WELCH, L(uderne) Edgar

(1855-?)

   UK writer, in the USA for at least 10 years until 1905, after which nothing is known of LEW, who wrote under pseudonyms. Most of his work was published as by Grip, including his first 2 sf novels, The Monster Municipality, or Gog and Magog Reformed (1882), a DYSTOPIANprediction that socialist reforms will torture London in 1885, and How John Bull Lost London, or The Capture of the Channel Tunnel (1882), one ofthe earlier future- WAR novels - if not the earliest - to warn against a tunnel connecting the UK to France (TRANSPORTATION). LEW is also cited as the author of Politics and Life in Mars: A Story of a Neighbouring Planet (1883), anon, in which advanced MARS is contrasted with backward Earth -though Darko SUVIN, in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK (1983), doubts the ascription because the opinions expressed are UTOPIAN. As J. Drew Gay, LEW was definitely responsible for The Mystery of the Shroud: A Tale ofSocialism (1887), in which a fog gives a socialist secret society the chance to conquer England, but the chance is muffed.

   JC