Science Fiction

Nordenholt's Million

A Scientific Romance of Bacterial Blight, Ecological Collapse, and Technocratic SurvivalBy J. J. Connington

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Length10h 37m

About this audiobook

J. J. Connington's Nordenholt's Million (1923) is a scientifically grounded catastrophe novel in which a devastating agricultural blight threatens the food supply and, with it, the foundations of modern civilization. The narrative follows the determined efforts of the wealthy and intellectually formidable Nordenholt to preserve a viable remnant of society, confronting not only biological disaster but also panic, class conflict, political failure, and the ethical costs of survival. Connington combines the measured exposition of scientific romance with the suspenseful structure of the detective novel, producing a work whose interest lies as much in its social engineering and moral dilemmas as in its apocalyptic premise. It belongs to the interwar tradition of speculative fiction that transformed contemporary anxieties about science, industrial dependence, and fragile institutions into visions of national and global collapse. The pseudonym J. J. Connington was used by Alfred Walter Stewart, an accomplished chemist and university academic whose scientific training strongly informs the novel's plausible treatment of epidemic catastrophe and resource management. Stewart's professional familiarity with chemistry, evidence, and rational investigation enabled him to write both technically credible mysteries and speculative narratives that test how expert knowledge might confront collective crisis. Nordenholt's Million reflects the uncertainties of the period after the First World War, when advances in science coexisted with fears of famine, population pressure, and civilizational disintegration. This book is recommended to readers interested in early science fiction, disaster literature, ecological speculation, and the intellectual history of the modern thriller. Its restrained style, analytical imagination, and sustained concern with leadership and social responsibility make it valuable not merely as an ancestor of contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction, but as a serious meditation on what civilization chooses to preserve when its material security disappears.

Apocalyptic Survival Dystopian Political Intrigue Antihero Post-Apocalyptic Rebellion Psychological