Archives: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame

Bamber Fortescue came from an old English family, and he was distantly related to Lord Phillip "Thunderhead" Fortescue, the hero of the Battle of Romney (1666) and Cisco Fortescue, the populariser of the tarantella in Ireland.

Fortescue's old landed family became an old unlanded family following World War I, an event that had a profound effect on him. It led to his first published story "The Land Pirates" which postulated a future society with ownership of land restricted to writers and scientists. Coincidentally, Fortescue completed his studies in chemistry later that year. University also had a profound effect on Fortescue, and the revolutionary, free-thinking atmosphere turned Fortescue into something of an eccentric radical.

Fortescue eschewed chemistry for writing, using his science fiction stories as a medium for his messages long before anyone had heard of Marshall McLuhan. His immensely popular "Molarman" series (1932-1938), featuring a molecule-sized hero who fought off various aliens thanks to Fortescue's latest theory of Social Organisation, was mistakenly collected and published in 1959 as a dental textbook. In "It's the Bumps that Count" (1942) he espoused the since discredited "science" of Electro-phrenology, where people had their characters appraised by electrode stimulation of the cranium.

He was an early enthusiast of Chaos Theory, and in The Random Man (1949) his hero wanders around for 300 pages uncertain as to what to do. The baffled critical reception ("Who? What?" — SF Daily) did not deter Fortescue from trying to put these theories into action in his own life.

He soon abandoned Chaos Theory after the incident with the bus; and while recovering in hospital, he began to study Eastern methods of enlightenment, which resulted in such works as I Ching, U Ching (1956). He later admitted his study of Zen, which featured in A Hazy Future (1957), was a mistake, as he was never able to get the hang of riding a motorcycle.

Achieving little satisfaction, he turned to drugs in the 1960s, dabbling with aspirin and paracetamol, which featured in his ground breaking SF thriller, No Pain, No Gain (1964), and the follow up, Analgesia Angels (1966). Still searching, he turned to old-fashioned methods: fasting and mortification of the flesh, after reading a biography of the twelfth century monk, Gregory of Castile called Whip it and Beat It under the mistaken initial impression it was a cookbook.

The gaunt and red-eyed Fortescue was a familiar figure at SF Conventions in the 60s and 70s, especially after he donned his hair shirt. Something seemed to be working, for this was his most productive period, and he dashed off such gems as The Hermit World, Alone to the Stars!, I Can See Clearly Now the Pain Has Gone and the taut, but enigmatic novella, Who's There?

In 1979 Fortescue saw a vision of Milton Friedman while on the road to Damascus, New Mexico. He was immediately converted to the world of economic rationalism, and abandoned his robe and fasting. In rapid succession he wrote Supply Side Planet, The Money Machine and his triumph, Lost and Weary in the Corporate Jungle.

Bamber Fortescue is still writing from his home in Belfast and is not working on an autobiography. He is reportedly waiting "for someone to do it for me".