''For the silent film see

The Great Romance (film) ''The Great Romance'' is a 1919 American silent romance film directed by Henry Otto and starring Harold Lockwood, Rubye De Remer and Frank Currier.Darby p.43 Main cast * Harold Lockwood as Rupert Danza * Rubye De Remer as Althea Hanway * Jos ...

'' ''The Great Romance'' is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

and

Utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...

novel, first published in New Zealand in

1881 Events January–March * January 1– 24 – Siege of Geok Tepe: Russian troops under General Mikhail Skobelev defeat the Turkomans. * January 13 – War of the Pacific – Battle of San Juan and Chorrillos: The C ...

. It had a significant influence on

Edward Bellamy Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 – May 22, 1898) was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel ''Looking Backward''. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of numerou ...

's 1888 ''

Looking Backward ''Looking Backward: 2000–1887'' is a utopian science fiction novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888. The book was translated into several languages, and in short or ...

'', the most popular Utopian novel of the late nineteenth century.

The book

''The Great Romance'' is a short novel, originally published in two parts. The texts appeared anonymously: authorship was attributed to The Inhabitant, "a pseudonym common at the time for guidebooks in the United Kingdom and the United States...."Alessio, p. 305. The work is one aspect of the major wave of Utopian (and dystopian) literature that characterized the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the English-speaking world, that literature is best known in its American and British expressions; but ''The Great Romance'' illustrates how that wave of utopian fiction reached into the remoter regions of the Anglophone domain. An 1882 article in the Christchurch newspaper ''The Star'' identifies the author as "Mr Henry Honor, a gentleman resident in Ashburton". A review of both parts of the book appeared in the Dunedin ''Otago Daily Times'' in 1882.

Literary connections

In ''The Great Romance'', the protagonist endures a long sleep and awakes in the future. He meets and falls in love with a young woman named Edith, a descendant of an important figure in his earlier life, who then serves as a guide for the protagonist in the new world he confronts. These elements unite ''The Great Romance'' with Bellamy's famous book. A third novel of the period, John Macnie's ''

The Diothas ''The Diothas; or, A Far Look Ahead'' is a 1883 utopian novel written by John Macnie and published using the pseudonym "Ismar Thiusen". ''The Diothas'' has been called "perhaps the second most important American nineteenth-century ideal society"E ...

'', may have served as a conduit for the common features shared by the Inhabitant's and Bellamy's fictions; all three share these commonalities, and Macnie's book has a New Zealand connection that Bellamy's lacks. Yet it is also possible that Bellamy drew upon ''The Great Romance'' directly rather than through any intermediary work: editor Dominic Alessio has argued that Bellamy's later short story "To Whom This May Come" shows a "pervasive" influence of the Inhabitant's work on the shared theme of

telepathic Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...

communication.

Synopsis

The book's opening scene portrays the protagonist, John Hope, awakening from a sleep of 193 years. Hope had been a prominent mid-twentieth-century scientist, who had developed new power sources that enabled air travel and, eventually, space exploration. In the year 1950, Hope had taken a "sleeping draught" that put him into a long suspended animation, as part of a planned experiment. When he wakes in the year 2143, he is met by Alfred and Edith Weir, descendants of John Malcolm Weir, the chemist who had prepared the sleeping draft Hope had taken in 1950. Hope is shocked to find that the Weirs and their contemporaries have telepathic abilities. The development of telepathy as a general human talent has led to a vastly improved society. People can no longer conceal malevolent motives and plans, a fact that has inaugurated a new moral order. Those who have been unable or unwilling to adapt to this new social and ethical climate have left civilized society for more primitive lands, where the telepathic power is not dominant. Hope joins with Alfred Weir and another scientist, Charles Moxton, in a plan to fly a specially-equipped craft to the planet

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

. Moxton has developed his paranormal abilities to include

telekinesis Psychokinesis (from grc, ψυχή, , soul and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), or telekinesis (from grc, τηλε, , far off and grc, κίνησις, , movement, label=ㅤ), is a hypothetical psychic ability allowing a person ...

. The later chapters of the book describe their flight to Venus, and what they find on that planet. ''The Great Romance'' makes a special effort to attempt a realistic forecast of what space travel would be like, in terms of the absence of breathable atmosphere and gravity in space, and comparable factors. In these aspects, the book reflects the likely influence of Percy Greg's 1880 novel ''

Across the Zodiac ''Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record'' (1880) is a science fiction novel by Percy Greg, who has been credited as an originator of the sword and planet subgenre of science fiction. Plot The book details the creation and use of a ...

''.

New editions

The original edition of ''The Great Romance'' is one of the rarest books extant, with single copies of Parts 1 and 2 existing in New Zealand libraries. After a century of neglect, the book has been reprinted by editor Dominic Alessio, first in ''Science Fiction Studies'' in 1993 (Part 1) and then in a separate volume in 2008 (Parts 1 and 2).The Inhabitant, ''The Great Romance'', Dominic Alessio, ed., Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2008. (A third part of the story is thought to have existed, but no copy has yet been found.) The book's rediscovery is one product of the widespread re-evaluation of early science fiction that has brought new editions of rare works like

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

's ''

Paris in the Twentieth Century ''Paris in the Twentieth Century'' (french: Paris au XXe siècle) is a science fiction novel by Jules Verne. The book presents Paris in August 1960, 97 years in Verne's future, when society places value only on business and technology. Written i ...

'' and ''

The Golden Volcano ''The Golden Volcano'' (french: Le Volcan d'or) is a novel by Jules Verne, edited by his son Michel Verne, and published posthumously in 1906. The story takes place in the middle of the Gold Rush, and features two French-Canadian cousins, who ...

''.

References

External links

''The Great Romance'', Part 1, online
preserved at The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...