Page - 51 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

Jennifer Woodward Totalitarian Opportunism Cataclysm, Nietzschean Thought and Cultural Trans­ formation in J. J. Connington’s Nordenholt’s Million (1923) ABSTRACT This article considers J. J. Connington’s 1923 British disaster novel Nordenholt’s Million as a response to its British inter-war context by examining the novel’s presentation of cataclysm as an opportunity for social change. Nordenholt’s Million utilises an apoca- lyptic scenario involving soil denitrification as a means of offering an uncompromising critique of conventional government systems and its wider social context. Drawing upon the appeal of extreme politics and displaying affinities with Nietzschean philos- ophy throughout, Nordenholt’s Million emphasises the necessity of dictatorship during periods of social and economic difficulty. It uses such circumstances to champion so- cial transformation from what it presents as a state of contemporary decline towards a highly efficient, eugenically constructed post-apocalyptic utopian society. KEYWORDS Disaster Fiction, Apocalypse, Literature, Nietzsche, Inter-war Britain, Eschatology, Uto- pia, Science Fiction BIOGRAPHY Jennifer Woodward is a senior lecturer in Film Studies and English Literature at Edge Hill University, UK. Her PhD examined British Disaster Science Fiction before the Sec- ond World War and alongside her interests in speculative fiction and adaptation stud- ies, she has published work examining disaster novels by authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and R. C. Sherriff. She is also on the editorial committee for Gylphi Press’s SF Story Worlds series. J. J. Connington’s 1923 apocalyptic novel Nordenholt’s Million is one of sever- al British catastrophe narratives written prior to the Second World War that use disaster as a means to envision social transfiguration and political wish-ful- filment fantasy. Such narratives form a body of secular-eschatology that use disaster narratives to address contemporary social concerns and model social change. Specifically, Nordenholt’s Million uses a global cataclysm to champion DOI: 10.25364/05.05:2019.2.4 Totalitarian Opportunism | 51www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 51–68