O'NEILL, Joseph

(1886-1953)

   Irish educationist and novelist; Permanent Secretary to the Department of Education, Irish Free State, 1923-44; author of 3 sf novels. Wind from the North (1934) is only marginally sf, its narrator passing through a timeslip to give a vivid account of Dublin under Viking rule in AD1013. JO turned to sf proper with Land under England (1935), a DYSTOPIAin a LOST-WORLD setting: in a cave system beneath Cumberland, descendants of the Roman Army suffer a totalitarian state in which individualism is completely obliterated by telepathic means. The introduction by AE assumed that the book was a SATIRE on Hitlerian totalitarianism, an impression confirmed with the appearance of Day of Wrath (1936), a future- WAR novel which describes the destruction of civilization by advanced aircraft following a coalition between Germany, Japan and China. JO was not a GENRE-SF writer; rather, he used sf instruments to make cultural andpolitical points. His eloquence was considerable.

   JE

   See also: OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; POLITICS.