Ingland England Fiction author Country: USA

Biography of George Allen England

George Allen England, a science fiction author, is relatively unknown in Russia. However, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern adventure science fiction worldwide. Despite his diverse body of work, which includes detective stories, travelogues, and even scientific social research, England's contributions to the genre remain largely unrecognized in Russia.

Born in 1877 in Fort McPherson, New York, England spent most of his life in Bradford, New Hampshire. He published his first book, a collection of poems called "Underneath the Bough," in 1903. Two years later, he wrote his first science fiction story, "The Time Reflector." England is most often remembered as the author of the first American socialist science fiction novels. The themes of socialism and class struggle were familiar to him, as he even ran for governor of Maine in 1912 as a member of the Socialist Party. In 1913, he published a book titled "Socialism and the Law," which evaluated the applicability of legal procedures to the practices of the labor movement. Naturally, he could not ignore socialist ideas in his artistic works.

Those who believe that "anti-capitalist" science fiction was invented by Soviet Russian writers in the 1920s and 1930s are mistaken. George Allen England had been using the same techniques and building plots around similar fantastic ideas one and a half decades before that. For example, in his novel "The Air Trust" (1915), a group of capitalists attempts to establish a monopoly on the Earth's atmosphere. Alexander Belyaev's novella "The Air Seller," which shares a similar theme, was only published in 1929, fourteen years later. In 1912, England's novel "The Golden Blight" was published in the magazine "Cavalier" and later as a separate edition in 1916. Its plot, through a fateful coincidence, is reminiscent of another Soviet-era science fiction novel considered a classic in the USSR. The ingenious loner John Storm invents a device that can turn all the gold on Earth into worthless powder. The engineer attempts to blackmail the capitalist elite, demanding an end to their war and threatening to destroy the gold standard in the economy. However, the capitalists, led by the richest man on the planet, Van Horn MacMurchison, ridicule Storm, who then activates his infernal machine. All the gold in Manhattan turns into useless dust, causing horrifying disorder in the business districts. The wealthy elites try to kill Storm but fail. The destructive "radiation waves" deadly to gold spread wider, and the economy crumbles before their eyes. However, one man, Count Braunswick, the wealthiest representative of Jewish capital in Europe, decides to save the collapsing capitalist world. He buys all the "golden dust" with silver, assuming that over time, the destructive radiation will weaken, and gold will regain its properties. He collects all the purchased golden powder in giant underground vaults in Washington, D.C., and when gold does indeed begin to recover, he invites his capitalist friends to the vault to fully enjoy his triumph. However, the precious metal takes up a larger volume than the powder, and the sharks of capital find themselves sealed alive in gold. The global economic crisis leads to a proletarian uprising, which ends in the complete and final victory of the working class.

England's highest literary achievement and his most famous work is the "Darkness and Dawn" trilogy (1914), consisting of the novels "The Vacant World," "Beyond the Great Oblivion," and "The Afterglow." The trilogy is set in America, devastated by an unimaginable catastrophe. Engineer Allan Stern and his secretary Beatrice Kendrick fall into a mysterious lethargic sleep during the disaster and awake many decades later in the destroyed and desolate New York City. Their adventures in the uninhabited world and the slow rebirth of civilization are the central theme of the trilogy. "Darkness and Dawn" became one of the seminal works of early 20th-century "post-apocalyptic" science fiction and was even republished in an expanded edition in the mid-1960s. According to John Clute, although England was one of the leaders in early pulp fiction, his works often pale in comparison to the works of his predecessors, particularly Herbert George Wells, Garrett P. Serviss, and Fitz-james O'Brien. Such "continuity" is typical of all pulp literature, which is aimed at mass production and often falls into the trap of copying successful "models" and self-repetition. England, for example, repeatedly returned to the theme of immortality and eternal youth, which appears in his stories "My Time - Annihilator" (1909), "Beyond White Sea" (1909-1910), and "The Elixir of Hate" (1911). However, England also had quite original ideas for his time. In the novel "The Empire of the Air" (1914), he described an invasion from a parallel world, while the story "July 6, 2016" explored the "futuristic" theme of women's emancipation.

In addition to his fantastic works, which earned him a place in the history of popular literature, England also wrote detective stories. Many of them were even published as separate editions, such as "The Alibi" (a police investigation, 1916), "The Gift Supreme" (a story about drug addicts and the criminal underworld, 1917), and "The Greater Crime" (a novel about a wrongfully convicted man who escapes from Sing Sing prison to prove his innocence, 1917). He also published travelogues, including his book "Vikings of the Ice, Being the Log of a Tenderfoot on the Great Newfoundland Seal Hunt" in 1924.

Although George Allen England's name is regularly mentioned in literary-historical works, his works have almost been forgotten. Edgar Rice Burroughs had already ruthlessly pushed him to the fringes of the pulp fiction scene by the end of the 1910s. In the 1920s and 1930s, England's works were still being republished in magazines, but in the second half of the 1930s, the era of the "young lions" arrived, and it quickly became apparent that his novels' style was archaic and laughable.

The creator of socialist science fiction passed away in 1936. He did not have the opportunity to know that the traditions he laid down would flourish in the opposite hemisphere. Stories about ingenious inventors defying the soulless capitalist world would be published and reprinted in Russian until the end of the millennium.

However, it is likely that none of England's late Soviet followers ever heard of him or his works.