internationalist ethos, Walters’s SF is the best of its kind and Britain’s nearest rival to
Heinlein in terms of an unfolding vision of the future. The Tom Swift tradition of
improbable technology was continued in E.C.Eliott’s Kemlo series published from 1954
to 1963.
During this period some fine literary fantasies, precursors of today’s ‘science fantasy’,
were published by non-SF-genre authors. The plot of T.H.White’s The Master (1957) is
familiar from James Bond thrillers: a mad scientist with mesmeric powers and a secret
weapon plans to rule the world; two children accidentally trapped in his island fortress
destroy him, thanks to their pet dog. The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince (1943)) is a unique
classic fable, illustrated by its author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and other examples are
Garry Hogg’s In the Nick of Time (1958) (inspired by J.W.Dunne’s An Experiment in Time),
Meriol Trevor’s The Other Side of the Moon (1956), and Merlin’s Magic (1953) by ‘Helen
Clare’ (Pauline Clarke)-a family treasure-hunt guided by Merlin and the god Mercury,
with clues and adventures from literature and legend.
With the most memorable British children’s SF of the period being actually ‘science
fantasy’, the way of writing genre SF had to change. A radical shift away from ‘space
opera’ was driven by new developments in adult SF and world politics. The influence of
John Wyndham’s four great disaster novels, The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Kraken
Wakes (1953), The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) and The Chrysalids (1955) on British
children’s SF cannot be overestimated. With Orwell’s 1984 (1949), and Nigel Kneale’s
television Quatermass trilogy, the 1950s were an exciting, if doom-ridden time for the
genre.
In the new model of children’s SF, historical, political and religious issues would be
centre stage; Donald Suddaby is an important transitional figure here, writing both
space and disaster fiction in books like Prisoners of Saturn (1957), and The Death of
Metal (1952), while David Severn’s The Future Took Us (1956) is a vital pivotal work, a
chilling vision of post-holocaust Britain in AD 3000, where machines, especially the
wheel, are banned.
The major British figures to emerge in the field in the 1960s and 1970s have been
John Christopher, Peter Dickinson, Nicholas Fisk, and Louise Lawrence. Christopher’s
first juveniles, the Tripods trilogy—The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and
Lead (1967) and The Pool of Fire (1968) are a tribute to H.G. Wells: suppose the Martians
had won? His masterpiece is the Winchester trilogy: The Prince in Waiting (1910), Beyond
the Burning Lands (1971) and The Sword of the Spirits (1972) in which man-made
geological disasters have returned Britain to a medieval city-state culture. The
Guardians (1970) is probably the first to use Orwell’s motifs of the escape from the city
and the forbidden romance/friendship, in a world divided between the Conurbs and the
Country. A Dusk of Demons (1993) reverts to the classic post-holocaust dark ages
formula.
Peter Dickinson enjoys a literary career that spans children’s and adults’ books, and
has written fantasy, historical novels and political young-adult fiction. The Changes
trilogy—The Weathermonger (1968), Heartsease (1969) and The Devil’s Children (1970)
uses the device of a future suspicious of machines; The Devil’s Children is interesting as
a positive view of an ethnic minority group (Sikhs), written shortly before educationalists
began to make demands for such books. Elsewhere, Dickinson uses the biological
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