Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Rip Van Winkle (1912 film) Rip Van Winkle (1912 film) Rip Van Winkle is a 1912 Australian feature-length film directed by W. J. Lincoln about Rip Van Winkle. It was arguably Australia's first fantasy film. It is considered a lost film. The film was made in the wake of a successful Australian season of Joseph Jefferson and Dion Boucicault's theatre adaptation of Washington Irving's story. One reviewer said that star Arthur Styan "has figured in several of the previous productions of the Amalgamated Pictures Ltd., and who makes quite a success of this." The film appears not to have been widely released. The "Bendigo Advertiser"