Nordenholt's Million
Famine sweeps across the world when a lab accident unleashes a virulent strain of bacteria that transforms healthy fields into barren wastelands. With the fate of the human race at stake, wealthy financier Stanley Nordenholt establishes a stronghold in central Scotland and assumes dictatorial powers to save what remains of the planet's starving population. This gripping tale of survival explores some of the moral dilemmas that arise in the wake of catastrophic events as well as their social, cultural, and political consequences.
A precursor to the latter-day tales from the golden age of science fiction, this compelling novel was published by a noted British chemist in 1923. Acclaimed by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "realistic, reasoned, sociologically observed, and credible," it offers an ever-relevant warning against the exploitation of disaster as a pretext for the suspension of freedom, democracy, and justice.
Science fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general
Alfred Walter Stewart
Alfred Walter Stewart (5 September 1880 – 1 July 1947) was a Scottish chemist, academic, and part-time novelist who wrote seventeen detective novels and a pioneering science fiction work between 1923 and 1947 under the pseudonym of J. J. Connington. He created several fictional detectives, including Superintendent Ross and Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield. [Wikipedia]

He was born in Glasgow and educated at the universities of Glasgow, Marburg, and London. He was Professor of Chemistry from 1919 to 1944 at Queen's University, Belfast, and author of a number of respected treatises on chemistry.

As J. J. Connington, he wrote over twenty detective stories, beginning with *Death at Swaythling Court* (1926), in which the investigation is usually carried out either by Superintendent Ross (*The Eye in the Museum*, 1929; *The Two Tickets Puzzle*, 1930) or, more often, by Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield (*Murder in the Maze*, 1927; *The Sweepstake Murders*, 1931). As Connington he also published an unusual science fiction novel, *Nordenholt's Millions* (1923). - from https://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/3659/J-J-Connington-pseudonym-Alfred-Walter-Stewart.html