Cannan, Gilbert
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1884-1955) UK translator, poet and author whose career was truncated by insanity. His first novel, Peter Homunculus (1909), is a hyperventilated tale of sexual and cultural entrapment, not fantastic. Of his subsequent wide-spread output before he was institutionalized in 1924, Windmills: A Book of Fables (coll of linked stories 1915) is of sf interest, its four long tales all dealing with the inconsistently allegorical Fatland: in two of them, a floating Island halts a foolish war between Fatland and Fatterland, to Satirical effect; a third, "Gynecologia", set in the future, satirizes the absurd sexual mores (see Sex) of Fatland in Dystopian terms. [JC]
Gilbert Eric Cannan
born Manchester, England: 25 June 1884
died Virginia Water, Surrey: 30 June 1955
works (highly selected)
- Peter Homunculus (London: William Heinemann, 1909) [hb/]
- Windmills: A Book of Fables (London: Martin Secker, 1915) [coll of linked stories: hb/]
links
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