The Secret People

Unlike few other English writers of science-fantasy who were obliged to turn to America for their early encouragement, John Beynon was fortunate to taste a fair measure of success in his own country before the war interrupted his efforts. It was in 1935 that his first full-length novel was serialised in Odham's Passing Show, a family weekly lavishly designed on the lines of America's Saturday Evening Post. This had started off by making great play with American science fiction of more universal appeal, including Edgar Rice Burrough's tales of John Carson's exploits on Venus; and the periodical offered an appropriate billet for The Secret People. It proved so popular that it was soon followed by Beynon's Stowaway to Mars, which has an equally honoured place in the annals of British science fiction.

The Secret People is set in the 1960s; and though the rocket plane which seemed a reasonable possibility in 1935 was pushed off the drawing board by the jet, the motive power of the rocket has enabled us to reach far beyond the stratosphere into outer space—an achievement which then seemed utterly fanciful. And if the New Sea has not yet materialised, we have heard enough in recent years of the drowning of African villages and the painstaking shifting of ancient Nubian monuments in the interests of vast irrigation projects involving millions of acres of land. As for the pygmies who inhabit the cavern world beneath the desert, there is no record of their existence beyond the realm of the author's fertile imagination. But the Dark Continent has not yielded all her secrets; and by the time you reach the end of this story you may well find yourself believing in The Secret People . . . even haunted by them, as their creator was haunted for years by the memory of the Morlocks after reading, in his schooldays. Wells' immortal tale of The Time Machine.