makes it more interesting - and it's oddly charming when a book like this is being brilliantly prophetic and alarm-bell-y about us creating AI that is smarter than us and soulless, but also clumsily dated at the same time. An author seeing what might be coming, but not quite able to see it exactly. But I did enjoy this fun try. And if this had been typical 1950s American "robot threat" SF - dare I say of a more American style (at least in the 1950s) - we would have been stuck in a lab with scientists and military types talking and talking, with cuts to cities overrun, and then back to the scientists and some sharper but dull gobbledygook that really explains how the robots work. I prefer the narrow, pastoral (well, swampy but initially peaceful) perspective - a small but plucky team of killer crab robots laying siege to a hut full of whiny, philosophical humans, who do at least take a paragraph or two out from the mooning to get me to identify with them before they might get burned up.
I do love how the robots get called monsters basically from the start. Not robots. Monsters. The author did get that right. And of the "do they really have time for this?!!" philosophizing, I did like the bits about scientists never really being able to see what the unending treadmill of great inventions will actually do to the world, say, in 50 years. We don't have the omniscience to really see what we are doing to the world when we create.
Anyway, a worthwhile neglected gem, and interesting to see where the author's head was at, so long after The King of Elfland's Daughter.
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April 29, 2016The Last Revolution was written by Lord Dunsany in his early seventies, (six years before he died) published in 1951, and forty years after such works as the Book of Wonder, and Time and the Gods. Dunsany published in many styles and themes, he may have even moved on from some genres, having done all he felt he could with them, so this book will seem a lot different than those immortal fantasy classics.
But the reader will find his mastery of setting a landscape and drawing you into a scene. He can tell a simple story and not clutter it with extraneous social commentary or dismal accounts of family dysfunction. (In fact, this book is about as close as he ever comes to describing a mother who misunderstands her child, and critiquing society in broad terms, it is still pretty upbeat, for all that.)
The question dealt with is whether machines will one day acquire intelligence and stop serving the commands of us their makers. This, coming from a WWI vet in a time when computers were the size of office buildings and incapable of doing the tasks your phone does on its worst day, is pretty prophetic, seeing as we have a lot of talk nowadays about an AI singularity that is near or already passed. The singularity, the implications, and the story to go along with it, are all here.
One warning, the book either had some editing problems, printer issues, or Dunsany was older and not on his game. there seem to be some phrases that were unnecessarily repeated here and there. Ignore these, and you have a treat for the Dunsany completist!
lord
But the reader will find his mastery of setting a landscape and drawing you into a scene. He can tell a simple story and not clutter it with extraneous social commentary or dismal accounts of family dysfunction. (In fact, this book is about as close as he ever comes to describing a mother who misunderstands her child, and critiquing society in broad terms, it is still pretty upbeat, for all that.)
The question dealt with is whether machines will one day acquire intelligence and stop serving the commands of us their makers. This, coming from a WWI vet in a time when computers were the size of office buildings and incapable of doing the tasks your phone does on its worst day, is pretty prophetic, seeing as we have a lot of talk nowadays about an AI singularity that is near or already passed. The singularity, the implications, and the story to go along with it, are all here.
One warning, the book either had some editing problems, printer issues, or Dunsany was older and not on his game. there seem to be some phrases that were unnecessarily repeated here and there. Ignore these, and you have a treat for the Dunsany completist!
lord
January 31, 2023
Dunsany's pleas to the reader regarding a sentient force of machinery that may one day choose to rise up against humanity written over 70 years ago ring more urgent now—in an age where faux facsimiles are becoming harder and harder to distinguish from the real thing by the day and where complex and powerful machinery is present in almost every aspect of life—more than ever before in history. Yadda yadda, I know, nonetheless we best keep our eyes open lest we miss the signs of the next revolution and do end up as slaves to our own creations.
November 24, 2022
Although rather drawn out it makes a pertinent point relevant 70 years later. This particular version of the Terminator, though perhaps lacking modern hi tech wizardry, has a mysterious power to gain allies in its attempt to gain freedom from mankind’s enslavement. I wholeheartedly agree that man’s curiosity and foolhardiness in combination with a massive population is a recipe for self extinction. My youthful optimism that a benevolent and morally sound AI can save us from ourselves is fading fast. So I guess if you’re an alien translating a fossilised fragment of data, “Hi this is so cool!” and don’t believe we weren’t warned. As of COP27 no-one listened is all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 16, 2025
Interesting book that was written a bit ago about a machine revolution with machines that can think. Very different writing style than I’m used to, formal but intriguing. There are some slurs used, slight sexism and a word that meant something else that nowadays would be a slur. But an interesting read with a unique perspective from a different time!
February 15, 2019
Ahead of its time
Astonishing this was written so long ago. Amazingly perceptive, if a little laboured & overly descriptive. Raw sci-fi in its purest form.
Astonishing this was written so long ago. Amazingly perceptive, if a little laboured & overly descriptive. Raw sci-fi in its purest form.
May 11, 2017
Its hard to give Dunsany a less than perfect review, and this is the first time I have ever wanted to. It felt a bit like he strongly and personally believed in his subject matter (as in fact he did) but was a little out of his depth in executing a story about it (or at least one that would age well). Much of the vibrancy and cleverness of his earlier works is missing here, though there are occasional flashes of his wit in the text. Still, Dunsany is Dunsany, and I enjoyed it for its own sake.
This book presages (literally) Maximum Overdrive, The Terminator, and any number of other overtly luddite-worthy science fiction pieces in this particular canon in a generally enjoyable if somewhat tedious way. If it has a weakness (aside from Dunsany himself being more successful as a fantasy writer than a science fiction writer), I would say that this book is a bit too long and is generally anti-climactic. On the other hand, as a borderline luddite myself, I think it still has a strong message if taken as an allegory.
As an aside, I think its wonderfully ironic and completely appropriate that spell check apparently hates the word luddite.
This book presages (literally) Maximum Overdrive, The Terminator, and any number of other overtly luddite-worthy science fiction pieces in this particular canon in a generally enjoyable if somewhat tedious way. If it has a weakness (aside from Dunsany himself being more successful as a fantasy writer than a science fiction writer), I would say that this book is a bit too long and is generally anti-climactic. On the other hand, as a borderline luddite myself, I think it still has a strong message if taken as an allegory.
As an aside, I think its wonderfully ironic and completely appropriate that spell check apparently hates the word luddite.
February 26, 2016
Deeply weird and creepy for about 40 pages, dreary and boring for the other 152. Normally I trust Dunsany, but he lost his touch with this one. Do you want to spend an entire book hearing about how bad technology is, and how it'll eventually destroy the people who created it? If I wanted that, I'd read the latest thinkpiece about how kids these days spend too much time on their phones.
Still, good moments abound in the first few chapters, and if you close the book as soon as the characters get trapped in the cabin, what comes after won't ruin it for you.
Still, good moments abound in the first few chapters, and if you close the book as soon as the characters get trapped in the cabin, what comes after won't ruin it for you.
May 6, 2015
an interesting story, though very repetitive. futurism well done for his time. mr. gaiman's quote on the front cover is quite accurate; it was a very 'biblical' read.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews