WAGAR, W(alter) Warren

(1932-)

   US academic (professor of history since 1971 at the State University of New York at Binghamton, which has since 1991 been Binghamton University) and writer. He has published sf - his first story being "Heart's Desire" for IASFM in 1984 - but his involvement in the field comes primarily through his many years of work on H.G. WELLS in books like H.G. Wells and the World State (1961) and H.G. Wells: Journalism andProphecy, 1893-1946 (coll 1964). In these WWW concentrates upon a side of Wells not generally thought very congenial: the insistent, peremptory, secretly authoritarian proselytizer for a world UTOPIA. The image of Wells as a simple propagandist does not survive WWW's analysis. Later books, like Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things (1982) and A Short History of the Future (1989; rev 1992), demonstrate the complexity anddarkness that Wells, and others, brought to their prophecies; the 2nd vol is a literal recasting of one of Wells's favourite modes, the future history told as a nonfiction narrative, with illustrations. Terminal Visions, an important work of sf scholarship, is a social history ofapocalyptic thought in literature, covering (but not confined to) GENRE SF.

   JC

   See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF.