ALLEN, Grant (Charles Grant Blairfindie)

(1848-1899)

   UK writer, born in Canada, known primarily for his work outside the sf field, including the notorious The Woman who Did (1895), which attacked contemporary sexual mores. He was professor of logic and principal of Queen's College, Jamaica, before moving to the UK. He wrote a series of books based on EVOLUTION theory before turning for commercial reasons to fiction. After the success of The Woman who Did he published a self-indulgent novel of social criticism, The British Barbarians (1895), in which a time-travelling social scientist of the future is scathing about tribalism and taboo in Victorian society. GA's interest in ANTHROPOLOGY is manifest also in the novel The Great Taboo (1890) and in many of the short stories assembled in Strange Stories (coll 1884); this collection includes two sf stories originally published under the pseudonym J.Arbuthnot Wilson: Pausodyne (1881), an early story about SUSPENDED ANIMATION, and A Child of the Phalanstery (1884), about a future society's eugenic practices. (The former is also to be found in The Desire of the Eyes and Other Stories coll 1895 the latter in Twelve Tales, with a Headpiece, a Tailpiece and an Intermezzo coll 1899.) GA's other borderline-sf stories are The Dead Man Speaks (1895) and The Thames Valley Catastrophe (1897). The above-mentioned collections also feature a handful of fantasy stories. The Devil's Die (1897) is a mundane melodrama which includes an account of a bacteriological research project. GA's early shilling shocker Kalee's Shrine (1886), written with May Cotes (not credited in some US reprint editions), is a fantasy of mesmerism with some sf elements. See also: CANADA; SATIRE; SOCIOLOGY; TABOOS; TIME TRAVEL.