DICKENS, Charles (John Huffham)

(1812-1870)

   UK writer, almost certainly the greatest novelist in the English language. CD wrote considerable fantasy - including most famously A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843) - but no sf proper. However, it has been argued, most recently by John CLUTE in Horror: 100 Best Books (anth 1988; rev 1992) ed Stephen Jones and Kim NEWMAN, that the nightmarish, almost futuristic London which figures in several of his later novels, from Bleak House (1853) through Our Mutual Friend (1865), was a central influence - via G.K. CHESTERTON, Robert Louis STEVENSON and others - in the creation of 19th-century urban England as a stamping-ground for STEAMPUNK. Like William MORRIS, Lord DUNSANY and J.R.R. TOLKIEN after him, CD is central to the geography of sf.It is also arguable that Mugby Junction (anth 1866 chap), a self-contained volume published as an extra Christmas number of CD's magazine All the Year Round, may constitute the first SHARED-WORLD anthology of genre interest.

   JC

   Other works: The Chimes (dated 1845 but 1844); The Cricket on the Hearth (dated 1846 but 1845); The Haunted Man, and The Ghost's Bargain (coll 1848).

   See also: ENTROPY.