Every Thursday at dinner time - except with it is preempted - we watch Chesterton Station on EWTN. The premise of the show is that Chesterton (wonderfully played by John Walker), after his death, is at a railway station where he meets up with others on their way to their eternal destinations. Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Georger Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Dorothy Sayers, and George McDonald are among the travelers with whom he meets. They talk, act out scenes, interact with characters from their works, and enjoy some beverages. It's an amusing show, well worth watching.
Last night's episode featured Father Robert Hugh Benson, a convert who, in addition to being a priest, wrote works of fantasy and science fiction, the most famous of them being the dystopian novel Lord of the World.
Confession: I was in a play version of one of his novels, Come Rack! Come Rope!, about the persecution of Catholics in England under Queen Elizabeth.
In the episode, Father Benson is being harassed by forces of the "Lord of the World" - prompting Chesterton to fire off his pistol in their direction.
The episode got me to wondering what would have happened had Chesterton turned more of his energies to speculative fiction. He certainly wrote some fantastic tales, and two of his novels, The Man Who Was Thursday, and The Napoleon of Notting Hill, certainly seem to straddle the realms of fantasy and science fiction. And there are fantasy elements in the collection The Coloured Lands.
He might have produced more of such works, but I suspect his conversion changed his focus. He continued to write mysteries and essays - to help pay the bills - but seemed to focus more and more on religious writings.
I have not read all of his short fiction - yet - so perhaps there are some fantasy/science fiction gems among them. Perhaps some folks who have read him more widely have already looked into this.
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