CLARKE, I(gnatius) F(rederic)

(1918-)

   Intelligence officer and code-cracker during WWII, and retired Professor of English (from 1964) at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. His first major publication was the BIBLIOGRAPHY The Tale of the Future: From the Beginning to the Present Day: A Checklist of those Satires, Ideal States, Imaginary Wars and Invasions, Political Warnings and Forecasts, Interplanetary Voyages and Scientific Romances - All Located in an Imaginary Future Period - that have been Published in the UK between 1644 and 1960 (1961; rev 1972; rev 1978); the third edition carries the story to 1976. This work is very useful but not always reliable, being occasionally weak on variant titles and plot summaries, and is far from comprehensive. These weaknesses lie primarily in the period from 1940 on, and IFC-whose work in the earlier period was pioneering-has since publicly regretted the fact that he did not stop at the year 1939.IFC's next important contribution to sf studies was Voices Prophesying War 1763-1984 (1966; rev vt Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749 1992), by a long way the most comprehensive account of the future- WAR story. This was followed by The Pattern of Expectation: 1644-2001 (1979), which ranges widely through the literature of the future from its earliest days to the most recent forecasts of FUTUROLOGY, and takes in much work which tends to be ignored by historians of genre sf. This book broke new ground in the history and sociology of ideas, focusing on the interrelation between differing expectations and PREDICTIONS of the future in different historical periods and the characteristic future images they yielded, in pictures as well as in words. In most respects it supersedes W.H.G. ARMYTAGE's Yesterday's Tomorrows (1967).

   PN

   See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DYSTOPIAS; HISTORY OF SF; INVASION; NEAR FUTURE; PILGRIM AWARD; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION.