McIVER, G. [George]. - Neuroomia: A New Continent. A manuscript delivered from the deep.

Melbourne, George Robertson 1894. Octavo publisher's printed wrapper. A touch of wear to the bottom of the spine; a nice copy, outstanding for this book, usually found in gruesome shape. ¶ First edition, Australian wrappered issue to be precise. It appeared in cloth, boards, or wrappers, and with a London imprint. Neuroomia is a true utopia, larger than Australia, hidden in the centre of the Antarctic. I have remarked before on the crowds of stranded or lost travellers roaming around the Antarctic towards the end of the 19th century. It's a big place but surely they must have bumped into each other. And all those ancient and advanced civilisations must have been cheek to jowl. I spent a bit of time wondering how much of this is naive and how much tongue in cheek, if not mocking. I'm undecided. But it's clear McIver understood well the form of imaginary travel: the hero must be a blockhead, otherwise nothing ever happens to interrupt endless sere and drear explanatory dialogues. He's made our hero an indefatigably bumptious, often offensive blockhead - and a serial mauler of lovely young women - so there's plenty of action. Neuroomia is an impressively advanced socialist white middle class heaven, or would be if there was any religion. Women have liberty and equality but choose not to take any part in decision making and "are always careful not to abuse that liberty." Our hero was frightened by individual flying machines on his first day in Neuroomian society but that seems to have been a lost art by the next page. All travel from then is by ship, rail, or creature drawn carts - on a bewildering scale to be fair.No more than two thirds of the way through our hero begins to be reflective and learn from his painful self inflicted lessons so overall consequence needs ratcheting up and we are introduced to prehistoric - to us, not the Neuroomians - cataclysms caused by a wandering planet, life on Mars, interplanetary migration and the source of life on earth. None of this gets too much in our way.McIver, a schoolteacher at Macksville in northerly NSW when he wrote this, apparently made some money from it. If so, he wasn't spurred to produce more. Much later he wrote for papers and magazines, produced a memoir of his droving days, and a slim volume of verse near the end of his life.

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