THE BIOSCOPE NOVEL.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 781, 2 April 1910, Page 9

THE BIOSCOPE NOVEL.

These are days (says the London "Daily News") in which. the social prophet has to extend, himself in order A to keep ahead of actual developments. Some things—such as wireless telegraph , and' X-ray phofcography—he never anticipated at all; foretold before they begin-to I 'be: realised; :In one of Mr. H. G.- Wells's romances of "th'o'days to come"'he shows us a. gentleman going to a shelf for some story to amuse.his leisure. He takes down a cylinder, fits it into a'-machine, and presses a button.. Forthwith thero is shown upon a little screen a living picture, , which continues, with phono-, graphic dialogue, until the story arrives at its happy ending—for, although Mr. Wells does not tell us so, we are con-, vinced that tlie happy ending is an attribute of English fiction which no con-' ceivable changes in the structure of human society will have the power to overthrow. And now it is announced that: Mr. A. G. Hales, whose record as war correspondent and novelist" is especially well known to readers of the "Daily News," is busy with a schemo for "a bioscope novel." A novel of action in living. pictnres, accompanied by- a brief explanation of the plot, is his scheme; and it has air the marks of a twentieth-century success. . The thing, indeed, has almost been done already: $ome of the more elaborate French and German bioscope arrangements aro in ..the nature of short stories. The possibilities of the new fiction —as well as those of human barbarity—are shown by a case which occupied a French tribunal some time ago, in which certain. employees of a khiematograph company, were shown to have driven a horso and carriage (containing dummy people) over the edge of n cliff on the Breton coast to obtain a thrilling scene. The horse was (happily) killed.on the spot, the carriage dashed to matchwood, and the perpetrators fined, a few pounds | apiece. That sort of elaboration, if we know Mr.. Hales, will find no place in ■ his bioscope fiction. There will doubtless bo plenty of gore, but it will be procured by-the barrel. ■