| The Sound of His Horn | |
|---|---|
first edition cover |
|
| Author(s) | Sarban |
| Country | Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Peter Davies Ltd |
| Publication date | 1952 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover. paperback) |
| Pages | 154 pp |
The Sound of His Horn is a 1952 dystopian time travel/alternate history novel by the senior British diplomat John William Wall, written with the pseudonym Sarban. It relates the story of a British naval lieutenant, Alan Querdillon who, after becoming a POW during the Battle of Crete awakens in a Nazi controlled world 102 years after World War II. He is hunted (literally) by a "Reichsforester" (a title Hermann Göring had during the Third Reich). He takes refuge with genetically mutilated "undesirables" — one of the first fictional descriptions of genetic manipulation.
The book's title is from an eighteenth-century song about the "gentleman farmer" John Peel, a famous fox hunter in his time, and given a sinister meaning not appearing in the original - as the victorious Nazis hunt humans as if they were foxes. In his introduction to the 1960 edition of the novel by Ballantine Books, Kingsley Amis writes: "I shall always feel a slight twinge whenever I am reminded of the innocent English hunting song from which the title is taken."
Contents |
Damon Knight found the book to be "a minor thing, crude in places, but persuasive."[1]