The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Victorian visionary who imagined world of today
He was the Victorian-age Scottish science fiction writer who dreamed the modern world in which we live – but fell through the cracks of time into obscurity.
Robert Duncan Milne, born in Cupar in 1844 as a son of the manse, wrote compelling stories anticipating TV, mobile phones, satellite communication, drone warfare and cryogenics while living in the age of the telegraph and the infancy of the telephone.
Some 140 years ago, Milne – whose Episcopalian minister father was from Keith – was building sci-fi tropes, such as visual time travel, years before HG Wells penned The Time Machine.
Based in San Francisco at the height of his writing career, Milne has been hailed as the father of American science fiction and is now the subject of intensive research at Dundee University to restore his place in Scotland’s literary history and landscape – including republishing his stories.
“If he didn’t exist, you would have to invent him because there is this kind of Milne-shaped gap between Scotland and the history of science fiction which he fits into perfectly,” said Dr Keith Williams, a reader in English at Dundee University’s School of Humanities.
“Scotland appears to punch way below its weight in relation to early science fiction pioneering, yet in actual fact it has this extraordinary and amazingly rich, lost presence who has just slipped through the cracks of the canon by a series of historical accidents.”
First and foremost was an actual accident. Milne, who had published most of his stories in San Francisco literary journal The Argonaut, was on his way to a meeting to discuss bringing out his magazine works as a book.
“Then during one of his
spectacular benders, because he was a heroic drunk, he was run over by one of San Francisco’s new electric street cars. He had this head-on collision with modernity himself.
“Ironically, that cut his career short and meant his work was never edited together into a single volume or even a selection of material in his lifetime.”
This tragedy meant Milne and his trailblazing work was all but forgotten, while writers who came after him are still lauded to this day.
Milne’s fate was a tragic end to a fascinating life – he was not only a writer and a classics scholar, but had also spent time as a shepherd, cook and labourer in California and northern Mexico in the early 1870s, having left Oxford without graduating.
The fact Milne has been rediscovered is down to the work of Barry Sullivan, an archivist with DC Thomson,
who stumbled across a reference to Milne while working on his English and film degree as a mature student and uncovered his fascinating story.
He took his work to Keith, his tutor, a move which resulted in Milne being honoured in 2016 in a programme of events at Dundee University to mark the 150th anniversary of HG Wells’ death. Milne is now taught as part of the university’s science fiction degree course and is the subject of major research into his fascinating life and work by PHD student Ari Brin.
Ari is the daughter of award-winning science fiction writer David Brin – who penned the Uplift novels as well as The Postman which was filmed by Kevin Costner. Working between Dundee and her native California, Ari has unearthed a rich treasure trove of Milne’s work.
Keith said: “Ari came to
do a science fiction masters here a few years ago and got bitten by the Milne bug and wrote her dissertation on him and is doing a creative PHD on Milne as well.
“She is editing his work and has put together a collection she calls The Essential Milne and we are in the process of editing that and pitching it to a press.”
Keith said that the astonishing aspect of
Milne’s work is just how much it anticipated of today’s world.
“There are lots of stories about new kinds of devices that are a bit like TV or CCTV or some kind of satellite communication,” he said.
“One of the stories is really about a satellite phone system where signals are bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere to transmit news across the planet, so you can hear about an assassination attempt on the kaiser within minutes because someone is using a device in Germany that can transmit a message to you.
“He is dreaming up the world that we now live in. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.
“He really was imagining this networked, digitised, intercommunicated world which we live in when he only had the telegraph and the telephone to inspire him.”
Milne was ahead of the game, too, on ideas that gave rise to the likes of Doctor Who and even James Bond villains – as well as the darker side of modern society, such as terrorism and drone strikes.
“Milne’s A Question of Reciprocity is essentially a story about San Francisco being blackmailed by a foreign power, using a remote controlled helicopter that can drop bombs on any target. So there’s a Bond-villainish feel to the whole thing.”
Keith believes a fitting tribute to the lost genius of Milne would be to reinstate him in the canon of transatlantic science fiction.
“Ari is constantly discovering new publications by Milne, so we know he wrote something like 110 to 120 stories, two-thirds of which or more are science fiction,” he said.
“He made a bigger contribution to the early science fiction genre in terms of quantity and quality than any of his contemporaries and that includes Scottish contemporaries that sort of associate with science fiction, like Stevenson or later Arthur Conan Doyle. His contribution outweighs theirs massively.”
Keith believes Milne should be honoured in his home town of Cupar with a plaque or a memorial.
“There should be a big sign: ‘You are now entering Cupar, birthplace of the Scottish pioneer of American West Coast science fiction’ and turn it into a place of pilgrimage.”
Archivist Barry Sullivan agrees.
He said: “Cupar has been my home town for the past nearly 40 years and I was blown away.
“I had never heard the name, never once in the 30 years I had been living there at that time.
“There has been some talk about a blue plaque somewhere in Cupar or maybe something a bit bigger, a statue or commemorative thing.”