MILNE, Robert Duncan (Gordon)

(1844-1899)

   Scottish-born journalist and writer, in the USA from about 1864, who published at least 60 sf stories of very considerable conceptual ingenuity, prefiguring many of the themes of the modern genre. Beginning with "A Modern Robe of Nessus" in 1879, he published most of these tales in the San Francisco journal The Argonaut, one of whose editors, Ambrose BIERCE, was strongly influenced by his work. Forgotten for many decadesafter his death, RDM was rediscovered by Sam MOSKOWITZ, who in Science Fiction in Old San Francisco, Volume 1: History of the Movement from 1854to 1890 (1980) forcefully argued the case for treating him as an important figure, and who assembled some of RDM's tales in a companion volume, Into the Sun and Other Stories (coll 1980). Typical of RDM's vigorous creative mind are "Into the Sun" (1882) and its sequel, "Plucked from the Burning" (1882), which together describe a world-cataclysm caused by a comet,detail the protagonist's escape in a BALLOON from the effects of impact, follow him first to Tibet and then back to a devastated world full of apocalyptic scenes, and end in the creation of a new and better society based on the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Throughout his work - the rest of which remains uncollected - can beperceived the workings of a mind for whom science and technology granted far more to the imaginative mind when their rules were obeyed, or at least understood. RDM was one of the first genuinely extrapolative thinkers to work in the field.

   JC

   See also: MATTER TRANSMISSION.