MAURICE, Michael

   Pseudonym of UK writer and clergyman Conrad Arthur Skinner (1889-?), whose sf novel Not in Our Stars (1923) can be forgiven its confused science - giant meteorites are supposed to cause perturbations in spacetime sufficient to reverse time's arrow for the protagonist - because of the odd intensity of the tale. Awakening in a death cell after a meteor strike, the protagonist is executed and then begins to relive his life (each day passing normally, but with him awakening each morning a dayearlier) with foreknowledge of the murder he has committed/will commit in error. The end of the story is ambiguous, with some hint that, on re-entering the normal flow of time, he will be able to avoid the deed. A later novel, Marooned (1932), is an afterlife fantasy.

   JC