Brits at their Best

How John Milton Invented Sci-Fi in the 1600s

At Brow Beat, we’re big science fiction fans and we thought the Yuletide would be a great time to pay homage to a Christian thinker who also happened to beget one of our favorite genres. That’s because John Milton—poet, free speech advocate, civil servant, classics scholar—was arguably a forefather to Asimov, Bradbury, Delaney, and the rest. Their outlandish other worlds owe a debt to his visionary mode of storytelling; their romance—characters who go on quests, encounter adversaries at portals, channel the forces of light and dark—is his, too.
Not to mention that the text of Paradise Lost is saturated in science. Milton met Galileo, for the first and only time, in a 1638 visit that Jonathan Rosen compared to "those comic book specials in which Superman meets Batman". . .

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A good start.

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LIFE
British gardens, sports cars, celebrations, fashion.

ARTISTS
Exciting, profound, joyful, local and global: British writers, artists and musicians

FREEDOM
They brought honesty and common sense, fair play and compassion, bravery, daring, and self-discipline, and a passionate love of liberty to a 2000-year-long struggle to achieve freedom.

INGENIOUS INVENTORS, INNOVATIVE THINKERS

Brits gave us the modern world. We love it, loathe it, can't live without it.

ABOLISHING SLAVERY

They were a fellowship of men and women, slave and free who changed the world.

BRITAIN’S CONSTITUTION

Allegedly unwritten, but called "the most stupendous fabric of human invention" in the world, and extremely important to your well-being, no matter where you dwell.

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Book cover

The people of Britain and the Anglosphere defied a world of cruelty and superstition to create life-changing gifts. This is your inheritance. Glorious. Hardcover, 140 pages, 125 colour illustrations.

Available at PG Wells Bookshop, Winchester, 01962 852 016.

The cost is £4.99 (plus £3 shipping) in the UK, $9 (plus $8 shipping) in the USA.

Please contact us at [email protected] if you would like a copy.

The authors — Dr David Abbott and Catherine Glass Abbott — are the publishers of this website.

David Abbott

DAVID ABBOTT MD, MRCP

I have practiced medicine in England, America and Canada for the last four decades. I believe in the principles of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. I am a father, grandfather, bell ringer, environmental campaigner and marathoner.

Brits at their Best produced thousands of indispensable inventions, developed wildly popular sports, designed romantic houses and gardens, created astonishing literary masterpieces, lived with style and humour, tackled dangerous missions with daring and ingenuity, and fought with indomitable courage to establish and protect the free world.

We describe their superb achievements and extraordinary lives.

CATHERINE (CAT) GLASS

I saw tyranny firsthand in Eastern Europe. (My background is English, Irish, and Czech.) I received my degree in Classical Greek from Columbia University, New York, worked in publishing in the United States for twenty years, and helped the homeless for seven years.

We write about liberty, reason, imagination, fair play, a generous and forgiving spirit, love of God, the rule of just law, representative government, books, gardens, music, art, sports, inventions. . .the most wonderful things in the world.

“Brits at their Best. A magnificent site, particularly the Liberty Timeline. . .”
Hugh Hewitt, radio talk-show host, author, law professor and blogger

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