BLACKWOOD, Algernon

(1869-1951)

   UK writer who spent a decade in Canada and the USA from the age of 20. His work is essentially fantasy, though his tales of occult pantheism - best exemplified in The Centaur (1911), which builds on the theories of Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) in its projections of a sentient Mother Earth - tend to argue a logic of history which might seem sufficiently rational for his work to count as sf. His novels tend to the ponderous; his very numerous short stories, beginning with A Mysterious House (1889 Belgravia; 1987 chap ed Richard Dalby), are his best work and, though frequently overlong, often reach heights of morose lyricism. It is in his short stories, too, that AB most often became explicitly sciencefictional in his treatment of the concepts of time and of PARALLEL WORLDS. He was a friend of J.W. DUNNE, whose theories about the Serial Universe he espoused in stories like "The Willows" (1907), "Wayfarers" (1912), "The Pikestaffe Case" (1923), "The Man who was Milligan" (1923), "Full Circle" (1925) and "The Man who Lived Backwards" (1930). His short work is collected in The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (coll 1906), The Listener and Other Stories (coll 1907), The Lost Valley and Other Stories (coll 1910), Pan's Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories (coll 1910), Incredible Adventures (coll 1914), Ten Minute Stories (coll 1914), Day and Night Stories (coll 1917), The Wolves of God and Other Fey Stories (coll 1921), with Wilfred Wilson, and Tongues of Fire, and Other Sketches (coll 1924). With the exception of The Doll and One Other (coll 1946 US), later collections rearranged earlier material (though AB in fact continued to produce new work until the year before his death); the best of these are Strange Stories (coll 1929), The Tales of Algernon Blackwood (coll 1938) and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (coll 1949). In later years, AB enjoyed a rebirth of fame on UK RADIO and tv. His occult detective John Silence, some of whose adventures are collected in John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (coll 1908), uses some PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC techniques. The recurrent theme of REINCARNATION is developed most notably in Julius Le Vallon: An Episode (1916) and its sequel The Bright Messenger (1921) and in The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath (1916) and Karma: A Re-incarnation Play (1918) with Violet Pearn.

   JC/MA

   Other works: The Education of Uncle Paul (1909) and its sequel, A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913); Jimbo (1909); The Human Chord (1910); The Extra Day (1915); The Garden of Survival (1918); The Promise of Air (1919); Dudley and Gilderoy (1928); The Fruit Stoners (1934); Tales of the Supernatural (coll 1983) and The Magic Mirror: Lost Tales and Mysteries (coll 1989), both ed Mike ASHLEY.

   About the author: Algernon Blackwood: A Bio-Bibliography (1987) by Mike Ashley.

   See also: DIMENSIONS; HORROR IN SF.