HASTINGS, Milo (Milton)

(1884-1957)

   US nutritionist, editor and writer, sometimes on agricultural subjects - The Dollar Hen (1909) is a nonfiction text about hens. With striking accuracy, his future- WAR sf centres on conflict between either Japan or Germany and the rest of the world. Set around 1950, "In theClutch of the War-God: The Tale of the Orient's Invasion of the Occident" (1911 Physical Culture) effectively espouses the cause of eugenical Japan against a bigoted USA, which loses the war but becomes healthy. Set around AD2150, and far more impressive, City of Endless Night (1919 True Story as"Children of 'Kultur'"; rev 1920) describes a Germany partly defeated after centuries of warfare, but remaining impregnable underground within a great dome which shelters Berlin. Here a proto-Nazi DYSTOPIA has taken shape, with under-races genetically distinguished from one another (and from the sybaritic ruling class) by a ruthless breeding programme; thought-control is universal. The imagery of this striking novel links it with the German Expressionist cinema and films like Fritz LANG's METROPOLIS (1926), as well as to dystopian fictions like HUXLEY's BRAVENEW WORLD (1932).

   JC

   See also: HISTORY OF SF; POLITICS.