Edward Page Mitchell

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stories From 'The Sun' Edward Page Mitchell

Later described as "the lost giant of American science fiction," Edward Page Mitchell wrote many science fiction and fantasy short stories in the 1870's to 1890's, nearly all of which were published anonymously in the The Sun daily newspaper of New York. Mitchell was editor-in-chief of The Sun and was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board for many years. Mitchell introduced many technological and social predictions which were daring for the time, prior to similar predictions by famous authors, such as travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed in the home by electrical transmission, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, suspended animation of a living human being through freezing (cryogenics), a man rendered invisible by scientific means, a time-travel machine, faster-than-light travel, a thinking computer, a cyborg, matter transmission or teleportation, voting by American women, and interracial marriage. His fantasy stories dabble with the occult and bizarre, involving ghosts, the Devil, masochism, inanimate objects coming to life, and more. Edward Page Mitchell was an American editorial and short-story writer for The Sun, a leading daily newspaper in New York City. He became that newspaper's editor in 1897 and editor-in-chief in 1903. He retired in 1926, a year before dying of a cerebral hemorrhage. Decades after his death, Mitchell was recognized as a major figure in the early development of the science fiction genre. Mitchell wrote numerous short stories which were published anonymously in the decades of the 1870's and 1880's. The gradual rediscovery of Mitchell and his work is a direct result of the publication in 1973 of a book-length anthology of his stories, compiled by Sam Moskowitz, with a detailed introduction by Moskowitz giving much information about Mitchell's personal life. Because Mitchell's stories were not by-lined on original publication, nor indexed, Moskowitz expended major effort to track down and collect these works by an author whom Moskowitz cited as "the lost giant of American science fiction".