The future-war fiction and the problem of two camps in “The Battle of Dorking” and P.G. Wodehouse’s The Swoop!

The aim of the article is to compare and contrast two examples of the short-lived conservative literary genre of future-war fiction (also known as invasion literature) popular in Britain between the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The analysed texts, “The Battle of Dorking” of 1871 and The Swoop! of 1909, are examined as manifestations of two camps with which commentators of projected future seem to identify: the camp comprising of people expressing genuine fears and future anxieties, and the camp of people mocking and dismissing these apprehensions. The article explores their social and political impacts and their potential legacy.