Hardcover, 392 pages
Borrowed from the libraryPublished 1971 (originally 1836)
Read May 2013
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by Nathaniel Beverly Tucker
My reading of nineteenth-century future-war fiction brought me to this, one of the earliest examples of the genre, from 1836, a rare American instance, this one about the growing "disunion" between North and South. C. Hugh Holman's introduction to my University of North Carolina Press reprint is pretty informative, and much more interesting than the book itself, which at 392 pages is dull and long. It's basically a Walter Scott imitation by someone who's nowhere near as good as Walter Scott, but it just happens to be set in the future. Probably a milestone in the history of science fiction, except I suspect it's one of those books that no one in its era actually read. Definitely one of those books that's more interesting for its place in history than for your actual reading experience.
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