MacKaye, Harold Steele
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1866-1928) French-born lawyer and author, in US from infancy, son of the playwright and theatrical impresario Steele MacKaye (1842-1894) and brother of the author Percy MacKaye (1875-1956). Of sf interest is his novel, The Panchronicon (1904), a Time-Travel story whimsically condescending about its provincial protagonists and their travels to the sixteenth century in a Time Machine left by a traveller from the twenty-sixth century, who had died of injuries and pneumonia. The machine operates by repeatedly and very rapidly circumnavigating the north pole (to which it is attached by a chain) in the opposite direction to the Sun, thus winding itself widdershins against Time. The travellers' experiences in Tudor England show some awareness of Time Paradox, but little is done with the idea, though the adventurers do determine that Francis Bacon was definitely not Shakespeare. [PN/JC]
Harold Steele MacKaye
born Paris, France: 10 March 1866
died Yonkers, New York: 22 June 1928
works
- The Panchronicon (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904) [hb/]
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