DOUGLAS, (George) Norman

(1868-1952)

   UK writer of superb meditative travel books and some fiction, his best known novel being South Wind (1917). Unprofessional Tales (coll 1901), as by Normyx, consists mainly of fantasies; but in two novels of his late maturity he dramatized his strongly misogynist and persuasively "pagan" views in venues familiar to the reader of sf. They Went (1920; rev 1921) subversively promulgates a UTOPIAN aestheticism in a land much like doomed Lyonesse. Through the tale of half-divine Linus and his imposition of a rigid civilization upon the world, In the Beginning (1927 Italy), an example of prehistoric sf, expresses - with a more vigorous loathing than Thomas Burnett SWANN could muster 40 years later - the sense that humanity's rise entailed the destruction of Eden, and of the sentient, pagan, amoral creatures who dwelt there.

   JC

   Other works: Nerinda (1929 Italy).