(1888-1956) UK academic, inventor and writer, president of the British Interplanetary Society for a period; in 1917 he invented a flying bomb. His first novel, Peter Down the Well: A Tale of Adventure in Thought (1933), is an educational juvenile told in fantasticated terms; in his first sf novel, Adrift in the Stratosphere (17 February-21 April 1934 Scoops as "Space"; 1937), also a juvenile, the young protagonists accidentally take off in a professor's experimental Spaceships and soon find themselves attacked by irrationally hostile Martians (> Mars) with various Rays and a madness-inducing Basilisk radio broadcast; there are subsequent tours of Utopias set on space Islands. In Mars Breaks Through; Or, the Great Murchison Mystery (1937) a scientist possessed by a Martian can bring about world peace, but seems unwilling to. Flights into the Future (anth 1955) assembles stories and nonfiction about Space Flight; Satellite in Space (1956) is a Space Opera in which humans, including an old-time Nazi, meet Aliens from the Asteroid belt.

Low also wrote several nonfiction Futures Studies prognoses, including Wireless Possibilities (1924 chap) in the To-day and To-morrow series, The Future (1925), the wide-ranging Science Looks Ahead (anth 1942) and It's Bound to Happen (1950; vt What's the World Coming To? 1951). [JC/DRL]

see also: Boys' Papers; Eastercon; To-day and To-morrow.

Professor Archibald Montgomery Low

born London: 17 October 1888

died London: 13 September 1956

works

• Peter Down the Well: A Tale of Adventure in Thought (London: Grayson and Grayson, 1933) [hb/]
• Adrift in the Stratosphere (London: Blackie and Son, 1937) [hb/Geo W Blow]
• Mars Breaks Through; Or, the Great Murchison Mystery (London: Herbert Joseph, 1937) [hb/]
• Satellite in Space (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1956) [hb/uncredited]

works as editor

• Flights into the Future (London: The Thames Publishing Co, 1955) [anth: hb/]

nonfiction (selected)

• Wireless Possibilities (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company, 1924) [nonfiction: chap: To-day and To-morrow: hb/nonpictorial]
• The Future (London: Routledge, 1925) [nonfiction: hb/]
• Our Wonderful World of Tomorrow: A Scientific Forecast of the Men, Women, and the World of the Future (London: Ward, Lock and Co, 1934) [nonfiction: hb/]
• Science Looks Ahead (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1942) [anth: chiefly by Low but including specialist contributions from Julian Huxley and others: hb/]
• It's Bound to Happen (London: Burke, 1950) [nonfiction: hb/]
  • What's the World Coming To? (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J B Lippincott, 1951) [nonfiction: vt of the above: hb/]

about the author

• Ursula Bloom. He Lit the Lamp: A Biography of Professor A M Low. (London: Burke, 1958) [nonfiction: hb/]

links

Previous versions of this entry

• 19/07/2006
• 22/11/2011
• 21/12/2011
• 10/03/2012
• 15/05/2012