Erroll Collins

Erroll Collins was a British author active during the 1940s, specialising in adventure and science fiction for boys.

His 1944 "Mariners of Space" is for its time a very advanced piece of science fiction. It envisages a future world where there were populations on Mars and Venus as well as Earth flying around the solar system, and, inevitably, getting into wars. As it was serialised in the then popular "Boy's Own Paper" it was read widely and must have influenced many boys of that generation to take an interest in the possibility of space travel. To some extent it anticipates the later work of Robert A. Heinlein, though it is clearly just aimed at boys. It was published by Lutterworth Press in hardback in 1949.

"Mariners of Space" also anticipates a number of political realignments, some of which have actually come true. He predicts a 'United States of Europe' not dissimilar to the EU, although the British Empire and the USA have merged to become the 'British-American Empire'! Nonetheless, Collins correctly anticipates that the world's major trouble-spots at the millennium would be in the Middle East (he posits a dispute between Europe and Asia over the territorial rights to the Caspian Sea). In the Interplanetary War which forms the climax to the story, Earth is victorious largely due to the population uniting against their common enemies from Mars and Venus.

Other books include "Submarine City" and "The Black Dwarf of Mongolia".

Little is known about the author, any more information would be welcome.

Erroll Collins is actually the pseudonym of a woman author Ellen Edith Hannah REDKNAP, born in 1906, date of death not known. It appears that she was possibly an acquaintance of Barnes Wallis - the use of swing-wing Arrow-Planes in 'Mariners of Space' may have had their origin in this association. Fact|date=April 2008