HOUGHTON, Claude

   Pseudonym of Claude Houghton Oldfield (1889-1961), a UK writer known primarily outside the sf field. He declared that all his work was based on the thesis that modern civilization must collapse "because it no longer believes it has a destiny"; thus his novels of ideas occasionally stray into the surreal, the supernatural or the sciencefictional. His one borderline-sf novel is This was Ivor Trent (1935), which examines the effect upon a writer of a vision which reveals to him a man of the future. His first novel, Neighbours (1926), is an intriguing study in abnormalPSYCHOLOGY whose narrator makes an obsessive study of his "next-door neighbour", unaware of the fact that he is merely an alienated facet of his subject's mind. Some of CH's later works also feature eccentric psychologies, but their fantastic elements are minimal. Julian Grant Loses his Way (1933) is a bitterly misanthropic character-study cast in the form of a posthumous fantasy. Three Fantastic Tales (coll 1934 chap) contains 3 brief philosophical fantasies.

   BS

   See also: SUPERMAN.