PEMBERTON, Sir Max

(1863-1950)

   UK writer, educated at Caius College, Cambridge, the first editor of Chums 1892-3, editor of Cassell's Magazine 1896-1906, and later a director of Northcliffe Newspapers; he was knighted in 1928. Of more than 60 novels, his most famous is a Jules VERNE-style piece of CHILDREN'S SF: in the much-reprinted The Iron Pirate: A Plain Tale of StrangeHappenings on the Sea (1893; vt The Shadow on the Sea 1907) and its sequel Captain Black (1911) an advanced submarine is used for piracy. Equally popular in its day was his novel of attempted future WAR, Pro Patria (1901), in which a Channel tunnel is excavated by the French for a plannedINVASION of the UK. France is again the unsuccessful antagonist in The Giant's Gate (1901), this time using advanced submarines to bypass the UK's defence systems. Another theme prominent in MP's writing is of secret communities established either for scientific reasons, as in The Impregnable City (1895) and The House under the Sea (1902), or forUTOPIAN, as in White Walls (1910).

   JE

   Other works: Queen of the Jesters (1897); The Phantom Army (1898); Dr Xavier (1903); The Diamond Ship (1906).

   About the author: Sixty Years Ago and After (1936), an autobiography.

   See also: HISTORY OF SF; SPACESHIPS; UNDER THE SEA.