I think I discovered invasion literature from a random “Did you know?” blurb on Wikipedia but ever since then it has captured my imagination and I’ve finally gotten around to reading one of its major works. Invasion literature is now an obscure genre but it flourished in the late 19th century. Typically it consists of future histories about invasions by foreign powers. Combined with the steampunky technology of that time period (hot air balloons, gunboats, the persistence of cavalry and swords, etc.) it seemed to have some immaculate vibes. I checked out William Le Queux’s classic from 1894, The Great War in England in 1897. The plot is rather funny to those of us from the future: England gets invaded by France and Russia, and one of the allies that tries to help save them is Germany. A major plot point is Britain’s embarrassing lack of military preparation so the book begins with many instances of them getting stomped.
There are barely any characters, and the ones that do exist are not followed very long. The narrative consists mostly of zoomed-out news report-like descriptions of crazy fucking battles where tons of people die and things are destroyed. It can get pretty repetitive. Some of Le Queux’s phrasings are repetitive, too. There is a lot of “galling fire” and people getting “blown to atoms.” Still, I always get a little stunned at how modern works from this time period can sound; surely they were giving us the wrong things to read in school.
I was pleased to learn that Britain has locations named Cuckfield and Knutsford.