''An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future'' is a 1906 novel written and illustrated by Gregory Casparian and published by Mayflower Presses. A reviewer for ''

io9 ''io9'' is part of Gizmodo media since 2015, and it began as blog launched in 2008 by Gawker Media. The site initially focused on the subjects of science fiction, fantasy, futurism, science, technology and related areas but over the years has ...

'' has called it "the first

lesbian science fiction A lesbian is a homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with femal ...

novel".

Author

Little is known about Gregory Casparian (1856–1942). A Turkish-Armenian, Casparian served as an officer in the Turkish army. He emigrated to the United States in 1877, settled in New York and worked as an artist, painter, and

photoengraver Photoengraving is a process that uses a light-sensitive photoresist applied to the surface to be engraved to create a mask that protects some areas during a subsequent operation which etches, dissolves, or otherwise removes some or all of the mate ...

. ''The Anglo-American Alliance'' is his only published work.

Setting and plot

The novel is set in the future of 1960 and depicts a world that is geopolitically broadly similar to that of 1906, with the US and the UK as the world's major colonial powers. Casparian stated in the preface that the purpose of the book was to show the desirability of a

world government World government is the concept of a single political authority with jurisdiction over all humanity. It is conceived in a variety of forms, from tyrannical to democratic, which reflects its wide array of proponents and detractors. A world gove ...

, to which he saw the establishment of an Anglo-American federation as a first step. There are limited technological advances, such as

prenatal sex discernment Prenatal sex discernment is the prenatal testing for discerning the sex of a fetus before birth. Methods Prenatal sex discernment can be performed by preimplantation genetic diagnosis before conception, but this method may not always be classif ...

suspended animation Suspended animation is the temporary (short- or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. It may be either hypometabolic or ametabolic in nature. It may be induced by either endogen ...

and a cure for laziness (which benefits the "negroes of the Southern States", according to the novel). Telescopes have shown intelligent life on other planets, which is described in interludes unconnected to the rest of the novel. The novel follows the romance of two young upper-class women, the Briton Aurora Cunningham and the American Margaret MacDonald, who attend the same ladies' seminary in Cornwall and pursue a secret romantic relationship. After graduation, Margaret has herself surgically transformed into a man, Spencer Hamilton. As a famous musician, Hamilton courts and marries Aurora, and they live happily ever after.

Significance

Reviewing the novel in 1990, Everett F. Bleiler described it as a curiosity and as an "eccentric novel with an early description of surgical sex changes". A 2011 article in ''io9'' highlighted the work's novelty in that it presented a lesbian romantic relationship directly rather than through the

subtext Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without ...

of a "

Boston marriage A "Boston marriage" was, historically, the cohabitation of two wealthy women, independent of financial support from a man. The term is said to have been in use in New England in the late 19th/early 20th century. Some of these relationships were r ...

", as was occasionally done in

Victorian fiction Victorian literature refers to English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some to be the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. It was in the Victorian era th ...

, and in featuring science fiction's first

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

hero.

References

External links

* *
An Anglo-American Alliance
at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

* 1900s LGBT novels 1906 American novels 1906 science fiction novels American LGBT novels American science fiction novels Fiction set in 1960 LGBT speculative fiction novels Novels set in the future Novels with lesbian themes Novels with transgender themes {{specf-novel-stub