Morris, Anthony P
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1849-1921) US businessman, farmer, journalist and author, active in the latter capacity from about 1867, publishing dime novels for publishers like Beadle; he may have used pseudonyms, which have not been identified, and some of his tales may have been sf (see Dime-Novel SF). He is known to have written at least one novel with sf content, A Modern Monk (circa 1893) anonymous, which is understood to be the first American pornographic sf story. The plot is perhaps unduly contorted. Darius Shankdig – a disgraced Scientist who has founded a sexually liberated Utopia whose members he keeps under hypnotic control (see Sex) – constructs a telescope through which he observes the inhabitants of Mars, who are capable of Space Flight, and a ship hurtling towards Earth. Rightly assuming that the impact of its arrival will destroy the planet, Shankdig flies in a Balloon to the North Pole with various sexual partners, and descends from there into the Hollow Earth beneath, where everyone dies, perhaps orgasmically, as the Martian ship strikes. [JC]
Anthony Paschal Morris, Jr
born Safe Harbor, Pennsylvania: 15 October 1849
died Berkeley, California: 27 December 1921
works (highly selected)
- A Modern Monk (no place given: no publisher given, circa 1893) anonymous [pb/nonpictorial]
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