W. Delisle (William Delisle) Hay

William Delisle Hay was a 19th-century British author associated with early science fiction and disaster fiction. Reference works describe him as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society who spent years in New Zealand, and his writing reflects both speculative imagination and an interest in colonial life and travel.

His best-known works include The Doom of the Great City (1880), a striking tale of London overwhelmed by a deadly fog, Three Hundred Years Hence (1881), and Blood: A Tragic Tale (1888). These books helped earn him a place in discussions of early speculative fiction, especially for their bold visions of catastrophe and the future.

Hay also wrote Brighter Britain!; Or, Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand, showing a broader range than his fiction alone suggests. Some details of his life are reported differently in reference sources, so modern summaries tend to focus more confidently on the work he left behind than on every biographical date.