Lance, Lancelot
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
An apparent pseudonym of the unidentified Australian author (? - ) of Hortense: A Study of the Future: A Romance (1906), set in a moderately distant Near Future Australia, which has become a high-Technology Utopia; the protagonist lands his Airship on an uncharted Island (apparently Vanua Lava) inhabited by survivors of a 1902 shipwreck (see Lost Race). He conveys one of these back to Australia where, as a classic Visitor, he is shown various marvels, several of which are the Inventions of Miss Pelham, an ambitious female Scientist who is described in entirely positive terms (see Feminism; Women in SF). But she dies in an experiment as a great War looms. The identity of Lancelot Lance remains unknown; it has been speculated by Richard Neylon (cited in the online book catalogue of L W Currey) that, because of "his" failure to condescend to Pelham, "the great scientist of Australasia", Lance may have been a woman. [JC]
Lancelot Lance
born
works
- Hortense: A Study of the Future: A Romance (Melbourne, Victoria: Sands and M'Dougal, 1906) [hb/]
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