author
George Gordon Hastings
Best known for the early speculative novel The First American King, this elusive American writer imagined a future United States shaped by suspended animation, invention, and political upheaval. Very little is firmly documented about the person behind the book, which gives the work an extra air of mystery.
1 Audiobook
The first American King
by George Gordon Hastings
About the author
George Gordon Hastings was an American author remembered primarily for The First American King, first published in 1904. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes it as a sleeper-awakes story in which suspended animation carries its characters forward to the America of 1975, placing it among early works of speculative future fiction.
Reliable biographical details about Hastings appear to be scarce. Sources consulted here confirm the novel and its publication history, including listings from Project Gutenberg and other library-style catalogs, but they do not provide much personal information such as birth and death dates or a fuller life story.
That scarcity makes Hastings an interesting figure for modern readers: he survives less as a well-documented public personality than as the author of one unusual, forward-looking novel that still turns up in archives and reprints more than a century later.