ADELER, Max

   Principal pseudonym of US writer and businessman Charles Heber Clark (1841-1915), who wrote also as John Quill, under which name he published The Women's Millennium (1867), possibly the first sex-role-reversal DYSTOPIA. Set in an indeterminate future, and told from the perspective of an even later period when some balance has been achieved, it is a remarkably cutting demonstration of the foolishness of male claims to natural superiority. As MA, he specialized in rather facetious tall tales, both sf and fantasy, many of which end in the perfunctory revelation that all was a dream. This convention aside, they remain of interest, especially Professor Baffin's Adventures (1880; vt The Fortunate Island 1882), a long lost-race tale (LOST WORLDS) which first appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual (anth 1880 UK) as centrepiece to The Fortunate Island - a linked assemblage of stories and sketches by various authors which made up the bulk of the volume - and was later published in An Old Fogey and Other Stories (coll 1881 UK; rev vt The Fortunate Island and Other Stories 1882 US). It is MA's story that almost certainly supplied Mark TWAIN with the basic premise and some of the actual plot of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). When accused of plagiarism, Twain responded evasively. Other works: Random Shots (coll 1878 UK); Transformations (coll 1883 UK); A Desperate Adventure (coll 1886 UK); By the Bend of the River (coll 1914).

   About the author: 'Professor Baffin's Adventures' by Max Adeler: the Inspiration for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? by David KETTERER in Mark Twain Journal 24 (Spr 1986); 'John Quill': The Women's Millennium, introduced by Ketterer in Science Fiction Studies 15 (1988); Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee: Reconsiderations and Revisions, by Horst H.Kruse in American Literature 62, 3 (Sept 1990).

   See also: SHARED WORLDS.