Enrique Gaspar

Born in Madrid in 1842, Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau was a Spanish writer and diplomat who worked across several forms, including plays, zarzuelas, journalism, and fiction. He came from a theatrical family, and that stage-world energy stayed with his writing, which often favored lively dialogue, comic invention, and social observation.

Alongside his literary work, he served in the diplomatic corps, a career that took him to posts outside Spain while he continued to write. He published widely in the nineteenth century, but modern readers usually meet him through El anacronópete (1887), a novel often noted as one of the earliest stories to feature travel through time by means of a machine.

That unusual blend of playwright, public servant, and speculative storyteller gives his work a special place in literary history. He died in Oloron in 1902, leaving behind a body of writing that connects Spanish popular theater with some of science fiction's earliest imaginative leaps.