Sinderby, Donald
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of UK author Donald Ryder Stephens (1898-1983), in active service during World War One. The last of his five novels, Mother-in-Law India (1930), is a Near Future tale in which the British Empire threatens to crack apart due to Britain's socialist government's foolish promise to give India her freedom (see Imperialism; Politics), opening the road to miscegenation (see Race in SF), a fate worse than death that is averted in Sinderby's earlier nonfantastic The Jewel of Malaba: A Story of the Moplah Rebellion in India (1927), when young Kamayala enters a nunnery to save her white, titled lover. But in Mother-in-Law India it is not so simple. Several quarrelsome autonomous states are soon established, intermarriage does become rife, partly due to a She figure (who eventually repents), and conflicts erupt between Hindus and Mohammedans. But before they are allowed to wage War on one another, a concordat of White powers intervenes to restore order. [JC]
Donald Ryder Stephens
born St Albans, Hertfordshire: 11 September 1898
died Tunbridge Wells, Kent: 22 November 1983
works (selected)
- Mother-in-Law India (London: Albert E Marriott, 1930) [hb/uncredited]
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