Gubbins, Herbert
Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1887-1950) UK schoolteacher and author of some interest for his Sleeper Awakes tale, The Elixir of Life; Or, 2905 AD: A Novel of the Far Future (1914), a classic Scientific Romance whose protagonist, having enabled his two centuries of Suspended Animation through the power of radium, discovers a republican England in harness with America as a "limited company". Wars are waged by Automata. This "far future" is full of Inventions; short-range Communications are effected by Telepathy, and longer-range by Television. But Disaster threatens: the advanced civilization of Mars informs humans that a planetoid is about to hit Earth. The protagonist awakens back in his own time: in a denouement damaging to the tale's long term effect, it was all a dream. Such unaccountably popular refusals of the power of story, which are the exact opposite of the Slingshot Ending, are less found after World War One. [JC]
Herbert John Gubbins
born Wimborne, Dorset: 17 September 1887
died Alton, Hampshire: 17 October 1950
works
- The Elixir of Life; Or, 2905 AD: A Novel of the Far Future (London: Henry J Drane, 1914) [hb/]
links
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