A CENTURY BEFORE THERE WAS LORD OF THE WORLD
Imagine a godless age, a time when all the world has fallen prey to soulless communism. This is the world that Christ comes to as he returns to us. This is the Second Coming. This is the End of Time. This is the Apocalypse. According to his biographer, Fr. Cyril Martindale, Mgr. Benson's depiction of the future was in many ways an inversion of the science fiction novels of H. G. Wells. In particular, Benson was sickened by Wells' belief that Atheism, Marxism, World Government, and Eugenics would lead to an earthly utopia. Due to his depiction of a Wellsian future as a global police state, Benson's novel has been called one of the first modern works of dystopian fiction.

Robert Hugh Benson was an English Catholic priest and author who lived from 18 November 1871 to 19 October 1914. He began his ministry as an Anglican priest before being welcomed and ordained in the Catholic Church in 1903. He also wrote a lot of fiction, including Come Rack! Come to Rope! and the well-known dystopian novel Lord of the World. His works include current fiction, children's stories, plays, apologetics, devotional writings, and historical, horror, and science fiction. In parallel with rising through the ranks to serve as a Chamberlain to Pope Pius X in 1911 and earning the title of Monsignor before passing away a few years later, he continued his writing career. Benson, the younger brother of E. F., A. C., and Margaret Benson, was the youngest child of Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his wife, Mary. Robert Hugh Benson attended Eton College for his education before attending Trinity College in Cambridge from 1890 to 1893 to study classics and religion. Benson's father, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, gave him his ordination as a priest in the Church of England in 1895.