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.