CHESNEY, Lt-Col. Sir George T(omkyns)

(1830-1895)

   UK officer, founder in 1868 of the Royal Indian Civil Engineering College at Staines, Member of Parliament from 1892, and author of some fiction, including the famous The Battle of Dorking (1871 chap; principal vt The Fall of England? The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer 1871 chap US) published anon. After great success in Blackwood's Magazine, and publication as a small book the same year, this tale virtually founded the future- WAR/ INVASION genre of stories which attained great popularity in the UK as she neared the height of her insecure Empire in the latter years of the 19th century - an earlier and inferior tale, Alfred Bate RICHARDS's The Invasion of England (A Possible Tale of Future Times) (1870 chap, privately printed), had had little effect. GTC's story warns against UK military complacency and incompetence in its bleak narrative of confusion and folly at home while the German army mounts an efficient invasion by surprise attack. The Battle of Dorking was remarkably successful, being immediately reprinted in Canada and the USA, and translated into several European languages, including German, each European nation soon developing its own version of the invasion theme - which saw its greatest popularity, understandably, in the years immediately preceding WWI. A second tale, The New Ordeal (1879), which posited the obsolescence of war through innovations in weaponry and its replacement by tournaments, proved less popular.

   JC

   About the author: Voices Prophesying War 1763-1984 (1966) by I.F. CLARKE (Chapter 2).

   See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; GAMES AND SPORTS; HISTORY OF SF; NEAR FUTURE; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; WEAPONS.