George Chetwynd Griffith (1857–1906)

George Griffith is very little known now, but in the late 19th and first few years of the 20th centuries, he was a writer of science fiction/fantasy and a utopian socialist a la H G Wells. This was apparently one of his minor works, where an Egyptologist and his daughter discover that they are the reincarnations of, respectively, a high priest and Queen in ancient Egypt. Other characters they meet in a series of dramatic events are also reincarnations of ancient Egyptians. This is a mixture of science, fantasy, high politics and Ruritania style manoeuvrings, and is quite fun, though it does drag in places, and the ending seemed quite sudden.… (meer)

Set in 1903, a world war approaches and an international group of terrorists mean to take advantage of the situation after getting their hands on a new form of combustion, which finally solves the problem of powered flight.
This is pretty prophetic in some ways, it combines the devastation of machine warfare realized in the first World War with the speed of machine warfare realized in the Second.
George Griffith it has to be said, isn't a particularly good writer. His writing tends to be quite plain and pulpy, its not bad, but its by no means spectacular.
He does however have two things going for him. One is a great imagination, and the other is his love of strong female characters, which is pretty unusual for the time.
Apart from the fact its hard to like anyone in this story as they're all gradations of evil from a modern perspective, the other major flaw is the racism in favour of anglo-saxons. Which is all the more remarkable given that most of the main characters are russian. Still i suppose it's no more racist than Star-Trek and every other sci-fi show in which the entire world appears to be ruled by white english speakers.
A very interesting plot, i am planning on reading the sequel.… (meer)