Foster, George C
Entry updated 28 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1893-1975) UK author, in active service during World War One, who also published as by Seaforth; his first novel of genre interest, The Lost Garden (1930), is a fantasy in which Immortal survivors of Atlantis experience world history up to the present, finding little of significance to remark upon. In almost all his speculative fiction, conventional plots are twisted to make room for perspectives on the nature of human history; in Full Fathom Five (1930), for instance, episodes set in Lemuria (see Theosophy) and elsewhere are linked by Reincarnation to scenes set in an expectable present, into which venue, however, a human from the deep past (see Prehistoric SF) also arrives in 1929 via Time Travel. This strategy, typical of the UK Scientific Romance, is demonstrated in Awakening (1932), a Sleeper Awakes tale, which subjects the contemporary (and the future) world to the perspective of a soldier aroused from Suspended Animation. Cats in the Coffee (1938) as by Seaforth presents through Reincarnation a retrospective vision of prehistory.
We Band of Brothers (1939), also as by Seaforth, is perhaps the first Hitler Wins tale to be told as an Alternate History, beginning with the outset of World War Two in 1938 and climaxing with the retirement of a successful Hitler and the beginning of something like the United Nations. In The Change (1963; vt 2001 A.D. 1973), nuclear experiments inadvertently rejuvenate humanity. [JC/PN]
George Cecil Foster
born London: 26 December 1893
died London: 7 December 1975
works
- The Lost Garden (London: Chapman and Hall, 1930) [hb/]
- Full Fathom Five (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1930) [hb/]
- Awakening (London: Chapman and Hall, 1932) [hb/]
- Cats in the Coffee (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1938) as by Seaforth [hb/]
- We Band of Brothers (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1939) as by Seaforth [hb/]
- The Change (London: Digit Books, 1963) [pb/R A Osborne]
- 2001 A.D. (Sydney, New South Wales: Bill Ewington Books, 1973) [vt of the above: pb/]
links
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