Fezandié, Clement
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1865-1959) US businessman, playwright and author based circa 1886-1919 in New York, though he lived and travelled in the Middle East in later life, and died in Belgium. Of his earlier work, The Revenge: A Tragedy in Three Acts (1895 chap) with Rodolphe De L'Escale involves a ghost; and The Sturgis Wager: A Detective Story (1899) as by Edgar Morette features a murderer who dissolves his victims in an sf-like fluid. His sf novel proper, Through the Earth (January-April 1898 St Nicholas Magazine; exp 1898), is a Young Adult tale featuring travel Underground through a tube straight from New York to Australia (see Transportation), which gives its first passenger an experience in free fall but suffers from melting at the Earth's core and must be abandoned. The sequel, «A Trip to Venus», awaits publication. A good deal of scientific speculation is conveyed in the course of Through the Earth, suggesting to the critic and bibliographer George Locke that Fezandié's didactic impulse may have had some influence on Hugo Gernsback, in whose magazines his later stories appeared, and who valued his work highly. The sequel, «A Trip to Venus», remains in manuscript.
Fezandié's later work of interest is comprised mostly of the Dr Hackensaw series – featuring the kindly eponymous mastermind (see Edisonade) and a crew of sidekicks who carry the action forward – which appeared first in Gernsback's Science and Invention in forty-three instalments, from "The Secret of Artificial Reproduction" (May 1921 Science and Invention) to the novel "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" (June-September 1925 Science and Invention), with two concluding stories published the next year in Amazing, where he also published four tales during 1927-1928 as by Henry Hugh Simmons. [JC]
see also: Apes as Human; Hollow Earth; Matter Transmission; Series.
Ernest Clement Fezandié
born New York: 15 September 1865
died Molenbeek St Jean, Belgium: 4 April 1959
works
- The Revenge: A Tragedy in Three Acts (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Penn Publishing Company, 1895) with Rodolphe De L'Escale [play: chap: pb/]
- Through the Earth (New York: The Century Co, 1898) [first version appeared January-April 1898 St Nicholas Magazine: illus/hb/William A MacKay]
- The Sturgis Wager: A Detective Story (New York: Frederick A Stokes Company, 1899) as by Edgar Morette [hb/]
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