TRACY, Louis

(1863-1928)

   UK journalist and writer, a colleague of M.P. SHIEL, who (uncredited) assisted him with several detective novels, all published as by Gordon Holmes. LT is best remembered for The Final War (1896), the first of his several future- WAR novels, which is significant for the malign intensity of the SOCIAL DARWINISM it espouses on behalf of "the Saxon race". The Vansittart sequence - An American Emperor: The Story ofthe Fourth Estate of France (1897) with Shiel and The Lost Provinces (1898) - moves from the RURITANIAN shenanigans of the first vol, in whichthe American Vansittart romances a princess and becomes the emperor of France, into a future-war scenario in which, on behalf of France, he usesa fleet of armoured vehicles to defeat Germany. The Invaders: A Story of Britain's Peril (1901) less interestingly threatens the UK with aNEAR FUTURE German invasion. 2 later novels endow their protagonists with PSI POWERS: in Karl Greier: The Strange Story of a Man with a Sixth Sense (1906; vt The Man with a Sixth Sense 1910) the power is that of reading minds and controlling others from a distance; in The Turning Point (1923 US) the hero embodies centuries-old family memories.

   JC

   Other works: The Wings of the Morning (1903 US), associational ROBINSONADE; The King of Diamonds (1904), featuring a diamond-filled meteorite; The House 'round the Corner (1914), a ghost story.

   See also: ESP; POLITICS.