Hicks, Granville
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1901-1982) US author, editor and broadcaster, most of whose significant work lay in the field of cultural studies, initially from a Communist standpoint; although by 1939 he had become disillusioned with Soviet communism, he retained a Marxist orientation in his work. His first novel, The First to Awaken (1940) with Richard M Bennett – Bennett illustrated the book and provided ideas, but did not collaborate in the writing – was a Sleeper-Awakes tale whose protagonist reaches the year 2040 CE via Suspended Animation and finds there a literately described and mutedly sane socialist Utopia not wholly dissimilar to that depicted by Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward (1888). There is, however, a greater emphasis here on technological advances (see Inventions). [JC]
Granville Hicks
born Exeter, New Hampshire: 9 September 1901
died Franklin Park, New Jersey: 18 June 1982
works
- The First to Awaken (New York: Modern Age Books, 1940) with Richard M Bennett [the dustjacket only gives a subtitle: "A Novel of the Year 2040": hb/Richard M Bennett]
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