SCRYMSOUR, Ella M.

(1888-?)

   UK writer whose remarkable The Perfect World: A Romance of Strange People and Strange Places (fixup 1922) is thought by E.F. BLEILER almost certainly to consist of 2 separate magazine novels here published sequentially; however, as EMS clearly attempted to weave their plots together, we designate the outcome a FIXUP. In the first main sequence the two young gentlemen protagonists are transported from a company town dominated by their family coalmine into an underground cave system populated by theocratic relics of an Old Testament quarrel; after they finally emerge in Australia and note that the world is about to blow up, they travel with their inventor uncle to JUPITER, where a similar oligarchy, this time pre-Adamic, subjects the main protagonist - as had happened already underground - to erotic inducements. He marries the relevant princess and together they rule Jupiter in peace. In dealing with the sinlessness of the Jovians, EMS ineffectively prefigured the work of C.S. LEWIS.

   JC