Robert William Cole (6 April 1869 - 12 November 1937) was born in Heston, Middlesex and studied law at Balliol, Oxford, intending to become a barrister, but instead worked as a professional photographer and author. [1] Some of his works are early science fiction and future war fiction. [2] His writing is most notable for an early description of war in space, but had little influence on the history of science fiction because it was published by small presses and received little public attention. He died in Dawlish in Devon, aged 68. Most of Cole's works are out of print and are difficult to find. Copies can be found at the British Library, and two have been republished in scholarly editions.
Ab early space opera. A scholarly edition edited by Richard Bleiler is available from the English publishers Pickering & Chatto as part of their 2013 "Political Future Fiction" series.
A former wastrel has found love and turned over a new leaf, but is intermittently possessed by his rakish past self, given to drinking, chasing loose women, etc., in order to teach him a moral lesson. The hero is prepared to renounce his fiancée to ensure that her life will be happy, even if he is miserable. This proves that he is worthy of her. The haunting ends, and they marry.
Germany, France, and Russia go to war with Britain, the French under duress, the others willingly. They destroy the British fleet, and invade southern England. Britain is nearly defeated and as profiteering, government bungling and the acts of German agents bring the country close to revolution, a heroic general is called upon to lead the country to victory. With the aid of the Japanese navy (the Japanese remember Britain as allies during war with Russia), he engages the German fleet at the last moment. France switches sides prior to the battle, and the enemy fleet is turned away. Included in Pickering & Chatto's 2000 British Future Fiction series.
A romantic comedy in which a young man disguises himself as his own sister, then takes her place at a ladies' finishing school, in order to pursue the woman he loves.
Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him.
Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
The Time Machine is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.
Reginald Bretnor was an American science fiction author who flourished between the 1950s and 1980s. Most of his fiction was in short story form, and usually featured a whimsical story line or ironic plot twist. He also wrote on military theory and public affairs, and edited some of the earliest books to consider SF from a literary theory and criticism perspective.
Norman Richard Spinrad is an American science fiction author, essayist, and critic. His fiction has won the Prix Apollo and been nominated for numerous awards, including the Hugo Award and multiple Nebula Awards.
Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." His book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783 (1890) won immediate recognition, especially in Europe, and with its successor, The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), made him world-famous.
Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but it has since come to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.
Military science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction and military fiction that depicts the use of science fiction technology, including spaceships and weapons, for military purposes and usually principal characters who are members of a military organization, usually during a war; occurring sometimes in outer space or on a different planet or planets. It exists in a range of media, including literature, comics, film, television and video games.
Omni was a science and science fiction magazine published for domestic American and UK markets. It contained articles on science, parapsychology, and short works of science fiction and fantasy. It was published as a print version between October 1978 and 1995. The first Omni e-magazine was published on CompuServe in 1986 and the magazine switched to a purely online presence in 1996. It ceased publication abruptly in late 1997, following the death of co-founder Kathy Keeton; activity on the magazine's website ended the following April.
Eliza Haywood, born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English writer, actress and publisher. An increase in interest and recognition of Haywood's literary works began in the 1980s. Described as "prolific even by the standards of a prolific age", Haywood wrote and published over 70 works in her lifetime, including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood today is studied primarily as one of the 18th-century founders of the novel in English.
The Axis of Time trilogy is an alternative history series of novels written by Australian journalist and author John Birmingham, from Macmillan Publishing.
Invasion literature is a literary genre that was popular in the period between 1871 and the First World War (1914–1918). The invasion novel was first recognised as a literary genre in the UK, with the novella The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871), an account of a German invasion of England, which, in the Western world, aroused the national imaginations and anxieties about hypothetical invasions by foreign powers; by 1914 the genre of invasion literature comprised more than 400 novels and stories.
Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, also known by his pseudonym Chatto, was a prominent Indian revolutionary who worked to overthrow the British Raj in India using armed force. He created alliances with the Germans during World War I, was part of the Berlin Committee organising Indian students in Europe against the British, and explored actions by the Japanese at the time.
Gilbert Imlay was an American businessman, author, and diplomat.
William Pickering was an English publisher and bookseller, notable for various innovations in publishing. He is sometimes credited with introducing edition binding in cloth to British publishing.
Jeffrey N. Cox is Arts and Sciences Professor of Distinction in English Literature and Humanities and Chair of the Department of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author or editor of ten books and more than forty scholarly articles. Cox specializes in English and European Romanticism, cultural theory, and cultural studies. He is a leading scholar of late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century drama and theater; of the Cockney School of poets, which included, among others, John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Leigh Hunt; and of the poetry of William Wordsworth.
Pickering & Chatto is an imprint of Routledge which publishes in the humanities and social sciences, specializing in monographs, critical editions and thematic source collections. Pickering & Chatto's academic monographs have an international reputation and its critical editions and source collections are critically acclaimed. Pickering & Chatto is regarded as "the pre-eminent publisher of critical editions in the humanities and social sciences".
Ignatius Frederick "Ian" Clarke was a British scholar and professor of English, known for his work on science fiction as a bibliographer, historian and editor, and also, with his wife Margaret, as a translator of early French science fiction.
Pamela Clemit, FRHistS is a British scholar, critic, and writer. She specializes in British literature and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her work intersects with the fields of history, philosophy, and politics, and she has particular expertise in the Godwin-Shelley family of writers.