CROMIE, Robert

(1856-1907)

   Irish author of the well known interplanetary sf novel A Plunge Into Space (1890) in which visitors travel by ANTIGRAVITY to MARS, where they discover humans living under UTOPIAN conditions and a fatal romance ensues; the 1891 edition includes a preface by Jules VERNE. In The Crack of Doom (1895) something very like atomic energy rather intriguingly threatens the world (the first test of the substance, thousands of years earlier, destroyed the fifth planet to create the ASTEROIDS); though hazily described, RC's use in this novel of a nuclear device to shake civilization marks the first occurrence of a theme which would dominate the next century. Two volumes of a cluttered future HISTORY - For England's Sake (1889) and The Next Crusade (1897) - fail, like his remaining works, to retain much interest.

   JC

   Other works: The King's Oak and Other Stories (coll 1897); A New Messiah (1902); El Dorado (1904; vt From the Cliffs of Croaghaun 1904 US).

   See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; END OF THE WORLD; HISTORY OF SF; POWER SOURCES; SPACESHIPS.