COLE, Robert W(illiam)

(? -?)

   UK author. His first novel, The Struggle for Empire: A Story of the Year 2236 (1900), took the future- WAR novel to its logical conclusion. In a UTOPIAN future the Anglo-Saxon Federation has expanded into other solar systems when interstellar warfare breaks out between Earth and a superior race from the Sirius system. The descriptions of space battles, and of an Earth surrounded by a barrage of space torpedoes and mines while scientists struggle to perfect the ultimate weapon, make it the equal of many of the SPACE-OPERA stories of the 1930s. RWC's later novels are anticlimactic. His Other Self (1906) is a mildly humorous tale of a physical alter ego; The Death Trap (1907) is a mundane though harsh account of an invasion of the UK; The Artificial Girl (1908) is not of genre interest.

   JC

   See also: COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GALACTIC EMPIRES; STARS.