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(1936- ) UK politician, IT consultant and author whose first novel, The Men Who Mastered Time (1986), is a stately Scientific Romance whose protagonist very calmly traces the competing goals of two colleagues who have co-invented a Time Machine. Some hints contained in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan; Or, a Vision in a Dream: A Fragment" (written 1797; as a title-poem of coll 1816 chap) lead to the correct conclusion that one of them has via Time Travel himself become the historical Kublai Khan (1215-1294). In the Young Adult Lord of the Lightning (2011), Aliens crash on Earth in ancient times, only emerging from Suspended Animation in the twentieth century now that human Technology is sufficiently advanced to enable them to repair their ship; though the basic story is familiar, the aliens' potential involvement in World War Two, with the risk that they will inadvertently create a Hitler Wins outcome, adds interest. [JC]
born London: 1 February 1936
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight.
Accessed 11:53 am on 18 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/butler_david>