author
Enrique Gaspar
1842–1902
Best known for imagining a mechanical time machine in El anacronópete, this Spanish writer mixed satire, theater, and early science fiction long before time travel became a staple of the genre. He also spent much of his life in diplomacy, which gave his work a broad, worldly edge.
1 Audiobook
El anacronópete; Viaje a China; Metempsicosis
by Enrique Gaspar
About the author
Born in Madrid in 1842, Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau was a Spanish writer and diplomat who worked across several forms, including plays, zarzuelas, and novels. He came from a theatrical family, and that stage background shows in the lively, dramatic quality of his writing.
Today he is remembered above all for El anacronópete (1887), a remarkable early science-fiction novel built around a machine that travels backward through time. That idea has made him especially interesting to modern readers, since he explored mechanical time travel years before it became famous in later fiction.
Gaspar balanced his literary work with a consular career and wrote for a wide audience, often blending humor, invention, and social observation. He died in 1902, but his reputation has grown over time as readers and scholars have looked again at his unusual place in the history of speculative fiction.