Alicia in Blunderland

Lewis Carroll's delightful fantasies about Alice in Wonderland are more than whimsy — they are social satires enjoyed especially by adults. Few "Alice" admirers know that Carroll had a score of imitators who utilized their own Carrollian creations for a satirical look at other times and places. Inevitably there had to be a science fiction Alice. It was published in the early 1930's as a serial in the fabled Science Fiction Digest, the first important printed science fiction fan magazine. The byline, "Nihil," concealed the young writer, P. Schuyler Miller. After half a century some of the characters in "Alicia" will be unfamiliar to modern readers. But other allusions to characters and locales out of Verne and Wells, Burroughs and Cummings, Merritt and Doc Smith — or to the writers themselves who appear in the story — will awaken nostalgic memories. "Alicia" is not a parody of the original story. Miller wrote about a future Alice, stressing the idiosyncrasies of science fiction and the great and near-great science fiction writers of the day.