LEWIS, (Harry) Sinclair

(1885-1951)

   US writer, highly esteemed in the 1920s and 1930s for such novels as Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922) and first US winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930), but with much diminished reputationtoday. His first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane (1912) as by Tom Graham, is a juvenile centred on a futuristic 200mph (320kph) aircraft; Arrowsmith (1925) is not so much sf as fiction about science, contrasting theidealism of the research SCIENTIST with the avarice and greed of the medical profession in general. SL's sf novel, It Can't Happen Here (1935), warns of how a Nazi-like regime could come to power in the USA. SL pays little attention to the nature of political institutions in this book, but that is not to say that he is guilty of political naivety (POLITICS): his analysis of how fascist regimes can come to power largely through the "little man's" apathy and perceived powerlessness is a potent example ofthe dreadful-warning tale. His NEAR FUTURE scenario contrasts interestingly with Gordon EKLUND's very similar portrait of 1930s authoritarianism in All Times Possible (1974), though in the latter case there is an ALTERNATE-WORLDS framework.

   JC