author
Alfred Charles Michaud
1876–1975
A little-known writer of speculative fiction, he imagined a better world through an unusual Martian utopia. His best-known book, Our Coming World, mixes space-age adventure with sharp social criticism.
1 Audiobook
Our coming world
by Alfred Charles Michaud
About the author
Born in St. Andrew, Quebec, on December 25, 1876, and later dying in Los Angeles on May 22, 1975, Alfred Charles Michaud is a very obscure figure in literary history. The clearest surviving reference to him comes from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which identifies him as a US author and links him to a single known novel.
That novel, Our Coming World (1951), is a utopian science-fiction work in which visitors from Mars confront the failures of postwar Earth and present a healthier social order by contrast. Modern catalog and public-domain listings confirm the book’s existence and continued availability, which has helped keep Michaud’s name alive even though biographical details remain scarce.
Because so little documented personal information appears to be readily available, Michaud’s reputation rests almost entirely on this one ambitious novel. For listeners drawn to forgotten science fiction, his work offers a glimpse of mid-20th-century hopes, anxieties, and big ideas about how society might be remade.