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Van Loon, Hendrik Willem

(1882-1944) Dutch-born historian and author, permanently in the US from 1919 when he was naturalized; he is best known for The Story of Mankind (1921), written (unlike H G Wells's almost simultaneous undertaking) primarily for children. His first work of sf interest was "If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam" (in If It had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History, anth 1931; vt If: or History Rewritten 1931, ed J C Squire), which speculates about early New York. Invasion [for subtitle see Checklist below] (1940) is a Near Future tale of World War Two, told from the perspective of 1960, and depicting a failed Invasion of America. [JC]

Hendrik Willem Van Loon

born Rotterdam, Netherlands: 14 January 1882

died Old Greenwich, Connecticut: 11 March 1944

works

• Invasion: Being the Personal Recollections of What Happened to our own Family and to Some of our Friends During the first Forty-Eight Hours of that Terrible Incident in our History Which is now Known as the Great Invasion and How we Escaped with our Lives and the Strange Adventures Which Befell us Before the Nazis were Driven from our Territories: Written Down at the Time and Now First Presented to the Public at Large (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940) [hb/]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 21:01 pm on 26 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/van_loon_hendrik_willem>