Olga Romanoff

Olga Romanoff
by George Griffith

This work of fiction is brimming with action and international politics. Narrated in a manner that befits the theme, the work monopolizes the reader's attention from the outset. With characters drawn with great precision and depth, and with the involvement of different super-powers, this is a mind-boggling work.

The Syren of the Skies picks up the story of The Brotherhood of Freedom, a story of air warfare in which Socialists, Anarchists and Nihilists defeat Capitalism. The team are led by a brilliant Russian and his daughter, Natasha, Volume II of this science fiction classic ends on a more apocalyptic note.

Olga Romanoff, the ruthless heir to the long-vanished Russian throne, is determined to seize the hereditary power of her family again. Her seduction and drugging of a young Aerian, Alan Arnold and manipulations against the advanced Aerians enable her to capture one of their powerful airships. The Aerians are a scientific culture who dwell in a valley in central Africa accessible only from the air. They alone know the secret of aerial navigation and use it to impose peace upon the Earth. The Aerians will not allow any other nation to build up an air fleet but now Olga Romanoff's new alliance with radical Islamists allows her to reproduce her captured airship in secret factories of the Middle East. Armed with her own Russian forces and new-found Moslem allies, their armies and their submarine and aerial fleets, Olga Romanoff attacks Europe and America, attempting to forge a new empire.

About The Author :-

George Griffith (18571906), full name George Chetwyn Griffith-Jones, was a prolific British science fiction writer and noted explorer who wrote during the late Victorian and Edwardian age. Many of his visionary tales appeared in magazines such as Pearson's Magazine and Pearson's Weekly before being published as novels. Griffith was extremely popular in the United Kingdom, though he failed to find similar acclaim in the United States, in part due to his revolutionary and socialist views. A journalist, rather than scientist, by background, what his stories lack in scientific rigour and literary grace they make up for in sheer exuberance of execution.

He was the son of a vicar who became a school master in his mid-twenties. After writing freelance articles in his spare time, he joined a newspaper for a short spell, then authored a series of secular pamphlets including Ananias, The Atheist's God: For the Attention of Charles Bradlaugh. After the success of Admiral Philip H. Colomb's The Great War of 1892 (itself a version of the more famous The Battle of Dorking), Griffith, then on the staff of Pearson's Magazine as a clerk addressing envelopes and mailing labels, submitted a synopsis for a story entitled The Angel of the Revolution. It remains his best and most famous work. It was among the first of the so-called marvel tales, epitomised by Jules Verne. Marvel tales featured such things as heavier than air flying machines, compressed air guns, submarines, profoundly convenient political developments, wooden heroes with no readily apparent sexual tastes, and spectacular aerial combat along with other forms of combat, such as battle under the sea. Later novels, such as ' The Gold Finder' developed the heroes' romantic interests. His short stories were very similar to the future war tales of George Chesney and his imitators along with the political utopianism of William Morris's News from Nowhere. He wrote a sequel, serialised as The Syren of the Skies in Pearson's Magazine. It was later published as a novel titled with the name of its main character, Olga Romanoff.

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