George Allan England was born in Fort McPherson, Nebraska on February 9, 1877. He attended Harvard University, where he earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. In 1903, he published Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses. His first published science fiction story was “The Time Reflector,” which appeared in the September 1905 issue of The Monthly Story Magazine, edited by Trumbull White.

He published numerous short stories throughout the 1910s, which his novels Darkness and Dawn, Beyond the Great Oblivion, and The Afterglow being serialized in The Cavalier, between 1912 and 1913 and published by Small, Maynard & Company in 1914. These novels, set in 2915, a thousand years after “The Great Death” killed most of the human race during the 1920s. England’s protagonist, Allan Stern and his secretary survived the Great Death in a form of suspended animation, waking up to the new world.

England ran for Congress in Maine as a Socialist in 1908 and lost. Four years later, he ran as a Socialist candidate for the governorship of Maine against the Democratic incumbent Frederick W. Plaisted and the Republican challenger William T. Haines.  England received 1.47% of the vote, coming in a distant third in the four man field (William I Sterling, running on the Prohibition ticket had just over half the number of votes England received).

In addition to five novels, England published more than 330 short stories, mostly in Munsey publications. Although many of his stories through 1922 were science fictional in nature, he also wrote in other genres, including straight adventure yarns. His stories often reflected his socialist views as he dealt with new inventions and the role of business. In his novel The Air Trust, he examines Isaac Flint, a billionaire who tries to charge people for the air they breathe.

England’s name can be found along with Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Austin Hall, and G. Peyton Wertenbaker, England had a short story reprinted in the first issue of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1926: “The Thing from—“Outside.”

In addition to fiction, England was a journalist. He spent several years trying to get permission to join an annual seal hunt in Newfoundland, eventually, in 1922, he was allowed to participate in the six week event, which he described as a “gorgeous epic of violence, hardship, and bloodshed.” He published the memoir Vikings of the Ice in 1924, detailing the seal hunt. England retired from writing in 1931 and turned his attention to chicken farming.

England died of tuberculosis in a hospital in Concord New Hampshire on June 26, 1936.

 

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.