Pollard, Capt A O
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1893-1960) UK soldier and author, not simultaneously. In active combat throughout World War One, he was repeatedly honoured, and in 1917 was awarded the Victoria Cross; his war memoir, Fire-Eater: The Memoirs of a VC (1932), has been likened, because of its almost surreal buoyancy in the face of apocalypse, to the work of Ernst Jünger, though it lacks any philosophical ambition. In his later career as a prolific writer of thrillers and crime novels, he published at least forty-five books, including some sf, thrillers tending to introduce Inventions used for evil: The Cipher Five (1932), The Murder Germ (1937), in which a Mad Scientist figure infects others so that they commit atrocities identical to those he himself perpetrates (see Horror in SF), Air Reprisal (1938) and The Secret Formula (1939). [JC]
Captain Alfred Oliver Pollard
born Wallington, Surrey: 4 May 1893
died Bournemouth, Hampshire: 5 December 1960
works
- The Cipher Five (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1932) [hb/]
- The Murder Germ (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1937) [hb/Catling]
- Air Reprisal (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1938) [hb/]
- The Secret Formula (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1939) [hb/]
links
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