"The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper" | |
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Author | H. G. Wells |
Country | United Kingdom |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
"The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper" is a short story by H. G. Wells which was first published in the February 1932 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal . [1]
The story takes place on 10 November 1931 and opens with the protagonist, Brownlow, accidentally being delivered a newspaper dated 10 November 1971. The story is mainly a description of the contents of the newspaper, which features color photography throughout, with Wells taking the opportunity to issue some prophecies of what he thought 1971 might hold. His successful predictions include lower birth rates, an emphasis on psychological motivation in fiction, geothermal energy, and wider coverage of scientific news, while others include simplified spelling of English, a 13-month reformed calendar, the extinction of gorillas, and hints at some form of world government.
An adaptation of the story formed part of the first episode of the four-hour miniseries The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells released in 2001 by the Hallmark Channel, with Arthur Brownlow played by Mark Lewis Jones.
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
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The Knoxville Register was an American newspaper published primarily in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the 19th century. Founded in 1816, the paper was East Tennessee's dominant newspaper until 1863, when its pro-secession editor, Jacob Austin Sperry (1823–1896), was forced to flee advancing Union forces at the height of the Civil War. Sperry continued to sporadically publish the Register in Atlanta, and later Bristol, until he was finally captured by Union forces in December 1864.
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