Enrique Gaspar

Born in Madrid in 1842, Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau built a varied career as both a writer and a diplomat. He wrote numerous plays and zarzuelas, and he also served in the Spanish diplomatic corps, spending part of his life outside Spain before his death in Oloron in 1902.

He is most often remembered now for El anacronópete, a novel published in the 1880s that is frequently noted as one of the earliest stories to feature a machine designed specifically for time travel. That idea gives him a special place in the history of speculative fiction.

Even so, Gaspar was not only an early science-fiction curiosity. He was a working man of the theater with a lively, inventive style, and his writing reflects the mix of comedy, satire, and popular entertainment that shaped much of 19th-century Spanish literature.