MITCHELL, John A(mes)

(1845-1918)

   US writer in various genres. His sf began with The Last American: A Fragment from the Journal of Khan-Li, Prince of Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy (1889), a satirical post- HOLOCAUST novel in which a 30th-century Persian expedition visits a North America long devastated by climatic changes; it was much influenced by Edgar Allan POE's "Mellonta Tauta" (1849) and curiously prefigures Gene WOLFE's SevenAmerican Nights (1978 Orbit \#20; 1989 chap dos). The racism of the book - the USA falls because of unfettered immigration - is typical of JAM's era. His other well known sf book, Drowsy (1917), is a sentimental love storyinvolving a telepath who discovers ANTIGRAVITY and visits the Moon and Mars. The book was notable for Angus Peter Macdonnal's fine illustrations,many of them moonscapes, some reproduced in EXTRAPOLATION, May 1971; their relationship to the text is at times exiguous.

   JC

   Other works: The Romance of the Moon (1886 chap), a fantasy for children; Life's Fairy Tales (coll 1892); Amos Judd (1895); Gloria Victis (1897; rev vt Dr Thorne's Idea 1910); That First Affair and Other Sketches (coll 1902); The Villa Claudia (1904); The Silent War (1906).