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(1888-1956) UK academic, engineer, inventor and author, president of the British Interplanetary Society for a period; for much of his career he addressed himself and was addressed as "Professor", but without a position to justify the use. During his service in World War One in 1917, he was partially responsible for the Invention of a flying bomb, though it seems never to have been used (he claimed it was essentially identical to a Rocket used by the Germans in 1942). His first novel, Peter Down the Well: A Tale of Adventure in Thought (1933), is an educational juvenile told in fantasticated terms; in his first sf novel, Adrift in the Stratosphere (17 February-21 April 1934 Scoops as "Space"; 1937), also a juvenile, the young protagonists accidentally take off in a professor's experimental Spaceship and soon find themselves attacked by irrationally hostile Martians (see Mars) with various Rays and a madness-inducing Basilisk radio broadcast; there are subsequent tours of Utopias set on space Islands. In Mars Breaks Through; Or, the Great Murchison Mystery (1936-1937 Armchair Science as "The Great Murchison Mystery"; 1937), a Scientific Romance for the adult market, a Scientist possessed by a Martian with Telepathic powers can bring about world peace, but seems unwilling to. Flights into the Future (anth 1948), edited anonymously, assembles stories and nonfiction about Space Flight; Satellite in Space (1956) is a Space Opera in which humans, including an old-time Nazi, meet Aliens from the Asteroid belt.
Low also wrote several nonfiction Futures Studies prognoses, including Wireless Possibilities (1924 chap) in the To-day and To-morrow series, which predicts Television, a more sophisticated device than the "TeleVista" he demonstrated as early as 1914; The Future (1925), which lists possible changes over the next century, including moving sidewalks, renewable energy production, and Gender equality in a high-Technology world; the wide-ranging Science Looks Ahead (anth 1942); and It's Bound to Happen (1950; vt What's the World Coming To? 1951). [JC/DRL]
see also: Boys' Papers; Eastercon; To-day and To-morrow.
born London: 17 October 1888
died London: 13 September 1956
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nonfiction (selected)
works as editor
about the author
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 17:18 pm on 15 January 2025.
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