The Doom of London (1903) is a collection of six, loosely connected short
stories all based on the near destruction of Great Britain's major city and
does share some common characters. In the first story, a killer smog
encompasses the city and in the next story, a severe diphtheria plague kills
hundreds of the city’s inhabitants. In the third story, a massive blizzard
buries the city The next three stories involve a massive explosion in London’s
new underground tube service, the threat of the Thames being polluted with
plague bacillus during a massive heat wave and two swindlers manipulating the
stock market by making it crash resulting in a panic.
In almost all of the stories, science comes to the rescue though modern
readers will roll their eyes at the uses technology is put to in order to save
the day.
The book is an interesting, albeit pedestrian harbinger of the modern
disaster novel, but it does give an interesting glimpse into a London long gone
when the horse and buggy was being replaced by the motor car and the novelty of
electricity was a new technology to light the darkest of nights and give birth
to an exciting panorama of knowledge and new-fangled machinery.
Start Page
All books by Fred M White
