Martin, John S
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1900-1977) US editor – a senior figure in Time magazine from 1924 until after World War Two – and author, whose Near Future sf novel, General Manpower (1938), told as a Future History from a twenty-first-century perspective, depicts a world challenged by General Manpower, a corporation founded to develop J Orestes Jones's Invention of procedures based on strict Eugenics that translate normal people into obedient Supermen. After Jones creates a regimented Utopia in Baja California in 1949 – its sanitized, monumental capital, riddled with athletics stadiums, is called Valhalla; the Satire of Nazi Germany is clear – his company begins to generate hundreds of thousands of trained warriors, and mounts an Invasion of San Francisco in 1959. Jones is betrayed by a colleague before being able to undertake the policing of the world, under the aegis of a sort of United Nations dominated by Anthony Eden's Britain. [JC]
John Stuart Martin
born Winnetka, Illinois: 9 November 1900
died Phillipsburg, New Jersey: 25 June 1977
works
- General Manpower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938) [hb/uncredited]
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