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Meyer, John J

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1873-1948) US author of several loosely linked apostrophic picaresques. They break down into two rough series. The Cerebroscope sequence – comprising 20,000 Trails Under the Universe with the Cerebroscope [for full subtitles throughout see Checklist] (1917) and The Deer-Smellers of Haunted Mountain (1921) – features a device, the cerebroscope, capable of Communications with the dead, of use when the protagonist of the second volume finds a kind of Lost Race of Germans skulking Underground somewhere in the Appalachians, and serves as well as a guidance system for the protagonists of the two books to gain the Brotherhood of Man. The Mentator sequence – comprising 13 Seconds that Rocked the World; Or, the Mentator (1935) and Try Another World (1942; vt The Immortal Tales of Joe Shaun 1944) – is based on the foggily sf-like premise that "Anything that brain can imagine is possible": including in this case the mentator, an artificial brain, in effect a primitive AI, a kind of Hive Mind which, incorporates the thoughts of all mankind, runs the world of the future on rational lines. [JC]

John Joseph Meyer

born 1873

died 1948

works

series

Cerebroscope

Mentator

links

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