SF&F encyclopedia (B-B)


BABBAGE, CHARLES
(1792-1871) UK mathematician and inventor, a founder of the Analytical
Society in 1812, and a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1816. His
recognition of the necessity for accurate calculation of mathematical
tables, as used in navigation and astronomy, led in 1820-22 to his
designing and building a calculating machine, using which he soon
generated a table of logarithms for the positive integers up to 108,000.
He then worked on a far more sophisticated machine, a full-size Difference
Engine, intended to use punched cards in the computation and printing of
mathematical tables. Impatient and not unduly practical, he abandoned this
device before it was completed in favour of the far more ambitious
Analytical Engine which, if built, would have been the world's first
COMPUTER. It was this machine for which Ada, Countess Lovelace, wrote
programs, as described in Ada: The Enchantress of Numbers - A Selection
from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and her Description of the First
Computer (1992) ed Betty A.Toole. (Much later the computer language Ada
was so-named in her honour.) CB spent decades on the project, deriving
many of the basic principles of the digital computer, but 19th-century
technology restricted him to mechanical rather than electronic components,
and consequently the machine was never finished - indeed, it was probably
by definition unfinishable. The Difference Engine remains on view in the
Science Museum, London. Writers who have extrapolated a full-blown success
of Babbage's machines into alternate histories (ALTERNATE WORLDS;
STEAMPUNK) include Michael F.FLYNN, in In the Country of the Blind (1990),
and William GIBSON and Bruce STERLING, in THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE (1990 UK),
which transfers Ada's interest to the earlier machine.

BABITS, MIHALY
(1883-1941) Hungarian editor, translator (from English and German) and
writer, best known for his poetry, the finest example of which is probably
the autobiographical Jonas konyve ["The Book of Jonah"] (1938). His sf
novel, Golyakalifa (1916; trans as King's Stork 1948 Hungary; retrans anon
as The Nightmare 1966), is of interest in its depiction of a split
personality. A utopian novel, Elza pilota avagy a tokeletes tarsadalom
["The Pilot Elza, or The Perfect Society"] (1933), remains untranslated.
See also: HUNGARY.

BABYLON 5
US tv series (1993- ). Warner Bros Television. Series created by
J.Michael Straczynski; co-exec prods, Straczynski and Doug Netter;
conceptual consultant Harlan ELLISON; writers include Straczynski, Peter
A.DAVID, Larry DiTillo, Kathryn Drennan, D.C.FONTANA, Scott Frost, David
GERROLD, Christy Marx, Marc Scott Zicree; directors include Menachem
Binetski, Richard Compton, Kevin Cremins, Mario DiLeo, David Eagle, John
Flinn, Lorraine Senna Ferrara, Janet Greek, Bruce Seth Green, Jim
Johnston, Stephen Posey, Jesus Trevino, Mike Vejar. Two-hour pilot episode
Feb 1993, 22 one-hour episodes season one 1994, 18 one-hour episodes to
May 1995 season two 1994-95. Current. The pilot is set in the year 2257,
and the following events are planned to go forward to the year 2262. The
story takes place on a five-mile-long space station, built by the Earth
Alliance in neutral space to help keep the peace between humans and the
four other alien alliances, each of which maintains an ambassador on
board. Four previous stations have disappeared or been destroyed. The
station has a human commander, Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O'Hare)
in the first season, but reassigned as ambassador to the Minbari homeworld
and replaced by Captain John Sheridan (played by Bruce Boxleitner) in the
second. The four ambassadors are loud-mouthed Londo Mollari of the
Centauri, a decadent power of waning strength but the first aliens to have
been encountered by humans, played by Peter Jurasik; Delenn of the
Minbari, an enigmatic race recently at war with Earth, a war called off
for mysterious reasons, played by Mira Furlan; G'Kar of the Narns, a race
that recently rebelled against the influence of the Minbari, played by
Andreas Katsulas; Kosh Naranek of the Vorlons, a methane-breathing race,
always seen in protective garb, about whom practically nothing is known
(voice effects by Chris Franke). This syndicated series is very much the
brain child of Straczynski, who has the writing credit for 23 of the 40
one-hour episodes to date, plus the pilot. Though individual episodes
stand alone, there is an over-arching story, involving the gradual
solution of a number of mysteries, planned to extend over five years. This
is a very unusual and ambitious way to structure a tv series. There is
much political conspiracy - often luridly melodramatic - slowly unravelled
as the story continues, and much of the action is devoted to these, which
include Commander Sinclair's amnesia about a space battle against the
Minbari ten years earlier. Other conspiracies involve soul stealing, and
the possibly malign influence of the human Psi Corps on the Earth
Alliance. The effective special effects are largely computer generated, by
Foundation Imaging, and those for the pilot won an Emmy. The science goes
out of its way, most of the time, not to include the futuristic for its
own sake; that is, some of it is plausible. Human relations are imperfect,
sometimes grating. The series gives the impression of being a little more
prepared to go for the jugular than its immediate competition, STAR TREK:
DEEP SPACE NINE, also set on a space station, whose pilot aired a scant
month before B5's, but which was not in pre-production so long. (That is,
B5 cannot be said to have been launched as any kind of deliberate
imitation.) Due to illness, Harlan Ellison has not written his announced
scripts. Several major roles were dropped or replaced after the pilot.
Other leading roles in the ongoing series are second-in-command Commander
Susan Ivanova (played by Claudia Christian); telepath Talia Winters
(played by Andrea Thompson); the cynical Security Chief Garibaldi (played
by Jerry Doyle); Dr Stephen Franklin (played by Richard Biggs), Lieutenant
Warren Keffer (played by Robert Russler); Vir, Londo's bumbling aide
(played by Stephen Furst); Lennier, Delenn's assistant (played by Bill
Mumy); Bester, possibly malicious Psi Cop (played by Walter Koenig). The
first of a series of novels spun off from the series is Babylon 5, Book
#1: Voices(1995) by John VORNHOLT.

BACHMAN, RICHARD
Stephen KING.

BACK BRAIN RECLUSE
UK SEMIPROZINE, from June 1984, current, 18 issues to Mar 1991, A4
format, ed Chris Reed. Originally an A5-format xeroxed FANZINE, BBR
developed into a professionally printed magazine, with bold design, able
to attract fiction from writers such as Michael MOORCOCK, Ian WATSON and
Garry KILWORTH. BBR is regarded as one of the more impressive semiprozines
to emerge from the UK in the 1980s.

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Film (1985). Amblin Entertainment/Universal. Dir Robert Zemeckis, Steven
SPIELBERG among the executive prods, starring Michael J.Fox, Christopher
Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F.Wilson. Screenplay Zemeckis,
Bob Gale. 116 mins. Colour. One of the major sf hits of the 1980s, BTTF is
a disarming, calculated and intelligent comedy about TIME TRAVEL. Teenage
guitar-playing Marty (Fox), son of a tacky and ineffectual mother and
father (Thompson and Glover), is interrupted by Libyan terrorists while
helping mad scientist Emmett Brown (Lloyd) test a TIME MACHINE mounted in
a DeLorean car, and escapes to 1955. There he seeks out the young Dr
Brown, but is disturbed to find his (now teenaged) mother strongly
sexually attracted to him. The oedipal and culture-clash themes are deftly
worked out with great good humour and something falling mercifully short
of complete good taste. After demonstrating the power of rock'n'roll and
convincing his teenage father to stand up to Biff the bully, he returns
with the young Dr Brown's assistance to find a changed 1985, complete with
a spruce mother and a confident father who is now a successful sf writer.
One of the few sf blockbusters made by a director wholly comfortable with
the conventions of GENRE SF, BTTF deserved its success and won a HUGO.
There was a four-year wait for its two sequels, BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II
and BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III. See also: CINEMA.

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II
Film (1989). Amblin Entertainment/Universal. Dir Robert Zemeckis, with
Steven SPIELBERG among the executive prods. Starring Michael J.Fox,
Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F.Wilson. Screenplay Bob Gale,
based on a story by Zemeckis and Gale. 108 mins. Colour. Panned by many
critics as a typically disappointing follow-up, in part because its plot
remains unresolved at the end, this film and BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III
can properly be seen as two halves of a single film, and indeed were shot
simultaneously. In fact it is perhaps the most sophisticated TIME-TRAVEL
film ever made; what was supposed by critics unfamiliar with the genre to
be an incoherence of plot was in large part the perfectly well realized
convolutions of a TIME-PARADOX tale. The story, involving Marty and
Brown's trip to the future, where the older Marty is interestingly a
failure and his son a potential hoodlum, is too complex for synopsis. A
trip back to 1955 generates a DYSTOPIAN 1985, an ALTERNATE WORLD run by
Biff, the bully of the previous film. The scenario is dark; the acting
suffers from Fox's tv sit-com mannerisms and Lloyd's hamming; but the
story, ambitious and intellectually complex for a popular movie, is a joy.
The good aspects of the film were perhaps ahead of their time, demanding a
knowledge in the audience that not enough of them had.

BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III
Film (1989). Credits as for Part II, but also starring Mary Steenburgen.
119 mins. Colour. Made with Part II and released soon after, this is a
hammy but enjoyable resolution of the story. Where Part II emphasizes
change and darkness, this emphasizes continuity and reconciliation. Marty
digs the damaged time machine out of a cave where it was buried in the
past by Dr Brown, who is "now" stranded in the Wild West town which was
Hill Valley, and, to judge from a nearby gravestone, will be shot in the
back on 7 September 1885. Marty returns to that year on 2 September
dressed in Western kitsch and adopting the pseudonym Clint Eastwood. He
finds a rough town on the verge of transition into a decent community, and
demonstrates his irrelevant, suburban 1985 values to the 1885 avatar of
Biff the bully while learning some new ones himself. There is something
pleasantly narcissistic and self-referential about the BTTF series
embracing the past history of its own small-town Californian setting so
passionately, like a communal version of wooing your own mother, the
Freudian threat of the original film. If Marty and Brown make love to
their own history the right way, it is intimated, then Hill Valley will
always be a comfortable, limited, tranquil Garden of Eden. The overall
vision of the three films is of a static paradise poised dangerously above
the dark abyss of uncertainty and change.

BACON, FRANCIS, VISCOUNT ST ALBANS AND BARON VERULAM
(1561-1626)English statesman, philosopher and writer who practised as a
barrister before embarking on a political career which ended in 1621 with
his dismissal, for taking bribes, from the post of Lord High Chancellor of
England. Early in life he planned a vast work, The Instauration of the
Sciences, a review and encyclopedia of all knowledge; the project was
never completed, but FB's reputation as a philosopher rests largely on the
first two parts: De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623 in Latin, based on The
Advancement of Learning [1605]) and Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620 in
Latin). The latter book championed observation, experiment and inductive
theorizing, arguing that the object of scientific inquiry is to discover
patterns of causation. His important contribution to PROTO SCIENCE
FICTION, the posthumously published fragment The New Atlantis (with Sylva
Sylvarum 1627; 1629), is a speculative account of possible technological
progress, probably written as an advertisement for a Royal College of
Science which he hoped to persuade James VI & I to endow. Though little
more than a catalogue, it is a remarkably accurate assessment of the
potential of the scientific renaissance. About the author: Francis
Bacon (1961 chap) by J.Max Patrick; Francis Bacon (1978 chap) by Brian
Vickers. See also: ATLANTIS; BIOLOGY; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FUTUROLOGY;
MACHINES; MUSIC; UTOPIAS; WEAPONS.

BACON, WALTER
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BADGER BOOKS
The main imprint of John Spencer & Co., used by that firm on almost all
their books from about the beginning of 1955 through 1967, when the
imprint was terminated. John Spencer & Co. itself was founded in 1947 and
still exists; like several other UK firms (e.g., CURTIS WARREN), it
specialized in the production of purpose-written paperback originals in
various popular genres, though the early 1950s saw some emphasis on
magazines (in small-DIGEST and pocketbook formats), including Out of this
World and Supernatural Stories, both being amalgamated under the latter
title in 1955. Some sf novels had been published, none distinguished,
before the BB imprint was created; but in 1954-67 several dozen issues of
Supernatural Stories were released, some consisting of a number of stories
by a single author under various pseudonyms, and 37 issues comprising
single novels (both categories are treated in this encyclopedia as books).
More significantly, in 1958 BB began an sf series which ran until 1966 and
consisted of 117 novels, almost all originals. One single author,
R.L.FANTHORPE, is popularly identified with BB; but although he did write
most of the titles, both sf and supernatural, he did not write them all.
John S.GLASBY also wrote a number, and other writers like A.A.GLYNN
produced one or two each, almost invariably under pseudonyms (for which
see authors' individual entries) or house names. For sf and supernatural
titles, BB house names included Victor LA SALLE, John E.MULLER and Karl
ZEIGFREID. Writers for BB worked for hire, and technically all BB books
are SHARECROPS, though the publishers exercised control only over length
(very rigidly), with content being a matter of some indifference. It is
understood that some sf readers have trawled the BB list for gems. Steve
HOLLAND suggests that the Glasby novels written as by A.J.Merak are of
some interest. Further reading: Fantasy Readers Guide 1: A Complete
Index and Annotated Commentary to the John Spencer Fantasy Publications
(1979 chap) by Mike ASHLEY; John Spencer and Badger Books: 1948-1967 (1985
chap) by Stephen Holland.

BADHAM, JOHN
(1939- ) US film-maker who showed a penchant for sf as far back as his
early tv work on ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY (1970-72), for which he
directed adaptations of stories by Basil Copper ("Camera Obscura") and
Fritz LEIBER ("The Girl with the Hungry Eyes"). For the portmanteau tv
film Three Faces of Love he directed Kurt VONNEGUT Jr's "Epicac", a
forerunner of JB's big-screen involvement with COMPUTERS and ROBOTS which
develop human characteristics. His first feature-length genre piece was
Isn't it Shocking? (1973), a well done made-for-tv movie about a
gadget-wielding murderer preying on the elderly. JB's first theatrical
feature was The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings (1976). He
followed up the enormous success of Saturday Night Fever (1977) with a
lush, romantic, somewhat shallow version of Dracula (1979) and the soapy
Who's Life Is It Anyway? (1981). Then in the 1980s JB turned out a
commercially successful trilogy of borderline sf films on mechanist
themes: BLUE THUNDER (1983), WARGAMES (1983) and SHORT CIRCUIT (1986). All
three deal with superweapons - a police helicopter, a vast military
computer and a military robot - that turn against violence, through,
respectively, human intervention, logical reasoning and a divine lightning
bolt. These are MACHINE movies, dependent on the glamour of robotry while
distrustful of technology without a "heart", suffused with impeccable
liberal sentiment of an increasingly stereotypical and less thoughtful
variety. This is indicated by the change from the hard-edged Blue Thunder,
a paranoid conspiracy movie, to the childish Short Circuit, which is
essentially a reworking of Disney's The Love Bug (1969) with a robot
instead of a Volkswagen. Subsequently JB has directed professional,
impersonal thrillers like Stakeout (1987), Bird on a Wire (1990), The Hard
Way (1991), Point of No Return (1993, vt The Assassin UK) and Another
Stakeout(1993). See also: CINEMA; VILLAINS.

BAD TASTE
Film (1987). WingNut. Prod, dir, ed, screenplay and special effects Peter
Jackson, starring Jackson, Terry Potter, Pete O'Herne, Mike Minett, Doug
Wren. 92 mins cut to 91 mins. Colour. ALIENS invade a small town to kill
humans and use them as a meat-source in a new galactic fast-food
franchise, but the INVASION is defeated, in this deliberately tasteless
(hence the title) low-budget New Zealand parody of sf and SPLATTER MOVIES.
It is in the same undergraduate, disgusting vein as BIG MEAT EATER (1982)
and The Evil Dead (horror, 1982) - drinking vomit, eating live brains -
but made much later and less proficiently. BT is amateurish (made over
four years at weekends), derivative and only occasionally funny. A better
made, but horribly emetic, film from the same director is Braindead
(1992), but this, a bloodsoaked farce about zombies, is only marginally
science fiction.

BAEN, JIM
Working name of US editor James Patrick Baen (1943- ) from the beginning
of his career in US publishing in 1972, when he became Gothics editor at
ACE BOOKS, though he nevertheless sometimes signed himself James Baen. He
moved to GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION in 1973 as managing editor, taking over
the editorship in 1974 of both Gal and IF from Ejler JAKOBSSON. These
magazines were then in a crisis, which resulted in their amalgamation (as
Gal) in January 1975. JB soon showed himself to be a capable editor, and
over the next two years turned Gal into one of the liveliest current
magazines, introducing popular columns by Jerry POURNELLE (science fact),
Spider ROBINSON (book reviews) and Richard E.GEIS (general comment). Gal
also began regularly to feature the much acclaimed stories of John VARLEY,
and serialized novels by Frank HERBERT, Larry NIVEN, Frederik POHL, Roger
ZELAZNY and others. In 1977 JB returned to Ace Books as sf editor,
becoming executive editor and vice-president before leaving in 1980 to
join Tom Doherty's newly founded TOR BOOKS as editorial director. He
retained this post until his departure in 1983 to form Baen Books, a firm
which, though it distributes its publications through Simon & Schuster,
has maintained itself as a full and genuine publisher, generally
specializing in military sf, though the range of authors it publishes is
fairly wide, including Lois McMaster BUJOLD, John DALMAS, David A.DRAKE,
Elizabeth MOON, Niven, Pournelle, S.M.STIRLING and Timothy ZAHN. As an
editor of books in his own right, JB produced some anthologies of reprints
from Gal and If, including The Best from Galaxy III (anth 1975) and #IV
(anth 1976), The Best from If III (anth 1976) and Galaxy: The Best of My
Years (anth 1980). He then produced, in Destinies, Far Frontiers (with
Pournelle) and New Destinies, a sequence of magazine/anthologies printing
original material. The DESTINIES sequence includes Destinies: The
Paperback Magazine of Science Fiction and Speculative Fact, Volume One (in
4 successive "issues", anths 1979), Volume Two (in 4 successive "issues",
anths 1980), The Best of Destinies (anth 1980) and Volume Three (in 2
successive "issues", anths 1981). The FAR FRONTIERS sequence, each
co-edited with Pournelle (and, uncredited, John F.CARR), includes Far
Frontiers (anth 1985), #2 (anth 1985), #3 (anth 1985), #4 (anth 1986), #5
(anth 1986), #6 (anth 1986) and #7 (anth 1986). The third sequence, New
Destinies, following on directly from the second, includes New Destinies
#1 (anth 1987), #2 (anth 1987), #3 (anth 1988), #4 (anth 1988), #6 (anth
1988), which comprises a special tribute to Robert A.HEINLEIN (there is no
#5), #7 (anth 1989), #8 (anth 1989), #9 (anth 1990) and #10 (anth 1992).
He also edited The Science Fiction Yearbook (anth 1985) with Carr and
Pournelle. With Barney COHEN, JB has written one novel, The Taking of
Satcom Station (1982). See also: HISTORY OF SF; SF MAGAZINES.

BAEN BOOKS
Jim BAEN.

BAERLEIN, ANTHONY
(? - ) UK writer whose sf novel, Daze, the Magician (1936), features
crimes committed through the use of MATTER TRANSMISSION.

BAGNALL, R(OBERT) D(AVID)
(1945- ) UK research chemist and writer. The Fourth Connection (coll of
linked stories 1975) presents a series of dramatized speculations on the
fourth DIMENSION, and describes the scientific community's response to the
challenges opened up.

BAHL, FRANKLIN
[s] Rog PHILLIPS.

BAHNSON, AGNEW H.Jr
(1915-c1964) US writer, inventor and textile-machinery manufacturer whose
NEAR-FUTURE political thriller, The Stars are too High (1959), features
hoax aliens with a real GRAVITY-driven ship who try to bring peace to the
world.

BAILEY, ANDREW J(ACKSON)
(1840-1927) Writer, apparently UK despite his given names, in whose The
Martian-Emperor President (1932) Earth is visited by a large spaceship
containing a delegation from Mars.

BAILEY, CHARLES W(ALDO)
(1929- ) US writer and journalist who collaborated with Fletcher KNEBEL
(whom see for details) on Seven Days in May (1962).

BAILEY, DENNIS B.
[r] David F.BISCHOFF.

BAILEY, HILARY
(1936- ) UK writer and editor, married to Michael MOORCOCK 1962-78. She
has written about 15 sf and fantasy stories, including "The Fall of
Frenchy Steiner" (1964) and "Everything Blowing Up: An Adventure of Una
Persson, Heroine of Time and Space" (1980), and was uncredited co-author
with Moorcock of The Black Corridor (1969). When Moorcock's NEW WORLDS
died as a magazine but continued for a while in quarterly paperback book
format, she joined Charles PLATT as co-editor of New Worlds Quarterly 7
(anth 1974; vt New Worlds 6 1975 US), and was sole editor of #8 (anth
1975), #9 (anth 1975) and #10 (anth 1976). Most of her writing is
mainstream fiction with occasional sf elements, as in All the Days of my
Life (1984), her almost successful bid for the bestseller market, which is
essentially an updated Moll Flanders (by Daniel DEFOE [1722]); it begins
in 1941 and ends in 1996. Also set in the very NEAR FUTURE (1991) is A
Stranger to Herself (1989). Hannie Richards, or The Intrepid Adventures of
a Restless Wife (1985) has fantastic elements. See also: HITLER WINS;
SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

BAILEY, J(AMES) O(SLER)
(1903-1979) US scholar, professor of literature at the University of
North Carolina. His Pilgrims through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns
in Scientific and Utopian Fiction (1947) was the first academic study of
sf, which it analyses primarily on a thematic basis, and without ever
using the term "science fiction", referring instead to "scientific
fiction" and the SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE. Only a small amount of its subject
matter is taken from sf magazines, which is less surprising when one
realizes that the work was based on JOB's 1934 doctoral dissertation. JOB
had much trouble finding an academic publisher who would consider sf
worthy of serious study; the book represents the first trickle of the
great torrent of SF IN THE CLASSROOM. He was honoured when the SCIENCE
FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION's PILGRIM AWARD (given annually for
contributions to sf scholarship) was named after his book, and he himself
was the first recipient (1970). JOB edited the 1965 edn of the
HOLLOW-EARTH novel Symzonia (1820) by Adam SEABORN. See also: CRITICAL
AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF.

BAILEY, PAUL (DAYTON)
(1906-1987) US osteopath, publisher and editor whose Deliver Me From Eva
(1946) deals with the complications ensuing from the hero's
father-in-law's capacity to increase INTELLIGENCE artificially.

BAIR, PATRICK
(? - ) UK writer whose Faster! Faster! (1950) is a DYSTOPIAN fable with
an sf flavour in which representatives of three classes, caught on a train
which goes on for ever, must work out their destinies. The Tribunal (1970)
satirizes a NEAR-FUTURE revolution in Italy. As David Gurney, he wrote
tales with a more popular slant, like The "F" Certificate (1968), which
treats of a violent UK to come. Other works as Gurney: The Necrophiles
(1969); the Conjurers sequence comprising The Conjurers (1972; vt The
Demonists 1977 US) and The Devil in the Atlas (1976); The Evil Under the
Water (1977).

BAIRD, WILHELMINA
Pseudonym of UK writer Joyce Carstairs Hutchinson (1935- ), who began
publishing sf with "Mantrap" for NW in 1961, writing this and other early
work as by Kathleen James; she soon became inactive in the field, however,
returning only with the Cass sequence of novels set in a CYBERPUNK-like
NEAR FUTURE England, and comprising CrashCourse (1994 US), ClipJoint (1994
US) and "PsyKosis" (1995 US). Her heroine-whose name reflects both
Cassandra and Case, the protagonist of William GIBSON's NEUROMANCER
(1984)-lives as a thief in a culture divided into Aris, Arts, Techs and
Umps (the great majority, who are permanently unemployed); but soon
becomes involved -"feeliefilms" and after becoming well-off is prepared,
in the sequels, to adventure off-Earth. The language throughout is alert,
savvy in the expected noir fashion, and funny.

BAJLA, JAN
[r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF.

BAKER, SCOTT
(1947- ) US-born writer, long resident in France, whose novels are
fantasy and horror with the exception of his first, Symbiote's Crown
(1978), a slyly intelligent though uneasily metaphysical SPACE OPERA.
Other works: Nightchild (1979; rev 1983); Dhampire (1982); the
Firedance sequence comprising Firedance (1986) and Drink the Fire from the
Flames (1987); Webs (1989).

BAKER, SHARON
(1938-1991) US author of 3 PLANETARY ROMANCES - all set on the planet
Naphar - whose richly layered FANTASY surface conceals much sf
underpinning: Naphar's poisonous environment has an sf explanation; the
planet has been colonized by humans who interbred with the native race;
and contacts with galactic civilization remain active. Quarreling, They
Met the Dragon (1984) describes the coming to adulthood of an escaped
slave. Journey to Membliar (1987) and its immediate sequel Burning Tears
of Sassurum (1988) comprise a quest tale culminating in dynastic
revelations in the capital city.

BAKER, W(ILLIAM ARTHUR) HOWARD
(1925-1991) Irish journalist, editor and author, in the UK after WWII.
After working as an editor of Panther Books he began to write for the
Sexton Blake Library in 1955, soon taking over as editor of the series for
Amalgamated Press, writing many titles under various names, and in 1965
taking the series to Mayflower Books, where it flourished briefly. He then
set up his own publishing imprint, which continued to publish Sexton Blake
books (among others). His stable of Sexton Blake writers included Wilfred
MCNEILLY, whose claims (see his entry) to have written most of WHB's
titles are false, and Jack Trevor STORY. His work was brisk and brash, and
he did not waste much time seeking quality, though his war novels were of
some interest; his sf - as editor and as author - rarely ventured beyond
the routine. It is impossible to distinguish much of what he wrote from
what he commissioned and what he doctored, under his own name and others.
Of sf/fantasy interest, he wrote some books under the Peter SAXON house
name, including 2 Guardians psychic investigator tales with McNeilly-Dark
Ways to Death (1968) and The Haunting of Alan Mais (1969) - and one solo:
The Killing Bone (1969). Other titles with McNeilly included The Darkest
Night (1966) and The Torturer (1966). With Stephen FRANCES (both as Saxon)
he wrote The Disorientated Man (1966; vt Scream and Scream Again 1967 US),
which was filmed as SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN(1969), and solo he wrote Black
Honey (1968) and Vampire's Moon (1970 US), both as Saxon. About the
author: "W.Howard Baker" by Jack Adrian, in Million 3 (1991).

BALCH, FRANK
(1880-1937) US writer whose sf novel, A Submarine Tour (1905) features,
in its painfully Vernean progress, visits to more than one LOST WORLD,
including ATLANTIS, in a submarine which hits 80 knots. All ends safely.

BALCHIN, NIGEL (MARLIN)
(1908-1970) UK writer, industrialist and wartime scientific adviser to
the Army Council; married for a time to Elisabeth AYRTON. From the
beginning of WWII his fictions specialized in the creation of
psychologically and physically crippled "competent men", as in The Small
Back Room (1943), and were plotted around scientific problems at the verge
of sf. Though No Sky (1934) is of marginal genre interest, his only sf
novel proper is Kings of Infinite Space (1967), a rather weak NEAR-FUTURE
look at the US space programme. See also: SPACE FLIGHT.

BALDWIN, BEE
Working name of New Zealand writer Beatrice Lillian Baldwin (? - ). Her
sf novel The Red Dust (1965), set in her native land, deals with a typical
Antipodean theme (cf Nevil SHUTE's On the Beach [1957]): the far-reaching
DISASTER whose consequences eventually embroil Southern climes. This time
it is red dust.

BALDWIN, BILL
Working name of US writer Merl William Baldwin Jr (1935- ), known mainly
for the efficient Helmsman adventure-sf sequence, whose plots are deployed
on a galactic scale: The Helmsman (1985 as Merl Baldwin; as BB 1990),
Galactic Convoy (1987), The Trophy (1990), The Mercenaries (1991), The
Defenders (1992) and The Siege (1994).

BALDWIN, MERL
Bill BALDWIN.

BALFORT, NEIL
[s] R.L.FANTHORPE.

BALL-BEARING MOUSETRAP
Most pulp magazines of the 1930s and 40s offered confessional and romance
stories that were pretty hard-boiled. But the stories in Astounding
magazine were surprisingly innocent. So the goal of many SF writers became
slipping off-color references past Editor John W.Campbell's editorial
assistant, Kay Tarrant. The only reported success was by George O. Smith,
who wrote a story entitled "Rat Race", which contained a reference to a
very technological-sounding item called a "ball-bearing mousetrap", which
was, in fact, a tomcat.

BALL, BRIAN N(EVILLE)
(1932- ) UK writer, until 1965 a teacher and lecturer, subsequently
freelance. He began publishing sf with "The Pioneer" for NW in 1962,
edited a juvenile anthology, Tales of Science Fiction (anth 1964), soon
after, and the next year published his first novel, Sundog (1965), one of
his better books, in which - though restricted by ALIENS to the Solar
System - mankind, in the person of space-pilot Dod, transcends its
limitations. There followed a trilogy involving an ancient Galactic
Federation, its relics, TIME TRAVEL, and rebirth: Timepiece (1968),
Timepivot (1970 US) and Timepit (1971). A second series, The Probability
Man (1972 US) and Planet Probability (1973 US), follows the exploits of
Frame-Director Spingarn in his heterodox construction of reality-spaces
(frames) for the delectation (and voluntary destruction) of billions of
bored citizens. Though he sometimes aspires to the more metaphysical side
of the sf tropes he utilizes, BNB's style tends to reduce these
implications to routine action-adventure plots, competently executed.
Other works: Lesson for the Damned (1971); Devil's Peak (1972); Night
of the Robots (1972; vt The Regiments of Night (1972 US); Singularity
Station (1973 US); The Space Guardians (1975), a SPACE 1999 tie; The
Venomous Serpent (1974; vt The Night Creature 1974 US); the two Keegan
books: The No-Option Contract (1975) and The One-Way Deal (1976); the
Witchfinder series, comprising The Mark of the Beast (1976) and The Evil
at Montaine (1977). For children: Princess Priscilla (1975); the Jackson
books, comprising Jackson's House (1975), Jackson's Friend (1975),
Jackson's Holiday (1977) and Jackson and the Magpies (1978); The Witch in
our Attic (1979); Young Person's Guide to UFOs (1979), nonfiction; Dennis
and the Flying Saucer (1980); The Starbuggy (1983); The Doomship of Drax
(1985); Truant from Space (1985 chap); Stone Age Magic (1988); The Quest
for Queenie (1988 chap).

BALL, JOHN (DUDLEY Jr)
(1911-1988) US commercial pilot and writer, much better known for work in
other genres - like In the Heat of the Night (1965) - than for his sf
novels, the first of which, Operation Springboard (1958; vt Operation
Space 1960 UK), is a juvenile about a space race to Venus. Other
works: Spacemaster 1 (1960); The First Team (1972).

BALLANTINE BOOKS
US publishing company founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine (1916-1995), who
had previously helped found BANTAM BOOKS, and Betty Ballantine; for the
first six months BB operated from their apartment. Although it was a
general publisher, an important priority was the prestigious sf list, the
first of its kind in paperback, with many original works, many of which
were - until 1958 - published simultaneously as hardbacks. BB's first sf
novel was THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953) by Frederik POHL and C.M.KORNBLUTH;
Pohl also edited BB's Star series of ANTHOLOGIES. By the end of 1953, BB
had also published Ray BRADBURY's FAHRENHEIT 451, Arthur C.CLARKE's
CHILDHOOD'S END, Ward MOORE's BRING THE JUBILEE, Theodore STURGEON's MORE
THAN HUMAN, and others. The list of regular authors resembles an sf roll
of honour: figures in later years included James BLISH, Fritz LEIBER,
Larry NIVEN and many others. Almost 100 early Ballantine covers featured
artwork by Richard POWERS, much of it semi-abstract; meant to emphasize
the modernity and innovative quality of the fiction, the effect was wider
than that: it was as if sf had suddenly grown up. The Powers covers were
one of the symbols of sf's growth to maturity. Ballantine became a
division of Random House in 1973, and the two Ballantines left in 1974.
Judy-Lynn DEL REY became sf editor, and in 1976 her husband Lester DEL REY
took over the fantasy list initiated by Lin CARTER. In 1977 the sf/fantasy
imprint was renamed DEL REY BOOKS. Since that time some sf has been
published under the original Ballantine imprint, but this has mostly been
borderline sf or sometimes, as with novels by Michael CRICHTON, sf books
for which a substantial mainstream sale is expected. In 1990 the combined
imprints of Ballantine, Del Rey and Fawcett, all under the same ownership,
were running fifth in the USA in terms of the number of sf/fantasy/horror
titles published. Further reading: Ballantine Books: The First
Decade: A Bibliographical History & Guide of the Publisher's Early Years
(1987) by David Aronovitz. See also: HUGO.

BALLARD, J(AMES) G(RAHAM)
(1930- ) UK writer, born in Shanghai and as a child interned in a
Japanese civilian POW camp during WWII. He first came to the UK in 1946.
He later read medicine at King's College, Cambridge, but left without
taking a degree. JGB discovered sf while in Canada during his period of
RAF service in the early 1950s. His first stories, "Escapement" and "Prima
Belladonna", were published in E.J.CARNELL's NEW WORLDS and SCIENCE
FANTASY, respectively, in 1956. His writing was influenced by the
Surrealist painters and the early Pop artists. From the start, he opened a
new prospect in sf; his interest in PSYCHOLOGY and in the emotional
significance of deserted landscapes and wrecked TECHNOLOGY soon became
apparent in such stories as "Build-Up" (1957; vt "The Concentration
City"), "Manhole 69" (1957), "The Waiting Grounds" (1959), "The
Sound-Sweep" (1960) and "Chronopolis" (1960). On the whole, he eschewed
such sf themes as space travel, time travel, aliens and ESP, concentrating
instead on NEAR-FUTURE decadence and DISASTER. In 1962 he began using the
term INNER SPACE to describe the area of his obsessions, and stated that
"the only truly alien planet is Earth". "The Voices of Time" (1960) is his
most important early story, an apocalyptic view of a terrible new
EVOLUTION (or DEVOLUTION) faced by the human race. As with much of his
work, its impressive quality is a result of JGB's painterly eye, as shown
in his moody descriptions of landscapes. With "Studio 5, the Stars" (1961)
JGB returned to the setting of "Prima Belladonna": a decaying resort,
Vermilion Sands, where poets, artists and actresses pursue perverse whims.
He subsequently wrote seven more stories against this background, and the
series, which constitutes one of his most popular works, was collected as
Vermilion Sands (coll 1971 US; with 1 story added rev 1973 UK). JGB's
first novel, The Wind from Nowhere (1962 US), was written in a fortnight,
and the money that he earned from it enabled him to become a full-time
writer. It is his only work of formula sf, the formula being that of John
WYNDHAM's disaster novels. In The Drowned World (1962 US) JGB inverted the
pattern, creating a hero who conspires with rather than fights against the
disaster that is overtaking his world. It was this novel, with its
brilliant descriptions of an inundated London and an ECOLOGY reverting to
the Triassic, which gained JGB acceptance as a major author. However, the
self-immolating tendency of his characters drew adverse criticism; some
readers, particularly devotees of GENRE SF, wrote JGB off, rather
simplistically, as a pessimist and a life-hater. Certainly his next two
novels, The Burning World (1964 US; rev vt The Drought 1965 UK) and THE
CRYSTAL WORLD (fixup 1966), served further to polarize opinion. Each
contains a lovingly described cataclysm towards which the protagonist
holds ambiguous attitudes. Some commentators - e.g., Kingsley AMIS and
Michael MOORCOCK - praised these works very highly. JGB is regarded by
some as a better short-story writer than novelist, however, and his 1960s
stories drew an enthusiastic audience. "Deep End" (1961), "Billenium"
(1961) (spelt thus on its first appearance, and sometimes thereafter),
"The Garden of Time" (1962), "The Cage of Sand" (1962) and "The
Watch-Towers" (1962) are among the excellent stories reprinted in his
collections The Voices of Time and Other Stories (coll 1962 US), Billenium
(coll 1962 US) and The Four-Dimensional Nightmare (coll 1963; rev 1974; vt
The Voices of Time 1984)"The Subliminal Man", "A Question of Re-Entry" and
"The Time-Tombs" (all 1963) are masterpieces of desolation and melancholy,
as is "The Terminal Beach" (1964), which shows JGB beginning to move in a
new direction, towards greater compression of imagery and nonlinearity of
plot. All these stories contain "properties", described objects, which
have become JGB's trademarks: wrecked spacecraft, sand-dunes, concrete
deserts, broken juke-boxes, abandoned nightclubs, and military and
industrial detritus in general. Sympathetic readers regard JGB's unique
"properties" and landscapes as being very appropriate to the contemporary
world: they constitute a "true" dream vision of our times. (In an
essay-"Myth-Maker of the 20th Century", NW #142, 1964-JGB has himself
acknowledged similar qualities in the work of William S.BURROUGHS.)
Perhaps JGB's strongest single collection of stories is The Terminal Beach
(coll 1964 UK), not to be confused with Terminal Beach (coll 1964 US): the
titles have only 2 stories in common. (The earlier US collections of JGB's
short stories are quite different from the contemporaneous UK editions,
and normally have different titles. Most of the earlier short stories
appear in at least two collections.) Other collections, all containing
much good material, are Passport to Eternity (coll 1963 US), The
Impossible Man (coll 1966 US) and The Disaster Area (coll 1967). One
story, "The Drowned Giant"(1965; vt "Souvenir"), was nominated for a
NEBULA, although the fact that JGB has never won an sf AWARD is indicative
of his unpopularity with HARD-SF fans. He did, however, become a
figurehead of the NEW WAVE of the later 1960s: younger UK writers such as
Charles PLATT and M.John HARRISON show his influence directly."You and Me
and the Continuum" (1966) inaugurated a series of stories - "condensed
novels", as JGB has called them - in which he explored the MEDIA LANDSCAPE
of advertising, broadcasting, POLITICS and WAR. Collected as THE ATROCITY
EXHIBITION (coll 1970; vt Love and Napalm: Export USA 1972 US; rev 1990
US), these are JGB's most "difficult" works, and they provoked more
hostility than anything that had gone before; the collection's intended
1970 US edition, from DOUBLEDAY, was printed but, on the instructions of a
panicking executive, pulped just before publication. The hostility was
partly due to the fact that JGB uses real people such as Marilyn Monroe,
the Kennedys and Ronald Reagan as "characters". In the novel Crash (1973)
JGB took his obsession with automobile accidents to a logical conclusion.
Perhaps the best example of "pornographic" sf, it explores the
psychological satisfactions of danger, mutilation and death on the roads;
it is also an examination of the interface between modern humanity and its
MACHINES. Brightly lit and powerfully written, it is a work with which it
is difficult for many readers to come to terms; one publisher's reader
wrote of the manuscript: "The author of this book is beyond psychiatric
help." Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975) are also urban disaster
novels set in the present, the one concerning a driver marooned on a
traffic island between motorway embankments, the other focusing on the
breakdown of social life in a multistorey apartment block. All three of
these novels are about the ways in which the technological landscape may
be fulfilling and reflecting our own ambiguously "worst" desires. In the
mid-1970s JGB returned to the short-story form, in which he still
excelled. Such pieces as "The Air Disaster" (1975), "The Smile" (1976) and
"The Dead Time" (1977) are outstanding psychological horror stories on the
fringes of sf. The collection Low-Flying Aircraft (coll 1976) contains an
excellent original novella, "The Ultimate City", which projects JGB's
urban obsessions of the 1970s into the future. Later volumes of stories
are Myths of the Near Future (coll 1982), Memories of the Space Age (coll
1988 US) and War Fever (coll 1990), all of which contain a good deal of sf
mixed with psychological fantasy. The Unlimited Dream Company (1979),
JGB's first fully fledged fantasy novel, concerns a young man who crashes
a stolen light aircraft into the River Thames, apparently dies and is
reborn, finding himself trapped in the riverside town of Shepperton (where
JGB in reality makes his home). The hero discovers the ability to change
himself into various beasts and birds, and to transform the sleepy suburb
around him into a vivid garden of exotic flowers. More sinisterly, he is
able to "absorb" human beings into his body-before expelling them again,
in the apocalyptic climax to the novel. The book is a remarkable fantasy
of self-aggrandizement, colourfully and compellingly told. It was followed
by JGB's most conventional sf novel in some years, Hello America (1981), a
comparatively light work about the rediscovery of an abandoned
22nd-century USA. JGB moved away from sf again for his most commercially
successful novel to date, Empire of the Sun (1984). Based on his childhood
experiences in Lunghua POW camp near Japanese-occupied Shanghai, it gained
him a vast new readership. The book has great merit as a psychological war
novel, but for the sf reader part of its interest lies in its apparent
revelation of the "sources" of many of JGB's recurring images and
"properties" (those drained swimming pools, abandoned buildings,
low-flying aircraft, drowned landscapes - they are all here). Although it
is not at all an sf or fantasy work, it has much in common with all JGB's
earlier fiction. The novel was filmed in 1987 by Steven SPIELBERG, and JGB
wrote a sequel, The Kindness of Women (1991). This latter is told in the
first person - Empire of the Sun is told in the third - and covers a
50-year timespan: heavily autobiographical, it is an intriguing work for
anyone interested in JGB's career, but contains little direct reference to
sf. Earlier JGB had written another psychological adventure novel, The Day
of Creation (1987). Set in an imaginary African country, it is less
overtly fantastic than The Unlimited Dream Company but resembles that
novel in terms of theme and imagery. The narrator inadvertently causes a
new river to well up from the parched earth, transforming a barren war
zone into a luxuriant, although short-lived, jungle. Like all Ballard's
novels it contains extraordinary descriptive passages embedded in a fairly
simple plot peopled by perverse characters of some psychological
complexity. This book was followed by an acute and entertaining novella,
Running Wild (1988 chap), a Thames Valley murder mystery of marginal sf
interest. Although most of his longer work of the past decade has been
outside the field, the originality and appropriateness of his vision
continue to ensure JGB's standing as one of the most important writers
ever to have emerged from sf. Other works: The Drowned World and The
Wind from Nowhere (omni 1965 US); By Day Fantastic Birds Flew through the
Petrified Forest (1967), wall-poster incorporating text from THE CRYSTAL
WORLD, sometimes wrongly included in JGB bibliographies as a book or chap;
The Day of Forever (coll 1967; rev 1971); The Overloaded Man (coll 1967;
rev vt The Venus Hunters 1980); Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (1968
chap); CHRONOPOLIS AND OTHER STORIES (coll 1971 US); The Best of
J.G.Ballard (coll 1977); The Best Short Stories of J.G.Ballard (coll 1978
US); News from the Sun (1982 chap); The Crystal World; Crash; Concrete
Island (omni 1991 US); Rushing to Paradise (1994), associational. About
the author: J.G.Ballard: The First Twenty Years (1976) ed James Goddard
and David PRINGLE; Earth is the Alien Planet: J.G.Ballard's
Four-Dimensional Nightmare (1979 US) by David Pringle; J.G.Ballard: A
Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1984 US) by David Pringle; Re/Search
8/9: J.G.Ballard (1984 US) ed Vale and Andrea Juno; J.G.Ballard: Starmont
Reader's Guide 26 (1985 US) by Peter Brigg; Out of the Night and Into the
Dream: A Thematic Study of J.G.Ballard (1991) by Gregory Stephenson. See
also: ABSURDIST SF; ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARTS; BRITISH SCIENCE
FICTION AWARD; CITIES; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT;
CYBERPUNK; DEFINITIONS OF SF; ECONOMICS; ENTROPY; FANTASTIC VOYAGES;
FRANCE; GREAT AND SMALL; HISTORY OF SF; HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; ISLANDS;
LEISURE; MARS; MEDICINE; MESSIAHS; MUSIC; MUTANTS; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM;
OVERPOPULATION; PERCEPTION; SEX; SPACE FLIGHT; TIME TRAVEL; UFOS.

BALLARD'S DARK VISION
J.G.Ballard may not have courted controversy. But the style and subject
matter of his work just seemed to attract it. After years of writing short
stories and novels noted for their dark visions and ambiguity, Ballard
caused a major explosion with a series of stories called The Atrocity
Exhibition. The U.S. edition was printed in 1970 but destroyed by the
publisher when an executive panicked after reading Ballard’s descriptions
of such real people as the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, and Ronald Reagan.
Ballard was unfazed and continued to write controversial works, including
the novel Crash. After reading that work, one reader commented, "The
author of this book is beyond psychiatric help. "It wasn't until a decade
later that Ballard found an appreciative audience. Empire of the Sun,
directed by Steven Spielberg, was a film based on Ballard's childhood
experiences in Shanghai during World War II. It provided clues about the
writer's psyche and motivation. And it brought Ballard a whole new
readership.

BALLINGER, BILL S.
William S.BALLINGER.

BALLINGER, W.A.
Wilfred Glassford MCNEILLY.

BALLINGER, WILLIAM S(ANBORN)
(1912-1980) US screenwriter and novelist who has also signed his books
Bill S.Ballinger. His work in radio and film was successful (he won an
Edgar Award in 1960), but his sf is comparatively obscure, and some listed
titles are dubious. We feel secure about listing The 49 Days of Death
(1969) and The Ultimate Warrior (1975), which novelizes The ULTIMATE
WARRIOR (1975). Other titles which have been ascribed to WSB, but which we
cannot feel secure about, include The Fourth of Forever (1963) and The
Doom Maker (1959) as by B.X.Sanborn, the latter being more widely credited
to WSB than the former. He was perhaps best known for his detective novels
under the name Frederic Freyer.

BALLOONS
For some six months in 1783 Paris was the Cape Canaveral of the 18th
century as Parisians watched a succession of extraordinary ascents by
hot-air balloons. The first successful manned trip took place on 21 Nov,
as reported by Benjamin Franklin, and it started off a long series of
speculations about the conquest of the air. Thomas Jefferson was certain
that balloon TRANSPORTATION would lead to the discovery of the north pole
"which is but one day's journey in a balloon, from where the ice has
hitherto stopped adventurers". Franklin was certain that the new balloons
would revolutionize warfare; and L.S.MERCIER added a new chapter to the
1786 edition of his L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante (1771; rev 1786;
trans as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred 1772) to show how
the "aerostats" were destined to link remote Pekin to Paris in a system of
world communications. When the inhabitants of major European cities
watched the new balloons drifting above, they thought they saw the
beginning of a profound change in human affairs: the assurance of a
growing mastery of Nature. For a brief period there were plays, poems and
stories about balloon travel - even a space operetta, Die Luftschiffer,
performed before Catherine II in the Imperial Court Theatre at St
Petersburg. Expectations about the future carried over into occasional
stories like The Aerostatic Spy (1785), published anon, the first of the
round-the-world stories that ran their course up to Jules VERNE's Cinq
semaines en ballon (1863; trans as Five Weeks in a Balloon 1869). The
balloon proved a most useful marker of the future (as the ROCKET was to do
in a later period), and was used by early sf writers as a convincing way
of establishing the more advanced circumstances of their future worlds.
Balloons were also the source of the first visual fantasies of the future:
there were engravings of balloon battles, vast transport balloons crossing
the Atlantic and airborne troops crossing the Channel. By the 1870s,
however, experiments with heavier-than-air flying machines had turned
popular attention towards airships and aircraft of the future.

BALMER, EDWIN
(1883-1959) US writer and editor, trained as an engineer, who wrote in a
variety of genres and edited (1927-49) the magazine Red Book, which
occasionally published sf. With his brother-in-law William MacHarg
(1872-1951) he wrote The Achievements of Luther Trant (coll 1910), a
series of 9 detective stories with borderline sf elements, notably the
accurate forecasting of the lie detector; some were reprinted in Hugo
GERNSBACK's AMAZING STORIES. EB is best known for his collaborations with
Philip WYLIE, When Worlds Collide (1933), filmed as WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
(1951), and the inferior After Worlds Collide (1934). In the first, Earth
is destroyed in a collision with the planet Bronson Beta; in the second,
escapees settle on the new planet, fight off some Asiatic communists, and
prosper. EB's solo sf novel was Flying Death (1927). Other works: The
Golden Hoard (1934) with Philip Wylie, a mystery thriller. See also:
COMICS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; DISASTER; END OF THE WORLD; HOLOCAUST AND
AFTER; PREDICTION; SPACESHIPS.

BALROG AWARD
AWARDS.

BALSDON, (JOHN PERCY VYVIAN) DACRE
(1901-1977) UK historian and author; Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford
1927-69. His three sf novels are humorous satires on contemporary mores,
little allowance being made for technological, social or behavioural
change. The most imaginative, Sell England? (1936), is a DYSTOPIA set 1000
years hence. The UK is inhabited solely by a decadent aristocracy, the
other echelons of society living in Africa under a totalitarian
dictatorship. Have a New Master (1935) and The Day They Burned Miss
TermaginOxford Life, coll 1957, as "Mr Botteaux's Story"; exp 1961) are
set, respectively, in a school 30 years hence and in an Oxford of the
immediate future. They have had little influence. Other works: Bedlam
House (1947), borderline SF, set in the Ministry of Anticipation; The
Pheasant Shoots Back (1949), a fantasy juvenile.

BALZAC, HONORE de
(1799-1850) French writer best known for La comedie humaine ["The Human
Comedy"], an immense series of novels into which his PROTO-SCIENCE-FICTION
story, La recherche de l'absolu (in Etudes de moeurs au XIXe siecle, coll
1834; trans as The Philosopher's Stone 1844 US; vt Balthazar, or Science &
Love 1859; vt The Alchemist 1861; vt The Alkahest 1887; vt The Quest of
the Absolute 1895 UK; vt The Tragedy of a Genius 1912; new trans Ellen
Marriage as the Quest of the Absolute 1990 UK) fits somewhat dissonantly.
Balthazar Claes invests everything into his search for a kind of universal
element that lies at the base of all other elements, but fails. Other
works: HdB is, like Jules VERNE, a bibliographer's nightmare. Of his
numerous early sensational novels, few translations seem to exist, and his
later supernatural fiction appears in very various and chameleon guises.
But some titles are of genre interest: Le Centenaire: ou les deux
Behringeld (1822 as by Horace de Saint-Aubin; trans George Edgar SLUSSER
as The Centenarian, or The Two Behringelds 1976 US), a horror novel; La
Peau de chagrin (1831; trans as Luck and Leather: A Parisian Romance 1842
US; various vts; new trans Katharine Prescott Wormeley as The Magic Skin
1888 US), a fantasy; "Seraphita" (1836; trans anon 1889 US; new trans
Clara Bell 1990 US), an occult romance; "Melmoth Reconcile" (in Etudes
philosophiques, coll 1836; trans in coll The Unknown Masterpiece 1896 UK),
a sequel to Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles MATURIN. About the
author: Balzac (1973) by V.S.Pritchett. See also: MONEY; SCIENTISTS.

BAMBER, GEORGE
(1932- ) US writer whose sf novel, The Sea is Boiling Hot (1971), deals
with a large number of themes, including ECOLOGY: nuclear pollution has
set the seas to boiling; mankind lives in huge domed CITIES; COMPUTERS do
the work and provide sophisticated entertainment; many citizens opt out
for lobotomized relief from a boring world. The protagonist discovers how
to reverse the effects of POLLUTION by reconstituting pollutants into
their original states; DISASTER routinely threatens and breaks.

BANCROFT, LAURA
L.Frank BAUM.

BAND, CHARLES
(1952- ) US film producer, director and entrepreneur, his ambitions often
undone by underbudgeting, but responsible for a vigorous burst of
sf/fantasy/horror exploitation movies in the mid-1980s. His best works
indicate a lively mind and a bizarre B-movie sensibility that has led to
comparison with the Roger CORMAN of the 1950s. Son of exploitation
film-maker Albert Band (I Bury the Living [1956] and others) and brother
of prolific film composer Richard Band, CB produced his first film,
Mansion of the Doomed (1976) - a mad-SCIENTIST picture modelled on Georges
Franju's Les YEUX SANS VISAGE (1959) - at the age of 21, and directed his
first, Crash! (1977), a year later. With the healthy profits from a pair
of derivative 3-D sf efforts that he produced and directed - Parasite
(1982), a MONSTER MOVIE, and METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN
(1983) - CB set up Empire International, a prolific grindhouse outfit that
flourished 1983-88, many of its films shot in Italy 1984-8. When Empire
had financial problems, CB sold out to Irwin Yablans, who had produced for
the company, and established a less ambitious production house, Full Moon
International which after a time shot a number of films in Romania. Other
sf films, many of them marginal sf/horror, with which CB was involved as a
producer (sometimes simply because Empire provided funding, sometimes with
fuller creative participation) include - the list may be incomplete - End
of the World (1977), Tourist Trap (1978), The Day Time Ended (1978; vt
Timewarp; vt Vortex), LASERBLAST (1978), Swordkill (1984; vt Ghost
Warrior), The Dungeonmaster (1984; vt RageWar; vt Digital Knights),
RE-ANIMATOR (1985; CB uncredited funded but did not produce), ZONE
TROOPERS (1985), ELIMINATORS (1986), TERRORVISION (1986), Mutant Hunt
(1986), Breeders (1986) CB's first direct-to-video production, FROM BEYOND
(1986), Robot Holocaust (1987), The Caller (1987), Arena (1988) based on
the Fredric BROWN 1944 short story, "Transformations"(1988), Shadow Zone
(1989), ROBOT JOX (1990), Crash and Burn (1990) directed by CB, Dollman
(1990), Doctor Mordrid (1992), co-directed with his father, Bad Channels
(1993), Seed People (1993), Trancers 3: Deth Lives (1993, vt Future Cop
3), Mandroid (1993), Robot Wars (1993) dir Albert Band, Prehysteria (1993)
dir CB and his father, Beach Babes from Beyond Infinity (1993),
Arcade(1994), Trancers 4: Jack of Swords (1994, vt Future Cop 4), Test
Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994), Trancers 5: Sudden Death (1995 vt
Future Cop 5), Oblivion (1995) and Prehysteria 2 (1995). Supernatural
HORROR films in which CB was involved, nearly always just as producer
except where noted, include - the list is not fully complete - Dracula's
Dog (1978 vt Zoltan: Hound of Dracula) dir Albert Band, Ghoulies (1984),
Troll (1986), Dreamaniac (1986), Necropolis (1987), Dolls (1987), Ghoulies
II (1987) dir Albert Band, Prison (1988), Ghost Town (1988), Puppetmaster
(1989), Catacombs (1990, vt Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice), Meridian
(1990, vt Kiss of the Beast) dir CB, Puppetmaster II (1990), Demonic Toys
(1990), Netherworld (1990), Puppetmaster III (1990), Subspecies (1990),
The Pit and the Pendulum(1991), Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys (1993) dir CB,
Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993), Bloodlust: Subspecies III (1994),
Puppetmaster IV (1994), Dragonworld (1994) fantasy rather than horror,
Lurking Fear (1994), DARK ANGEL (1994), Puppetmaster 5: The Final Chapter
(1995), Shrunken Heads (1995). While CB has certainly unleashed a torrent
of middling-to-terrible product - often featuring cheap ROBOTS or small
puppet demons - he deserves credit for fostering such talent as director
Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, special-effects-men-turned-directors
David Allen and John Carl Buechler, and writers Danny Bilson and Paul
DeMeo. TRANCERS (1984; vt Future Cop), dir CB from a snappy script by
Bilson and DeMeo, is one of the best sf films of the decade, an
imaginative TIME TRAVEL adventure that beat The TERMINATOR to several
punches and features as many ideas in its brief running time as an Alfred
BESTER novel. CB also dir the disappointing sequel, Trancers 2 (1991; vt
Future Cop 2). More and more from 1987 on, CB has concentrated on
direct-to-video production, which can be profitable if budgets and
shooting schedules are minimized. In the 1990s very few of his films have
had theatrical release, but in the direct-to-video castle he is probably
king. Full Moon built its staff up from 8 to 200 in the 1990s. In 1993 he
launched a new label, Moonbeam, specializing in children's products. With
the success of Prehysteria and Dragonworld in this label, it looks as if
this is where CB's future may lie. However in 1994, CB, never one to
overlook a marketing opportunity, also launched the Torchlight label,
which makes "adult" (i.e. pornographic) films. See also: HORROR IN SF.

BANGS, JOHN KENDRICK
(1862-1922) Extremely prolific US writer under many names, most of whose
books of interest were humorous fantasies, not sf. However, one of them
(his most famous), A House-Boat on the Styx: Being Some Account of the
Divers Doings of the Associated Shades (1896), provides a model for many
stories featuring the famous dead as posthumous protagonists in venues
that usually have an Arcadian glow. From it a suggestive line of
association can be drawn through William Dean HOWELLS's The Seen and
Unseen at Stratford-on-Avon (1914) and the works of Thorne Smith
(1892-1934) down to the various Riverworld tales and novels of Philip Jose
FARMER. The sequels areThe Pursuit of the House-Boat (1897) and The
Enchanted Type-Writer (coll of linked stories 1899). Other works:
Roger Camerden: A Strange Story (1887); New Waggings of Old Tales (coll
1888) with Frank Dempster Sherman, both writing as Two Wags; Tiddlywink
Tales (coll 1891); Toppleton's Client, or A Spirit in Exile (1893); The
Water Ghost (coll 1894); Mr Bonaparte of Corsica (1895); The Idiot (1895);
A Rebellious Heroine (1896); The Bicyclers, and Three Other Farces (coll
1896); Ghosts I have Met and Some Others (coll 1898); The Dreamers: A Club
(coll 1899)Mr Munchausen (1901); Over the Plum-Pudding (coll 1901); Bikey
the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmie-Boy (coll 1902), some stories being
sf; Emblemland (1902) with Charles R.Macauley, a desert-island fantasy;
Olympian Nights (1902); The Inventions of an Idiot (coll 1904); Alice in
Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream (1907); The Autobiography of Methuselah
(1909); Jack and the Check Book (1911); Shylock Homes: His Posthumous
Memoirs (coll 1973).

BANISTER, MANLY (MILES)
(1914-1986) US novelist and short-story writer. Conquest of Earth (1957)
is a SPACE OPERA in which a resurgent mankind learns how to conquer the
ALIEN Trisz. Other sf novels have been published in magazine form only.
Other works: Eegoboo: A Fantasy Satire (1957? chap). See also:
RECURSIVE SF.

BANKS, IAIN M(ENZIES)
(1954- ) Scottish writer who distinguishes between his fiction published
for a general market and that aimed more directly at sf readers by signing
the former books Iain Banks and the latter Iain M.Banks; although
differences in register and venue can be detected in the two categories -
as in the case of Graham Greene's "Entertainments" - those categories tend
to merge. IB's first published novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), is a case
in point: the familial intensities brought to light as the 17-year-old
protagonist awaits the return home of his crazy older brother are
psychologically probing in an entirely mimetic sense, while at the same
time his dreams and behaviour are rendered in terms displaced into the
surrealistic realms of modern horror. IB's second novel, Walking on Glass
(1985), even more radically engages a mixture of genres - a mimetic
rendering of an adolescent's coming of age, a paranoid's displaced and
displacing conviction that he is a warrior from the stars, and the
entrapment of a "genuine" set of characters from an sf war - in something
like internecine warfare. The Bridge (1986), perhaps IB's finest single
novel, once again conflates the literal with displacements of metaphor
which are given the weight of reality, as a comatose man relives (or
anticipates) his own life, which is represented in matrix form as an
enormous bridge, among the interstices of which he engages in a rather
hilarious parody of SWORD-AND-SORCERY conventions. Of later IB novels,
Canal Dreams (1989) also stretches the nature of the MAINSTREAM novel by
being set in AD2000. The IMB novels (some of which were written, at least
in an early form, before The Wasp Factory) are conspicuously more holiday
in spirit and open in texture, seeming at first glance to occupy their
space-opera venues without much thought for the morrow. It is a deceptive
impression, though the exuberance is genuine enough. The first four IMB
novels - Consider Phlebas (1987), The Player of Games (1988), The State of
the Art (1989 US), which was assembled with other stories, some of them
Culture tales (see below), as The State of the Art (coll 1991), and USE OF
WEAPONS (1990) - comprise loose-connected segments of a sequence devoted
to a portrayal of a vast, interstellar, ship-based Culturegoverned by
vast, wry AIs. The underlying premises IMB uses to shape this Culture
stand as a direct challenge to those underlying most future HISTORIES.
Most importantly, and most unusually for SPACE OPERA, the Culture has very
carefully been conceived in genuine post-scarcity terms. In other words,
it boasts no hierarchies bent on maintaining power through control of
limited resources. There are no Empires in the Culture, no tentacled
Corporations, no Enclave whose hidden knowledge gives its inhabitants a
vital edge in their attempts to maintain independence against the military
hardware of the far-off Czar at the apex of the pyramid of power. Even
more remarkably, IMB represents the inhabitants of the Culture - they are
most often met monitoring and exploring the Universe in the vast AI-run
ships which comprise the ganglia of the colossal enterprise - as energetic
volunteers at living in the UTOPIA that has, in a sense, been created for
them. The novels themselves, perhaps understandably, shy clear of any
undue focus on this complex, free-form, secular paradise, concentrating on
wars between the Culture and its occasional enemies. The protagonist of
Consider Phlebas is a mercenary who has chosen the wrong side; in his
battles against the Culture he exposes the reader to a number of sly
ironies, because the doomed civilization for which he is fighting is
remarkably similar to the standard backdrop GALACTIC EMPIRE found in
routine space opera. The Player of Games, though more economically told
than its bulbous predecessor, less challengingly pits its protagonist
against a savage game-based civilization, which he causes to crumble. The
novel The State of the Art contrasts contemporary Earth with a Culture
mission, allowing a variety of satirical points to be made about the
seamy, agonistic, death-obsessed mortals of our planet. USE OF WEAPONS,
constructed with some of the savage inhibiting intricacy of Walking on
Glass, does finally address the question of Culture guilt for its
manipulation of races not yet free of scarcity-bound behaviour; its
portrayal of the relationship between a Culture woman and the mercenary in
her employ is tough-minded, and provides no easy answers. The next two IMB
novels move away from Culture concerns. Against a Dark Background (1993)
is a singleton whose soft, walkabout middle somewhat muffles a tale of
singular desolation, in which a female protagonist is coerced into
ransacking her home planet for a MCGUFFIN-like treasure, and in the course
of accomplishing her goal loses her companions, loses her sense of trust
in her stifling family, and witnesses the further decline of her world.
Feersum Endjinn(1994) is a complex tale told at a scherzo pace, conflating
several plotlines into a neatly planned climax during which a FAR FUTURE
world is saved, folk are reunited, the dead walk, and everyone is
sling-shot into a new paradigm. For many readers and critics, IB/IMB was
the major new UK sf writer of recent decades. Other works: Cleaning Up
(1987 chap) as IMB; Espedair Street (1987) as IB, associational; The Crow
Road (1992) as IB, associational Complicity (1993), associational. See
also: OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PSYCHOLOGY.

BANKS, MICHAEL A.
(1951- ) US writer and editor who began publishing sf with "Lost &
Found", with George Wagner, for IASFM in 1978, and who has since published
at least 45 stories, some as by Alan Gould. His first books of sf interest
were the nonfiction Understanding Science Fiction (1982), a primer for
teachers unfamiliar with the field, and Ultraheroes (1983), an sf
interactive text for juveniles. His first sf novel as such was The
Odysseus Solution (1986) with Dean R(odney) Lambe (1943- ), an adventure
tale involving ALIENS; he remains best known perhaps for his
"collaborations" with the late Mack REYNOLDS (whom see for details), in
which he edited or worked up material by Reynolds into Joe Mauser:
Mercenary from Tomorrow (1986) and Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes (1986).
Other activities included the associate editorship of New Destinies
(DESTINIES) in 1986-7. Much of his nonfiction treats material of interest
to sf writers and readers. Other works: MAB's nonfiction includes
several computer product-training and applications texts, as well as
DELPHI: The Official Guide (1987); The Modem Reference (1988); Word
Processing Secrets for Writers (1989) with Ansen Dibel; and Pournelle's
Guide to PC Communications (1991) with Jerry POURNELLE.

BANNERMAN, GENE
[s] Thomas P.KELLEY.

BANNISTER, JO
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BANNON, MARK
Paul CONRAD.

BANTAM BOOKS
Large US publishing house, a general publisher, mainly of paperbacks,
rather than an sf specialist. It was founded in 1945 by Ian Ballantine,
but he left in 1952 to form BALLANTINE BOOKS because he wanted to publish
paperback originals, whereas BB's list was almost entirely of reprints -
although one early sf paperback original (but not published as sf) from BB
was Shot in the Dark (anth 1950) ed Judith MERRIL. In the 1950s and 1960s
BB published some sf, including original collections by Fredric BROWN, but
generally were not major players in sf publishing. Their sf line was
expanded when Frederik POHL was hired as sf consultant in 1975; inter alia
he introduced Samuel R.DELANY to the list, with DHALGREN (1975). Pohl was
followed as sf editor by Sydny Weinberg, who was in turn succeeded in 1980
by Karen Haas. By 1981 BB was publishing over 20 sf/fantasy paperback
originals a year, including such authors as David BRIN and John CROWLEY.
Lou ARONICA took over the sf line in 1982, with considerable success, his
list coming to include Thomas M.DISCH, Richard GRANT, Harry HARRISON,
Robert SILVERBERG and Norman SPINRAD, and introducing Pat CADIGAN, Sheila
FINCH, R.A.MACAVOY and Robert Charles WILSON. By 1985 BB had become one of
the top five sf publishers in terms of number of books published, and in
that year launched the new Bantam Spectra imprint for sf, which emphasized
original publications rather than reprints and also published some
hardcovers. Shawna MCCARTHY joined BB as sf editor in 1985, working for
Aronica, now Publishing Director. Soon BB authors included Karen Joy
FOWLER, William GIBSON, Lisa GOLDSTEIN, Ian MCDONALD, Lewis SHINER and
Connie WILLIS. McCarthy left in 1988. By the late 1980s BB had one of the
most prestigious lines in sf publishing. Its anthology lines included WILD
CARDS and FULL SPECTRUM. In 1986 the German company Bertelsmann, which
already owned BB, bought DOUBLEDAY. As a result, since 1987 Doubleday's
new hardcover imprint, Doubleday Foundation, was closely associated with
Bantam Spectra. In 1989 Aronica became vice-president and publisher of all
BB mass-market books, while retaining his direct control of Bantam
Spectra. It appears (1991) that much of the Doubleday Foundation list will
be returned to Bantam Spectra. The UK Transworld Publishers, which
publishes sf and fantasy under the Corgi Books imprint, is a subsidiary of
BB.

BARBARELLA
1. COMIC strip created by French artist Jean-Claude Forest (1930- ) for
V.Magazine in 1962. The interplanetary SEX adventures of the scantily clad
blonde astronaut were collected as Barbarella (graph coll 1964; trans
Richard Seaver1966 US). Despite its humorous attitudes, B incurred the
wrath of French censorship. This row and the subsequent film version have
tended to obscure the elegance and inventive sf content of the strip.
Forest's later attempts to revive it, reducing the sex and increasing the
sf elements, were less successful. Among his later, lesser known comic
books is the witty La revanche d'Hypocrite ["The Revenge of Hypocrite"]
(graph 1977). 2.Film (1968). De Laurentiis-Marianne/Paramount. Dir Roger
Vadim, starring Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Milo O'Shea, David Hemmings,
Anita Pallenberg. Screenplay Terry Southern, Jean-Claude Forest, Vadim,
Vittorio Bonicelli, Brian Degas, Claude Brule, Tudor Gates, Clement Biddle
Wood, based on the comic strip by Forest. 98 mins. Colour. Like Forest's
strip, this Italian-French coproduction parodies the conventions of
PULP-MAGAZINE sf as typified by FLASH GORDON but, where Forest's work was
spare, Vadim's is lush, and it loses some of Forest's sharpness. The film
is sometimes funny but seldom witty, despite the presence of Southern
among the multinational crowd of eight scriptwriters. Barbarella (Fonda),
agent of the Earth government, is sexually and culturally innocent in the
manner of VOLTAIRE's Candide. Her search for a missing scientist on the
planet Sogo results in an ever more baroque series of (mostly sexual)
encounters: with sadistic children and their carnivorous dolls, with a
blind angel (Law), with an inadequate revolutionary (Hemmings), with a
pleasure machine and with the decadent lesbian Black Queen (Pallenberg),
among others. Fonda - whose clothes look as if designed by Earle K.BERGEY
- is memorable for her attractively wide-eyed air, combining eroticism
with bafflement. FEMINIST critics were outraged at Vadim's exploitation of
his real-life wife's sexuality in so voyeuristic a manner - he had done it
before with Brigitte Bardot - though his evocation of the decadence he so
obviously enjoys appears adolescent rather than corrupt. The exoticism
with which the planet Sogo is created is what makes B a distinguished sf
film; a real, if intermittent, SENSE OF WONDER is created by the sheer
alienness of Mario Garbuglia's production design and Enrico Fea's art
direction, all glowingly photographed by Claude Renoir.

BARBARY, JAMES
Jack BEECHING.

BARBEE, PHILLIPS
[s] Robert SHECKLEY.

BARBET, PIERRE
Pseudonym of Dr Claude Pierre Marie Avice (1925- ), French writer; under
his real name he is a pharmacist and an expert on bionics. He has also
used the pseudonyms David Maine and Olivier Sprigel. A highly prolific if
derivative popular writer of sf from 1962, PB has published over 35
novels, some of which have been translated into English: Les grognards
d'Eridan (1970; trans Stanley Hochman as The Napoleons of Eridanus 1976
US) and its sequel L'Empereur d'Eridan (trans Stanley Hochman as The
Emperor of Eridanus 1983 US), which make up a series of SPACE OPERAS based
on Napoleon; the PARALLEL-WORLDS story L'empire du Baphomet (1971; trans
Bernard Kay as Baphomet's Meteor 1972 US) and assembled with Croisade
Stellaire (1974; trans C.J.CHERRYH as "Stellar Crusade" in Cosmic
Crusaders [omni 1980 US]); Liane de Noldaz (1973; trans Stanley Hochman as
The Joan-of-Arc Replay 1978 US); A quoi songent les psyborgs? (1971; trans
Wendayne Ackerman as Games Psyborgs Play 1973 US); La planete enchantee
(1973; trans C.J.Richards as The Enchanted Planet 1975 US).

BARBOUR, DOUGLAS (FLEMING)
(1940- ) Canadian poet and academic, a professor of English at the
University of Alberta, whose "Patterns of Meaning in the SF Novels of
Ursula K.Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Samuel R.Delany, 1962-1972", accepted by
Queen's University in 1976, was the first Canadian doctoral dissertation
in the field of sf. Two competent published studies were spun-off from
this volume: An Opening in the Field: The SF Novels of Joanna Russ (1978
US), a necessary study of Joanna RUSS, and Worlds Out of Words: The SF
Novels of Samuel R.Delany (1979 UK). Several shorter essays, specifically
those on Samuel R.DELANY and Ursula K.LE GUIN, have demonstrated DB's
adhesion to a high-road view of the genre, although he has published a
short piece on The Witches of Karres (1966) by James H.SCHMITZ and has
reviewed with some liberality of grasp. See also: CANADA.

BARBULESCU, ROMULUS
[r] ROMANIA.

BARBUSSE, HENRI
(1874-1935) French writer, best known for his strongly realistic fiction,
especially that concerning WWI. Les enchainements (1925; trans as Chains
in 2 vols 1925 US) attempts - like many novels from the first third of the
century - to present a panoramic vision of mankind's prehistory and
history, in this case through the transcendental experiences of a single
protagonist who is struck by his significant visions while in the middle
of a staircase. See also: ORIGIN OF MAN.

BARCELO, ELIA
[r] SPAIN.

BARCELO, MIQUEL
(1948- ) Spanish (Catalan) computer-systems professor and sf/fantasy book
editor with Ediciones B.Having been publisher of the sf FANZINE Kandama
from 1980, MB became a professional editor in 1986, and is author of
Ciencia ficcion: Guia de lectura ["Science Fiction Reader's Guide"]
(1990). He revised the SPAIN entry in this volume.

BARCLAY, ALAN
Pseudonym of UK writer and civil engineer George B.Tait (1910- ), who
wrote some stories for Science Fantasy, beginning with "Enemy in their
Midst" in 1952, and the Jacko series - mostly for NW, beginning with "Only
an Echo" (1954) and ending with "The Thing in Common" (1956). Parts of
this series became his sf novel Of Earth and Fire (fixup 1974), which pits
Earth's space service against ALIEN intruders. He wrote his novels
exclusively for ROBERT HALE LIMITED. Other works: The City and the
Desert (1976); No Magic Carpet (1976); The Cruel Years of Winter (1978);
The Guardian at Sunset (dated 1979 but 1980).

BARCLAY, BILL or WILLIAM
Michael MOORCOCK.

BARCLAY, GABRIEL
House pseudonym used in 1940 for 2 stories in Astonishing Stories and
Super Science Stories, 1 by Manly Wade WELLMAN and 1 by C.M.KORNBLUTH.

BARFIELD, (ARTHUR) OWEN
(1898- ) UK writer and philologist whose first book, The Silver Trumpet
(1925), was a fantasy. He was long involved with the Anthroposophical
philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). A member of the Inklings group
and a long-time associate of C.S.LEWIS, OB contributed to Essays Presented
to Charles Williams (anth 1947), which Lewis had organized. As
G.A.L.Burgeon he wrote an sf novel, This Ever Diverse Pair (1950). Later
works include Worlds Apart (1963), described as "A Dialogue of the 1960s",
and Unancestral Voice (1968). About the author: "C.S.Lewis, Owen Barfield
and the Modern Myth" by W.D. Norwood Jr in Midwest Quarterly 4(2) (1967).

BARGONE, FREDERIC CHARLES PIERRE EDOUARD
[r] Claude FARRERE.

BARJAVEL, RENE
(1911-1985) French novelist, active in later life as a screenwriter and
journalist. His first novel to be translated, Ravage (1943; trans Damon
KNIGHT as Ashes, Ashes 1967 US), describes a post- HOLOCAUST France driven
inwards into rural quiescence by the sudden disappearance of electricity
from the world; the corrupting effects of technology are described
scathingly. The next sf work from this important early period is Le
voyageur imprudent (1944; with postscript 1958; trans anon as Future Times
Three 1970 US), a rather pessimistic TIME-TRAVEL story with the usual
paradoxes, partly set in the same future world as the previous novel.
Several novels have not been translated: L'homme fort ["The Strong Man"]
(1946), about a self-created SUPERMAN whose efforts to bring happiness to
humanity are doomed; and Le diable l'emporte ["The Devil Takes All"]
(1948) and its sequel Colomb de la Lune ["Columbus of the Moon"] (1962),
about the consequences of a future WAR. The epigraph to Le diable
l'emporte reads, in translation, "To our grandfathers and grandchildren,
the cavemen."RB's later work decreases in intensity and is less
interestingly (though almost unvaryingly) gloomy about humanity's
prospects. Typical is La nuit des temps (1968; trans Charles Lam Markmann
as The Ice People 1970 UK), a ramblingly told morality tale in which two
long-frozen humans - survivors of an eons-prior nuclear war - revive into
a disaster-bound present age. Other works: Les enfants de l'hombre
["Children of the Shadows"] (coll 1946; exp vt Le prince blesse ["The
Wounded Prince"] 1974); Le grand secret (1973; trans as The Immortals 1974
US); Jour de feu ["Day of Fire"] (1974); Une Rose au Paradis ["A Rose from
Paradise"] (1981); La Tempete ["The Tempest"] (1982).See also: FRANCE.

BARKER, D.A.
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BARLOW, JAMES
(1921-1973) UK novelist, known mainly for such work outside the sf field
as the anti-communist thriller The Hour of Maximum Danger (1962). His sf
novel, One Half of the World (1957), presents a UK ruled by a totalitarian
leftist regime. The protagonist, finding God again, conflicts with the
powers-that-be.

BARLOW, JAMES WILLIAM
(1826-1913) UK cleric and writer whose sf novel, History of a World of
Immortals without a God (1891 Ireland as by Antares Skorpios; vt The
Immortals' Great Quest 1909 UK as JWB), presents in note form its
protagonist's record of his trip to VENUS, where a large population has
resided in a state of happy non-Christian socialism for many thousands of
years. The inhabitants of the first continent visited by the misogynist
narrator find themselves, after death, reincarnated ( REINCARNATION) on a
second continent far to the south, where they continue their Great Quest
for an explanatory principle, or God.

BARLOWE, WAYNE DOUGLAS
(1958- ) US illustrator whose successful Barlowe's Guide to
Extraterrestrials (1979), in collaboration with Ian Summers (who wrote the
text), was published when he was 21, only two years after he had made his
first sale, a cover for Cosmos. The book featured WDB's excellent
paintings of many of sf's best-known ALIENS. The son of natural-history
artists Sy and Dorothea Barlowe, WDB has a talent for creating believable
surface textures, important in creating aliens - his attention to detail
is reminiscent of Wyeth and Pyle. He works in acrylics and has done book
covers, also magazine covers for ASF and IASFM, to whose ex-editor, Shawna
MCCARTHY, he is married. Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork
of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV (1990), written and illustrated by
WDB, is an interesting work of speculative XENOBIOLOGY, illustrating and
describing the physiology of lifeforms on an imaginary planet.

BARNARD, MARJORIE FAITH
[r] M. Barnard ELDERSHAW.

BARNARD-ELDERSHAW, M.
M. Barnard ELDERSHAW.

BARNE, LEO
[s] L.P. DAVIES.

BARNES, ARTHUR K(ELVIN)
(1911-1969) US pulp writer known also for his works outside the sf field.
He was intermittently active in sf until 1946, his first story being
published in 1931. His Gerry Carlyle series of stories, in which Miss
Carlyle and a sidekick hunt down various alien prey, appeared originally
in TWS. His Interplanetary Hunter (1937-46 TWS; fixup 1956) combines 5 of
these stories, omitting "The Dual World" (1938) and "The Energy Eaters"
(1939). The latter story - and "The Seven Sleepers" (1940), worked into
the fixup - were written with Henry KUTTNER, and used his character Tony
Quade. AKB sometimes used the pseudonym Kelvin KENT, both alone and with
Kuttner. See also: GAMES AND SPORTS; OUTER PLANETS; THRILLING WONDER
STORIES.

BARNES, JOHN (ALLEN)
(1957- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Finalities Besides the
Grave" for AMZ in 1985, and who made some impact on the field with his
first novel, The Man who Pulled Down the Sky (1987), an effective drama
involving highly coloured political conflicts throughout the Solar System.
His second, Sin of Origin (1988), rather more ambitiously attempts to
combine SPACE OPERA, RELIGION and SOCIOLOGY in a tale set on a planet
(which humans call Randall) whose species enjoyed an extremely complex
tripartite form of symbiosis before the arrival of two human sects -
Christians and communists - who variously, and fatally, come to
"understand" what is happening. As the tripartite symbiosis breaks down,
the surviving singles begin to replicate human forms of behaviour -
slavery becomes rife - and the novel continues to darken. The final
conclusion is that DNA, found in all sentient species, reproduces by
causing its bearers to destroy themselves and their planets violently in
terminal HOLOCAUSTS, so that DNA spores are blown to new stars. JB's third
novel, Orbital Resonance (1991), a juvenile, rather implausibly at times -
though showing a marked increase in panache and vigour over the first
books - shows adult humans deciding that their children are better
equipped to handle the challenges of the new in space. The young female
protagonist evinces clear similarities to the heroine of Robert A.
HEINLEIN's Podkayne of Mars (1963). A MILLION OPEN DOORS (1992) also
hearkens deliberately backwards to the exuberant, human-dominated,
outward-looking galaxy of writers like Heinlein, though the story itself -
a young man comes of age on a strange planet - is perhaps more shadowed by
self-awareness than some of its predecessors. And in Mother of Storms
(1994), which is his most impressive novel, JB creates a powerful and
complex portrait of a NEAR FUTURE world wracked by the eponymous
self-fueling storm, and on the verge of numerous cusps, ethical and
practical. Through VIRTUAL REALITY, SEX has become extraordinarily present
in everyone's consciousness, and GENETIC ENGINEERING helps point the way
to the stars. Meanwhile the storm continues, in a narrative which makes
profitable use of both the bestseller disaster mode and of CYBERPUNK. JB
has become a virtuoso manipulator of sf themes; and the nature of his next
book is impossible to predict from the shape of its predecessor. Other
works: How to Build a Future (1991 chap), nonfiction; the Time Raider
sequence, featuring a Vietnam War veteran transported back to previous
battles: Time Raider #1: Wartide (1992); #2 Battlecry (1992) and #3 Union
Fires (1992).

BARNES, JULIAN (PATRICK)
(1946- ) UK writer who has published detective novels as by Dan
Kavanaugh. His most famous single novel is Flaubert's Parrot (1984). He
has written two books of sf interest. Staring at the Sun (1986) carries
its protagonist from her birth in 1922 into an exiguous future 98 years
later, but closes movingly at a moment when, still archaically alive to
the real world, she gazes at the unfaded reality of the Sun. A History of
the World in 101/2 Chapters (coll of linked stories 1989) begins with
Noah's Ark and gradually assembles a vision of history itself as a
Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, or Ark, whose message is nothing without
human love.

BARNES, MYRA EDWARDS
(1933- ) US author of Linguistics and Language in Science Fiction-Fantasy
(1975), a reprint of her 1971 PhD dissertation. This is a useful
introduction to the subject ( LINGUISTICS), although not as comprehensive
as Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (1980) by
Walter E. MEYERS.

BARNES, (KEITH) RORY
[r] Damien BRODERICK.

BARNES, STEVEN (EMORY)
(1952- ) US writer who began publishing with "Moonglow" in Vampires,
Werewolves and Other Monsters (anth 1974) ed Roger ELWOOD, and whose
career has been associated since its early days with Larry NIVEN, SB's
collaborator on most of his novels, including the first, Dream Park
(1981). The Dream Park sequence - the eponymous venue in which it is set
houses a wide variety of high-tech role-playing games ( GAME-WORLDS;
VIRTUAL REALITY) - continues with The Barsoom Project (1989) and Dream
Park: The Voodoo Game (1991 UK; vt The California Voodoo Game 1992 US),
both also with Niven, and has moments of relatively light-hearted agility,
especially perhaps in the second volume, in which a terraformed MARS (see
also TERRAFORMING) is advertised, although the action does not leave
Earth. Further collaborations include The Descent of Anansi (1982) with
Niven; the ongoing Avalon sequence, comprising The Legacy of Heorot (1987
UK) and The Dragons of Heorot (1995 UK) with Niven and Jerry POURNELLE,
tales of planet-exploitation based on Beowulf and reflecting many of
Pournelle's convictions; and Achilles' Choice (1991) with Niven alone,
which returns to a game-world atmosphere, though not it seems advertently,
in a tale set at a time when athletes can aspire to join the
planet-dominating corporate elite by winning at competitions, the catch
being that they must "Boost" to achieve stardom, and that only the winners
are saved through real-time computer monitoring of the effects of doing
so.SB's solo work has been perhaps less infected by hi-tech gloss. The
Aubry Knight sequence - comprisingStreetlethal (1983), its sequel Gorgon
Child (1989), and Firedance (dated 1993 but 1994) - are moderately
down-to-earth adventure tales set in the kind of CYBERPUNK urban venue -
in this case, post-earthquake Los Angeles - that is always said to be
gritty, with an abundance of sf instruments involved in keeping the action
moving. The Kundalini Equation (1986) invokes its author's long interest
in martial arts. It might be said that SB has acquired a good amount of
skill and gear, but has yet to speak in his own voice. See also:
LEISURE; SPACESHIPS.

BARNETT, PAUL (LE PAGE)
(1949- ) Scottish writer and editor, resident in England, who has used
the pseudonym John Grant for all his published work except some short
stories and a nonfiction book as by Eve Devereux and a handful of essays
and reviews and a nonfiction book translation under his own name. He
entered the field through editing Aries 1 (anth 1979), which contains the
first and so far only sf short story by Colin WILSON, with whom PB later
edited the nonfiction The Book of Time (1980) and The Directory of
Possibilities (1981). The solo A Directory of Discarded Ideas (1981),
largely on PSEUDO-SCIENCE, led directly to his book-length fiction, Sex
Secrets of Ancient Atlantis (1985), a parody of pseudo-science in general
and ATLANTIS studies in particular. His first novel, The Truth about the
Flaming Ghoulies (1984), a comedy, describes in epistolary form a
NEAR-FUTURE rock band whose members prove to be ANDROIDS. Earthdoom!
(1987) with David LANGFORD is a perhaps overly broad parody of the
DISASTER-novel genre. Albion (1991) is a fantasy novel about a POCKET
UNIVERSE, the first of a projected tetralogy, the second of which, The
World (1992), is more overtly sciencefictional, depicting the fusion of
two alternate universes to form a third. Judge Dredd: The Hundredfold
Problem * (1994), tied to the comic, is set in a dyson sphere ( Freeman
DYSON). By training a publisher's editor, he has served as Technical
Editor for the 2nd edn of this encyclopedia. Other works: The
Legends of Lone Wolf series of ties, SWORD-AND-SORCERY novels based on
gamebooks by Joe Dever (1956- ) and published as co-authorships: Eclipse
of the Kai * (1989), The Dark Door Opens * (1989) - these 2 assembled as
Legends of Lone Wolf Omnibus * (1992) - The Sword of the Sun * (1989; rev
in 2 vols vt The Tides of Treachery * 1991 US and The Sword of the Sun *
1991 US), Hunting Wolf * (1990), The Claws of Helgedad * (1991), The
Sacrifice of Ruanon * (cut 1991), The Birthplace * (1992), The Book of the
Magnakai * (1992), The Tellings * (coll 1993,The Lorestone of Varetta *
(1993, The Secret of Kazan-oud * (1994) and The Rotting Land * (1994),
with History Book: a "Thog the Mighty" Text (1994 chap) being an unserious
appendage to the sequence; much nonfiction, including Dreamers: A
Geography of Dreamland (1984) and Encyclopedia of Walt Disney's Animated
Characters (1987 US; exp 1993 US; further rev 1993 US).See also:
COSMOLOGY; GAMES AND SPORTS; MUSIC.

BARNEY, JOHN STEWART
(1868-1925) US writer whose sf novel, L.P.M.: The End of the Great War
(1915), is an unusually authoritarian EDISONADE in which an impatiently
triumphal US scientist - in this case his name is Edestone - uses the
futuristic weaponry he has invented to defeat the warring nations of
Europe and introduce to the world a government ruled by an "Aristocracy of
Intelligence".

BARNWELL, WILLIAM (CURTIS)
(1943- ) US author whose brief but interesting foray into the sf/fantasy
genre was his well written Blessing Trilogy, consisting of The Blessing
Papers (1980), Imram (1981) and The Sigma Curve (1981). This complex quest
through a post- HOLOCAUST world, where some sort of grand design by
mysterious powers is operating, at first appears lively but conventional
SCIENCE FANTASY. In fact, the intellectual structure of the work is both
demanding and very eccentric: a METAPHYSICAL allegory about free will and
predestination. The holocaust was deliberately brought about to
short-circuit humanity's DEVOLUTION as the left and right hemispheres of
the brain lost contact due to corrupting visual imagery replacing the
purity of the spoken word. This may be the only apocalyptic fiction where
Earth's "Falling" was directly, it appears, due to tv programming rather
than Original Sin. The books read as if produced by a member of a
PSEUDO-SCIENCE cult, but it is not clear which one.

BARON, OTHELLO
[s] R.L. FANTHORPE.

BARR, DENSIL NEVE
Pseudonym of UK writer Douglas Norton Buttrey (1918- ), whose sf novel,
The Man with Only One Head (1955), develops the theme of novels like Pat
FRANK's Mr Adam (1946). Only one man is left fertile; the subsequent
moralistic World Federation set up to deal with the crisis is riddled with
dissension.

BARR, DONALD
(1921- ) US writer and academic, former assistant dean of the Engineering
School of Columbia University, and author of several nonfiction works for
children as well as Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty, or The Education of a
Headmaster (1971), on US education. His sf novel, Space Relations: A
Slightly Gothic Interplanetary Tale (1973), is a SPACE OPERA interlaced
amusingly with "literary" analogues to its tale of a space diplomat, sold
into slavery, who is sexually excited by fear, thus enticing a princess,
and who also finds out grim secrets about an alien INVASION of Earth. A
Planet in Arms (1981) is noticeably less elated.

BARR, GEORGE
(1937- ) US sf illustrator. One of the most meticulous of sf/fantasy
artists, he is also one of the least appreciated - at least for his
professional work. GB started by illustrating sf FANZINES and was
nominated five times for the HUGO as Best Fan Artist, winning in 1968 and
1969. However, he had by then already sold his first professional
illustration to FANTASTIC, the cover for Mar 1961. He continued with some
magazine work, but is perhaps best known for his paperback covers for ACE
BOOKS, DAW BOOKS and others. His often delicate, sometimes whimsical,
artwork is influenced by his appreciation of the work of Arthur Rackham
(1867-1939) and Hannes BOK. GB works primarily in colour, laying
watercolour washes over ball-point lines. In a field that emphasizes
brightness, his pastel shades are almost unique. More recently he has done
many interior illustrations for ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE. A
showcase for his work is Upon the Winds of Yesterday, and Other
Explorations (1976).

BARR, ROBERT
(1850-1912) Scottish editor and a popular and prolific writer. His early
catastrophe story in The IDLER (which he edited), "The Doom of London"
(1892), deals with fog and POLLUTION. It was reprinted in The Face & the
Mask (coll 1894), which contains several other sf and fantasy stories, as
does In a Steamer Chair and Other Shipboard Stories (coll 1892). Other
works: From whose Bourne (1893); Revenge! (coll 1896); Tekla: A Romance of
Love and War (1898 Canada; vt The Countess Tekla 1899 UK).See also:
CANADA.

BARR, TYRONE C.
(? -? ) UK writer. His sf novel, Split Worlds (1959; vt The Last Fourteen
1960 US), sees 14 crew members of a space station survive the
extermination of everyone on Earth. Eventually they must land and breed
and start again, though quarrelling furiously, in a fantastically
transformed world.

BARREDO, EDUARDO
[r] LATIN AMERICA.

BARREN, CHARLES
(1913- ) UK teacher and writer, best known for historical romances and
co-author with R(ichard) Cox Abel of Trivana 1 (1966), in which an
overpopulated Earth establishes a VENUS colony. He was chairman of the
SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION from its inception in 1970 until his retirement
in 1980, subsequently serving as its Honorary Administrator 1980-84.

BARRETT, GEOFFREY JOHN
(1928- ) UK writer who has also published thrillers as Cole Rickard and
Westerns as Bill Wade; his sf novels, written for ROBERT HALE LIMITED
under his own name and as Edward Leighton, Dennis Summers and James
Wallace, are consistently routine. Works: As GJB: The Brain of
Graphicon (1973); The Lost Fleet of Astranides (1974); The Tomorrow Stairs
(1974); Overself (1975); The Paradise Zone (1975); City of the First Time
(1975); Slaver from the Stars (1975); The Bodysnatchers of Lethe (1976);
The Night of the Deathship (1976); Timeship to Thebes (1976); The Hall of
the Evolvulus (1977); The Other Side of Red (1977); Robotria (1977); Earth
Watch (1978).As Edward Leighton: Out of Earth's Deep (1976); A Light from
Tomorrow (1977); Lord of the Lightning (1977).As Dennis Summers: A Madness
from Mars (1976); Stalker of the Worlds (1976); The Robot in the Glass
(1977); The Master of Ghosts (1977).As James Wallace: A Man from Tomorrow
(1976); Plague of the Golden Rat (1976); The Guardian of Krandor (1977).

BARRETT, NEAL Jr
(1929- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "To Tell the Truth" for
Gal in 1960 and who has contributed with some regularity to the sf
magazines. Though he has never been prolific in shorter forms, some of his
later stories, like "Hero" (1979), "A Day at the Fair" (1982), "Trading
Post" (1986), "Sallie C" (1987), "Perpetuity Blues" (1987), "Diner"
(1987), "Stairs" (1988) and "Tony Red Dog" (1989), have caused
considerable stir for the dark bravura of the vision they sometimes expose
of a savaged USA. Some of these stories, though frustratingly (in the
absence of a further gathering) the selection is weighted toward lighter
work, are assembled in Slightly Off Center: Eleven Extraordinarily
Exhilarating Tales (coll 1992). NB's first novels did not seem urgently to
foretell the ambitious author of the 1980s, and titles like Kelwin (1970),
whose eponymous hero has stirring adventures in a post- HOLOCAUST venue,
the equally rambunctious The Gates of Time (1970), and the
alternate-history ( ALTERNATE WORLDS) tale, The Leaves of Time (1971) -
despite the title, not connected to the earlier volume - seemed little
more than amusing and competently told routine fare, with twists.Stress
Pattern (1974), a densely constructed fable set on an alien planet whose
profligate alienness is at points reminiscent of the worlds of Stanislaw
LEM, was clearly more ambitious, and NB followed this striking work with
the Aldair series - Aldair in Albion (1976), Aldair, Master of Ships
(1977), Aldair, Across the Misty Sea (1980) and Aldair: The Legion of
Beasts (1982) - whose baroque surface tends to disguise the alarming
implications of the tale, for the hero is a genetically engineered
humanoid pig, the FAR-FUTURE Earth he travels lacks real solace, and his
discovery of humans on another planet grants him no peace, for they
themselves have been enslaved by a race of ALIENS. In retrospect, then,
THROUGH DARKEST AMERICA (1987) and its sequel, Dawn's Uncertain Light
(1989), which have gained NB considerable attention 30 years into his
career, are a logical development of his earlier work. Their protagonists'
hegira through a most terrifyingly bleak and terminally scarred USA,
though told with an exhilarating and genre-sensitive competence, conveys a
sense of grieved, embedded, millennial pessimism impossible to sidestep;
and even The Hereafter Gang (1991), which less savagely focuses this
vision on the churning psyche of a middle-aged man in crisis, turns into a
sharp and garish parody of a sentimentalized small-town past over which it
is easy, but dangerous, to pine - posthumously, as it were. NB is a writer
who deserves to have come into his times. Other works: Highwood (1972
dos); Tom Swift: Ark Two * (1982) and Tom Swift: The Invincible Force *
(1983), two Tom Swift tales as by Victor APPLETON; The Hardy Boys: The
Swamp Monster* (1985) and The Hardy Boys: The Skyfire Puzzle * (1985), two
Hardy Boys tales as by Franklin W. Dixon;The Karma Corps (1984);Pink Vodka
Blues (1992), associational; Batman in: the Black Egg of Atlantis * (1992
chap), tied to Batman.See also: ECOLOGY; EVOLUTION; LIVING WORLDS.

BARRETT, WILLIAM E(DMUND)
(1900-1986) US writer who began publishing short stories with "The Music
of Madness" for Weird Tales in 1926. He wrote Flight from Youth (1939)
before WWII, later incorporating it into The Edge of Things (coll 1960),
whose 3 stories all relate in some way to flying. His sf novel, The Fools
of Time (1963), unconvincingly posits an IMMORTALITY drug based on cancer.
Lady of the Lotus (1975) is a fantasy about the Buddha and his wife. [JC]

BARRETTON, GRANDALL
[s] Randall GARRETT.

BARRINGTON, MICHAEL
Collaborative pseudonym of Michael MOORCOCK and Barrington J. BAYLEY on 1
story, "Peace on Earth" (1959). [JC]

BARRON, D(ONALD) G(ABRIEL)
(1922- ) UK architect and writer. In The Zilov Bombs (1962), unilateral
UK nuclear disarmament has led to Soviet domination of all Europe; after
five years (by 1973) the underground is putting pressure on characters
like the narrator, who ultimately solves his moral anxieties by detonating
an A-bomb. [JC]Other works: The Man who was There (1969).

BARRON, (RICHARD) NEIL
(1934- ) US bibliographer and book editor, trained as a librarian, who
has produced some of the liveliest and most readable scholarship in sf,
notably in the three well researched editions of Anatomy of Wonder: A
Critical Guide to Science Fiction (1976; exp 1981; further exp 1987),
which he edited and to which he contributed. These volumes discuss many
individual books, both fiction (including foreign-language) and secondary
literature; the 3rd edn, with over 2600 entries, is by far the most
thorough work of its kind; a 4th edition is projected for 1995. Companion
vols ed NB are Fantasy Literature: A Reader's Guide (1990) and Horror
Literature: A Reader's Guide (1990). NB founded and edited SCIENCE FICTION
& FANTASY BOOK REVIEW 1979-80, and edited the same journal when it was
revived by the SCIENCE FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION in 1982-3. It merged
with FANTASY NEWSLETTER in 1984 to form the newly titled FANTASY REVIEW
(very briefly known at first as SF & Fantasy Review), for which NB was
review editor Jan 1984-Apr 1985. He is a regular contributor to the SFRA
NEWSLETTER. NB received the 1982 PILGRIM AWARD for his contributions to sf
scholarship. [PN]See also: BIBLIOGRAPHIES; COLLECTIONS; CRITICAL AND
HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF.

BARRY, RAY
Dennis HUGHES.

BARTH, JOHN (SIMMONS)
(1930- ) US novelist. One of the leading fabulists ( FABULATION) of his
generation of writers, he is probably best known for his epic
mock-picaresque The Sot-Weed Factor (1960; rev 1967). Giles Goat-Boy, or
The Revised New Syllabus (1966), which derives its language in part from
Vladimir NABOKOV and its central metaphor of the university as the world
in part from Jorge Luis BORGES, can, by taking the metaphor literally, be
read as sf. The hero is rendered literally as goat-horned. The novel
itself is a complex SATIRE on education, human nature and knowledge, and
also a remarkable Bildungsroman. Some of JB's later short fiction, as
assembled in Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice
(coll 1968; exp 1969), contains some intensely academic FANTASY, and
Chimera (coll of linked stories 1972) hovers at the edge of the fantastic
in its literalization in narrative form of the powers of
mythopoeisis.Other works: Letters (1979); The Last Voyage of Somebody the
Sailor (1991). [JC]

BARTHELME, DONALD
(1931-1989) US writer known primarily as a surrealist and black-humorist.
His novels are all FABULATIONS: Snow White (1967), an absurdist dissection
of the fairy tale; The Dead Father (1975), in which the giant figure of a
moribund Father is escorted with trauma and ritual to its final resting
place; and The King (1990), which transports King Arthur and his knights
to WWII. DB's early collections especially - like Come Back, Dr Caligari
(coll 1964), Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (coll 1968) and City
Life (coll 1970) - present in the form of discontinuous spoofs and
iconoclasms a number of ideas and themes taken from MYTHOLOGY, fantasy and
sf. Many of these stories have been reprinted in sf anthologies. His work
as a whole is conveniently assembled in Sixty Stories (coll 1981) and
Forty Stories (coll 1988). [PR/JC]Other works: The Slightly Irregular Fire
Engine (1971 chap); Sadness (coll 1972); Guilty Pleasures (coll 1974);
Amateurs (coll 1976); Great Days (coll 1979); Overnight to Many Distant
Cities (coll 1983).About the author: Donald Barthelme's Fiction: The
Ironist Saved from Drowning (1982) by Charles Molesworth.

BARTHOLOMEW, BARBARA
(1941- ) US writer whose Timeways Trilogy for young adult readers-The
Time Keeper (1985), Child of Tomorrow (1985) and When Dreamers Cease to
Dream (1985) - traverses familiar TIME-TRAVEL themes without undue stress.
Other books for younger readers include The Cereal Box Adventures (1981),
Flight into the Unknown (1982) and The Great Gradepoint Mystery (1983).
[JC]

BARTLETT, VERNON (OLDFIELD)
(1894-1983) UK broadcaster, politician and writer, whose If I Were
Dictator (1935 chap) reflected his centrist politics - he was an
Independent MP 1938-50 - in its reformist agenda. His sf novel proper,
Tomorrow Always Comes (1943), describes in fictional terms the task of
reconstructing a defeated Germany after the end of WWII. [JC]

BARTON, ERLE
R.L. FANTHORPE.

BARTON, JAMES
(? - ) Writer, apparently US, whose post- HOLOCAUST Wasteworld series -
Wasteworld #1: Aftermath (1983 UK), #2: Resurrection (1984 UK), #3: Angels
(1984 UK) and #4: My Way (1984)-takes its military hero through the US
South and elsewhere, fighting bigots and MUTANTS and winning an Apache
lass. [JC]

BARTON, LEE
R.L. FANTHORPE.

BARTON, SAMUEL
(? -? ) US writer who also published as A.B. Roker. His sf novel, The
Battle of the Swash and the Capture of Canada (1888), thought by Thomas D.
CLARESON to be the first US future- WAR tale, was written to show the
defencelessness of the US coasts (and incidentally the vulnerability of
Canada) as the USA and UK come to blows, a conflict eventually won by the
USA through the invention of self-destructing torpedo boats. He has been
claimed as a US Congressman, Samuel Barton (1785-1858), but it is
extremely unlikely that The Battle of the Swash could have been conceived
30+ years before its publication. [JC]

BARTON, S.W.
[r] Michael KURLAND.

BARTON, WILLIAM R(ENALD III)
(1950- ) US writer whose sf novel, Hunting on Kunderer (1973), confronts
humans with ALIEN natives on a dangerous new planet, and whose A Plague of
All Cowards (1976) was also an sf adventure. Of much greater interest was
Iris (1990) with Michael CAPOBIANCO, in which a group of artists, en route
to Triton, encounters the eponymous GAS GIANT, which has drifted, with
moons, into the Solar System. Alien artefacts are found and epiphanies are
experienced; but the novel is primarily striking for the intense
directness of the prose and for the capacity of the authors to address in
that prose both matters of science (which might be expected in a HARD-SF
novel) and matters of character, for the cast is deeply memorable. Fellow
Traveler (1991), also with Capobianco, is perhaps more straightforward,
but again shows a remarkable grasp of the human shape of experience, in
this case a NEAR-FUTURE Soviet attempt to harness an asteroid for
industrial purposes. Given the current state of the US space program, this
novel is one of the very few of those caught out by the political
transformation of the USSR to make one feel that there have been losses as
well as gains. Dark Sky Legion: An Ahrimanic Novel (1992) is an ambitious,
Galaxy-spanning, metaphysical, highly readable SPACE OPERA which provides
some engrossing speculations about a universe in which FASTER-THAN-LIGHT
travel is impossible and over which a conservative human hegemony
exercises control, ruthlessly braking the tendency of isolated colonies to
vary too far from the declared norm; there are echoes of Wolfbane (1959)
by C.M. KORNBLUTH and Frederic POHL. WB treats this use of power with due
though occasionally rather moody ambiguity. Yellow Matter (1993 chap) is a
savage little sf fable of exogamy. [JC]

BARZMAN, BEN
(1912-1989) Canadian-born US writer and film-writer whose sf novel Out of
this World (1960 UK; vt Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 1960 US; vt Echo X
1962 US) ambitiously portrays twin Earths and tells a love story involving
people transported between them. [JC]

BASIL, OTTO
(1901-1983) Austrian writer. His sf novel, Wenn das der Fuhrer wusste
(1966; cut trans Thomas Weyr as The Twilight Men 1968 US), is set in an
ALTERNATE WORLD in which HITLER WINS in 1945 through the use of atomic
weapons; after Hitler dies, a battle for power ensues. [JC]See also:
GERMANY.

BASS, T.J.
Working name of US writer Thomas J. Bassler (1932- ), who began
publishing sf with "Star Seeder" for If in 1969. He is almost exclusively
associated with the series that comprises his only book publications, Half
Past Human (1969-70 Gal and If; fixup 1971) and The Godwhale (1974),
itself expanded from an earlier story, "Rorqual Maru" (1972 Gal). Through
a network of intricately interlinked stories, the first novel depicts a
densely overcrowded Earth where problems of OVERPOPULATION have been dealt
with by settling four-toed evolved human stock called Nebishes in vast
underground silos ( CITIES) under the control of a COMPUTER net. Outside
these hives, unevolved humans eke out savage existences; but an ancient
sentient starship named Olga ( CYBORGS) plans to seed the stars with her
beloved, five-toed, normal humans, and eventually succeeds, though the
Earth society of the Nebishes continues, oblivious to any threat. In The
Godwhale, a complexly structured SLEEPER-AWAKES tale, Larry Dever, a human
from our own near future, is mutilated in an accident and decides to enter
SUSPENDED ANIMATION to await a time when nerve regeneration is possible.
However, he is found to be still incurable when awoken millennia later
into an Earth society some time after the events of the previous volume. A
great long-dormant cyborg whale has registered life in the desolate ocean
and has reactivated herself, longing to serve mankind and harvest the seas
for him; she soon comes across humans evolved into Benthics capable of
living under water, and accepts them as human. Larry Dever escapes
servitude in the silos and joins the Godwhale; the seas are alive with
Benthics and lower forms of life - quite evidently, Olga has seeded the
planet. Mankind begins to inhabit the archipelagos and the Earth will once
again bear fruit.In these two books, TJB demonstrates a thorough command
of biological extrapolation and a sustained delight in the creation of a
witty, acronym-choked language suitable for the description of this new
environment. Though his control over the overall structure of a
novel-length fiction is insecure, the abundance of his invention conveyed
to readers of the 1970s a sense of TJB's potential importance as an sf
writer. He has, however, fallen silent, his series incomplete. [JC]See
also: EVOLUTION; HIVE-MINDS; UNDER THE SEA.

BATCHELOR, JOHN CALVIN
(1948- ) US author. His first two novels, The Further Adventures of
Halley's Comet (1981) and The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica
(1983), are borderline fantasy and sf respectively. He has also published
two mainstream novels, American Falls (1985) and Gordon Liddy is My Muse,
by Tommy "Tip" Paine (1990). With John R. Hamilton he wrote Thunder in the
Dust: Images of Western Movies (1987).JCB's novels have a gravity and
consistency which mark him as a significant contemporary writer; they
confront such themes as the morality of terror, the justice of ends and
means, and the construction of history by its victors. Halley's Comet is
an extended Pop- GOTHIC exercise. It presents a satirically and
grotesquely distorted picture of Western capitalism, whose distribution of
wealth and power appears as a weird latter-day version of feudalism.
People's Republic begins with similar Pop grotesquerie, but transforms
into an unremittingly stark NEAR-FUTURE Viking saga, its narrator a kind
of doomed and bloody seawolf. There is a vast backdrop of the collapse of
civilization across Europe and massive worldwide dislocation, apparently
in response to WAR in the Middle East and the virtual end of oil
production. As suppressed racial and other hatreds become rampant, and the
seas fill up with refugees on an uncontemplated scale, the so-called
"fleet of the damned" drifts towards the Antarctic, refused succour on any
populated shore. What are left of the civilized nations carry out a
massive programme of relief and resettlement, but we are led to understand
that the effort is half-hearted and serves the interests more of the
donors than of the disenfranchised and dispossessed hordes on the ice. The
narrative is heightened by awesome descriptions of both natural and
socially engendered cataclysm. Peter Nevsky and the True Story of the
Russian Moon Landing (1993), though told by Nevsky as an old man, is set
at the time of the Apollo 11 Moon shot, and is a fantasy of history rather
than sf; in Father's Day (1994), which is sf, a 21st century American
president must attempt to deal with a threatened coup. [RuB]See also:
DISASTER.

BATEMAN, ROBERT (MOYES CARRUTHERS)
(1922-1973) UK writer, primarily involved in radio and tv work. He did
revision work on Maurice RENARD's The Hands of Orlac for the 1960
translation. His sf novel, When the Whites Went (1963), is set in an
England where only Blacks survive a disease to which all others fall
victim. [JC]See also: POLITICS.

BATES, HARRY
Working name of US editor and writer Hiram Gilmore Bates III (1900-1981),
who began his career with the Clayton chain of PULP MAGAZINES in the
1920s, working as editor of an adventure magazine. When William Clayton,
the owner, suggested that HB initiate a period-adventure companion to it,
he successfully counterproposed a magazine to be called Astounding Stories
of Super-Science, which would compete with AMAZING STORIES. HB edited the
magazine - whose title was soon abbreviated to Astounding Stories (
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION) - for 34 issues, Jan 1930-Mar 1933. (He later
started a companion magazine, STRANGE TALES - intended as a rival to WEIRD
TALES - which lasted for 7 issues, Sept 1931-Jan 1933.) His was the first
true sf pulp magazine, paying four times as well as its competitors and
impatient with the static passages of PSEUDO-SCIENCE characteristic of
Hugo GERNSBACK's magazines. As Jack WILLIAMSON put it in The Early
Williamson (coll 1975): "Bates was professional . . . [he] wanted well
constructed action stories about strong, successful heroes. The
'super-science' had to be exciting and more-or-less plausible, but it
couldn't take much space." HB contributed stories to ASF in collaboration
with his assistant editor, Desmond W. HALL, the two sometimes writing
together as H.B. Winter but more famously as Anthony GILMORE, under which
name they produced the popular Hawk Carse series, which reached book form
as Space Hawk (coll of linked stories 1952); the first of these stories,
"Hawk Carse" (1931), was HB's first publication.After the Clayton group
went bankrupt in 1933, Strange Tales ceased publication and ASF was bought
by the STREET & SMITH chain, which appointed F. Orlin TREMAINE editor.
This ended HB's editorial connection with sf, though over the next 20
years he wrote a few short stories. Although he used the pseudonym A.R.
Holmes on occasion, it was mainly under his own name that he published
such notable stories as "A Matter of Size" (1934), a story on the then
popular GREAT-AND-SMALL theme, and "Alas, All Thinking" (1935). "Farewell
to the Master" (1940) was later filmed as The DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
(1951), although the film lost the story's ironic twist, which
demonstrated the pitfalls of interpreting nonhuman relationships in human
terms - in this instance, the relationship between a huge ROBOT and its
ALIEN "master". HB died in unfortunate obscurity. [MJE]See also:
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; EVOLUTION; SF MAGAZINES.

BATMAN
Neal ADAMS; Brian BOLLAND; DC COMICS; Frank MILLER; Alan MOORE.

*BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED
Film (1987). Amblin/Universal. Executive Prod Steven SPIELBERG. Dir
Matthew Robbins, starring Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Frank McCrae,
Elizabeth Pena, Michael Carmine. Screenplay Brad Bird, Robbins, Brent
Maddock, S.S. Wilson, based on a story by Mick Garris. 106 mins.
Colour.Originally intended as an episode of the tv series AMAZING STORIES,
this film betrays its small-screen origins in its slightness of plot. A
run-down rooming house with diner, which occupies land desired by a
property speculator, is visited by tiny saucer-shaped aliens, who help out
the residents and two elderly owners, eventually (with their new offspring
and other saucers) rebuilding the blown-up premises. Escapist fantasy at
best, this has no relationship other than the dubious aliens to genuine
sf. The novelization is *batteries not included * (1987) by Wayland DREW.
[PN]See also: CINEMA.

BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS
Film (1980). New World. Executive prod Roger CORMAN. Dir Jimmy T.
Murakami, starring Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn, John Saxon, George
Peppard, Sybil Danning, Morgan Woodward, Steve Davis. Screenplay John
SAYLES, based on a story by Sayles, Anne Dyer. 103 mins. Colour.New World,
never slow to capitalize on a trend, hoped - with partial success - to woo
the STAR WARS market with this space-opera replay of The Magnificent Seven
(1960). It follows the pattern of its Western original right down to
Robert Vaughn's reprise of his role as a world-weary gunslinger. Sayles's
script is entertaining, as are Danning as the huge-breasted Valkyrie,
Woodward as the reptilian mercenary, and the heat-eating twin "Kelvin",
but the emphasis is on space battles which, while better than expected,
leave the story treatment perfunctory. Murakami's heavy direction muffles
the lightness of the script. The special effects were recycled in the
Corman-produced Space Raiders (1983), of which they are the raison d'etre.
[PN]

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN
Roger CORMAN.

BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
Film (1973). Apjac/20th Century-Fox. Dir J. Lee Thompson, starring Roddy
McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Lew Ayres, John Huston. Screenplay
John William Corrington, Joyce Hooper Corrington, based on a story by Paul
Dehn. 86 mins. Colour.The fifth and last of the series beginning with
PLANET OF THE APES (to which this is a "prequel") and the most
disappointing. Established in their own Ape City after the near
destruction of mankind in WWIII, the social-democrat chimpanzee people,
still led by Caesar (from ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES), become
involved in a three-way struggle with a community of radiation-scarred
human survivors and the militant gorilla people. There is a feeling of
pointlessness about this simplistic film's attempt to squeeze a few more
dollars from the series. The novelization is Battle for the Planet of the
Apes * (1973) by David GERROLD. [PN/JB]

BATTLE OF THE ASTROS
GOJIRA; RADON.

BATTLE OF THE WORLDS
Il PIANETA DEGLI UOMINI SPENTI .

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
1. US tv series (1978). Universal Television/ABC-TV. Created by Glen A.
LARSON, also executive prod. Prods included John Dykstra and Don
Bellisario; main writers Larson and Bellisario; dirs included Christian
Nyby II and Dan Haller. 1 season only, beginning with a 150min pilot,
followed by 19 50min episodes, including 3 2-episode stories, plus one
100min episode. Colour.Perhaps the least likable of all tv sf in its
ineptness, its cynicism, its sentimentality and its contempt for and
ignorance of science, BG was devised by Larson (who went on to do a
similar job on BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY) in the wake of the
successful film STAR WARS, which it resembles closely in many respects;
moreover, John Dykstra, who initially did the special effects for BG (he
soon pulled out), had supervised the miniature photography on that film.
The series tells of humans (related to us according to a VON
DANIKEN-derived narration) elsewhere in the Galaxy being largely wiped out
by the robotic Cylons. A group of survivors, including the crew of a
military craft, the Battlestar, search for the legendary human colony of
Earth. Space battles, the raison d'etre of BG, were carried out by planes
apparently designed for flying in atmosphere, with fiery exhausts which,
Larson is quoted as saying, "make Space more acceptable to the
Midwest".The casting of Western star Lorne Green as the patriarchal
leader, Adama, emphasized the obvious subtext of wagon trains rolling west
under constant attack by Indians. Other regular cast members were Dirk
Benedict as Starbuck (ne Solo), Richard Hatch as Apollo (ne Skywalker),
Maren Jensen as Athena and Noah Hathaway as the cute boy, Boxie, whose
nauseating robot dog (ne R2D2) may have been the low point. Ratings began
well but soon fell off and, since each episode cost three times as much as
a conventional one-hour drama, the series was terminated. An attempt to
resuscitate it in altered form was GALACTICA: 1980. ( Glen A. LARSON for a
listing of the 14 spin-off BG books 1978-87, all, according to the covers,
co-authored by Larson, mostly with Robert THURSTON.)2. Film (1978).
Universal. Dir Richard A. Colla, starring the regular cast plus Ray
Milland, Lew Ayres. Screenplay Glen A. Larson. 122 mins, cut to 117 mins.
Colour.To recoup production costs on the tv series, Universal gave
theatrical release to the (edited) pilot episode. This militaristic film
(all politicians seeking peace are self-deluded weaklings) begins the BG
story with a battle against the Cylons, the round-up of survivors, the
beginning of the long trek to Earth, a visit to a pleasure-filled but
corrupt planet where they nearly get eaten, and a second battle against
the Cylons (close relatives of Star Wars's stormtroopers) - clearly a near
thing: "The Cylon fleet is five microns away and closing." The film is
poor. Another two-part episode from the tv series was theatrically
released as Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack (1979); it is more
cardboard still. [PN]See also: SCIENTIFIC ERRORS.

BAUM, L(YMAN) FRANK
(1856-1919) US writer of children's stories, who wrote also as Floyd
Akers, Laura Bancroft, John Estes Cooke, Hugh Fitzgerald, Schuyler
Staunton and Edith Van Dyne. He remains famous for his long series of
tales set in the land of Oz, beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(1900; vt The New Wizard of Oz 1903), which served as the main source for
the famous film version of 1939. The series continues with: Ozma of Oz
(1907; vt Princess Ozma of Oz 1942 UK);The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904; vt
The Land of Oz 1914); Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz (1908); The Road to Oz
(1909); The Emerald City of Oz (1910); The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913);
The Scarecrow of Oz (1915); Rinkitink in Oz (1916); The Lost Princess of
Oz (1917); The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), the eponymous lumberjack of which
is not a robot; The Magic of Oz (1919); Glinda of Oz (1920); later titles
were from other hands. Ozma of Oz includes the first appearance of
Tik-Tok, an intelligent clockwork man, one of the first ROBOTS in fiction;
the tale was reworked as The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, a 1913 musical play,
itself then rewritten as the novel Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), which features a
TRANSPORTATION tube through the Earth. LFB's juvenile sf novel The Master
Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale Founded on the Mysteries of Electricity and
the Optimism of its Devotees. It was Written for Boys, but Others May Read
It (1901), is an EDISONADE described rather fully by its title; the child
tinkerer-hero, though his electrical gun and ANTIGRAVITY device are
supplied magically, finds scientific explanations for everything he
experiences. A story in American Fairy Tales (coll 1901; rev with 3 more
stories 1908) describes the freezing of time in a US city. Some of LFB's
other work, which was produced very rapidly (only a sample is listed
below), was fantasy. Among a wide range of authors influenced by LFB,
recent examples include Gene WOLFE in "The Eyeflash Miracles" (1976) and
Free Live Free (1984), and Geoff RYMAN, whose non-fantastic novel "Was . .
." (1992; vt Was 1992 US), partly set in 19th-century Kansas, constitutes
a thorough examination of the roots of Oz. [JC]Other works: A New
Wonderland (1900; vt The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of
Mo 1903); The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902); John Dough and
the Cherub (1906); The Sea Fairies (1911) and its sequel Sky Island
(1912); The Purple Dragon and Other Fantasies (1897-1905 various mags;
coll 1976); Animal Fairy Tales (1905 The Delineator; coll 1989).About the
author: Wizard of Oz and Who He Was (1957) by Martin GARDNER and R.B. Nye;
The Oz Scrapbook (1977) by David L. Greene and Dick Martin.See also:
CHILDREN'S SF; DIME-NOVEL SF; MACHINES.

BAX, MARTIN
(1933- ) UK doctor of medicine, current (1992) editor of the literary
magazine Ambit and writer. In his sf novel, The Hospital Ship (1976),
which has more than a passing resemblance to the Narrenschiff or Ship of
Fools, a group of experimental doctors sail the world's oceans after a
HOLOCAUST, curing those they can cure, stashing those they definitely
cannot in the ship's mortuary, and applying a variety of techniques, many
sexual, to the in-betweens. [JC]

BAXTER, JOHN
(1939- ) Australian writer, who has also lived and worked in the UK and
USA. He began publishing sf with "Vendetta's End" for Science Fiction
Adventures in 1962, and for the next four years appeared primarily in New
Worlds; he wrote some stories with Ron Smith (1936- ) under the joint
pseudonym Martin Loran. His sf novel, The Off-Worlders (1966 dos US; vt
The God Killers 1968 Aus) portrays the superstition-ridden ex-colony
planet of Merryland and a search for the lost knowledge it contains. The
Hermes Fall (1978 US) depicts with some vigour the DISASTER created when
an asteroid strikes the Earth. Increasingly, JB has concentrated on
writing on the cinema, his work in this genre including the informative,
though not always accurate, Science Fiction in the Cinema (1970), and 11
titles unconnected with sf. The Fire Came By (1976), written with Thomas
A. Atkins, a science-fact book containing some almost-sf speculations,
tells of the great Siberian explosion of 1908. As editor JB produced The
Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction (anth 1968; vt Australian
Science Fiction 1 1969) and The Second Pacific Book of Australian Science
Fiction (anth 1971; vt Australian Science Fiction 2 1971). [JC/PN]Other
works: The Black Yacht (1982 US); Torched (1986) with John BROSNAN, both
writing as James Blackstone, a horror novel about spontaneous
combustion.See also: CINEMA.

BAXTER, STEPHEN (M.)
(1957- ) UK writer who has also signed his name Steve Baxter and S.M.
Baxter. He began publishing sf with "The Xeelee Flower" for Interzone in
1987, which with most of his other short work fits into his Xeelee
Sequence, an ambiitious attempt at creating a Future HISTORY; novels
included in the sequence are Raft (1989 Interzone; much exp 1991, Timelike
Infinity (1992), Flux (1993) and Rind (1994). The sequence - as centrally
narrated in the second and fourth volume - follows humanity into
interstellar space, where it enoucnters a complex of ALIEN races; the long
epic ends (being typical in this of UK sf) darkly, many aeons hence. SB's
basic mode is HARD SF, and his History is unusually dense with
thought-experiment environments. Raft, for instance, though it labors
under the strain of an ineptly conceived protagonist, effectively posits
an ultra-high-gravity universe, and argues the consequences to migrant
humans of living there; and Flux posits a microscopic folk who live on the
surface of a NEUTRON STAR. The TIME TRAVEL intricacies of Ring are at
points daunting; but the sweeping millennia-long tale is carried off with
a genuine, sciencefictional SENSE OF WONDER. SB's only work of interest
unconnected to Xeelee is Anti-Ice (1993), an ALTERNATE HISTORY tale set in
an England transfigured into a STEAMPUNK dystopia by the discovery of the
eponymous superconductor - extracted from a fallen moonlet - which
explodes with nuclear force when heated, but which is also capable of
powering spaceships. There is an occasional almost metallic flatness of
tone in this novel, a flatness characteristic of SB's work as a whole;
this seems a relatively small price to pay for the exhilaration of the
ride. [JC]Other works:Chiron (1993 chap); The Time Ships (1995), a sequel
to H. G. WELL's THE TIME MACHINE (1895).See also: CLICHES; GRAVITY;
IMAGINARY SCIENCE; INTERZONE.

BAYLEY, BARRINGTON J(OHN)
(1937- ) UK writer, active as a freelance under various names for many
years, author of juvenile stories, picture-strips and features as well as
sf, which he began to publish with "Combat's End" for Vargo Statten
Science Fiction Magazine in 1954. His sf pseudonyms include P.F. Woods (at
least 10 stories), Alan Aumbry (1 story), John Diamond (1 story), and
(with Michael MOORCOCK) Michael BARRINGTON (1 story). Some early tales
appear in The Seed of Evil (coll 1979). All his sf novels have been as
BJB, beginning with Star Virus (1964 NW; exp 1970 dos US). This complex
and somewhat gloomy space epic, along with some of its successors, has had
a strong though not broadly recognized influence on such UK sf writers as
M. John HARRISON; perhaps because BJB's style is sometimes laboured and
his lack of cheerful endings is alien to the expectations of readers of
conventional SPACE OPERA, he has yet to receive due recognition for the
hard-edged control he exercises over plots whose intricate dealings in
TIME PARADOXES and insistent metaphysical drive make them some of the most
formidable works of their type. Though Annihilation Factor (1964 as "The
Patch" NW as by Peter Woods; exp 1972 dos US), Empire of Two Worlds (1972
US) and Collision Course (1973 US; vt Collision with Chronos 1977
UK)-which utilizes the time theories of J.W. DUNNE - are all variously
successful, probably the most fully realized time-paradox space opera from
his pen is The Fall of Chronopolis (1974 US; vt Chronopolis 1979 UK), in
which the Chronotic Empire jousts against a terrifying adversary in doomed
attempts to maintain a stable reality; at the crux of the book it becomes
evident that the conflict is eternal, and that the same forces will oppose
one another through time forever (see also ALTERNATE WORLDS).The Soul of
the Robot (1974 US; rev 1976 UK), along with its sequel The Rod of Light
(1985), marked a change of pace in its treatment of such ROBOT themes as
the nature of self-consciousness; the book makes complex play with a
number of philosophical paradoxes, though BJB's touch here is
uncharacteristically light. The Garments of Caean (1976 US; text restored
1978 UK) utilizes some fairly sophisticated cultural ANTHROPOLOGY in a
space-opera tale of sentient clothing which owns the man. But perhaps the
most significant work BJB produced in the 1970s was in short fiction, most
of it collected in The Knights of the Limits (coll 1978), a remarkable
(though astonishingly bleak) assembly of experiments in the carrying of
story ideas to the end of their tether. Later space operas - The Grand
Wheel (1977), Star Winds (1978 US), The Pillars of Eternity (1982 US), The
Zen Gun (1983 US) and The Forest of Peldain (1985 US) - continued to take
an orrery joy in the galaxies. BJB continues to be seriously
underestimated, perhaps because of his almost total restriction to pulp
formats. [JC] Other works: The Pillars of Eternity and The Garments of
Caean (omni 1989); The Fall of Chronopolis and Collision with Chronos
(omni 1989).About the author: "Knight Without Limit: An Overview of the
Work of Barrington Bayley" by Andy Darlington in Arena 10 (1980); The
Writings of Barrington J. Bayley (1981 chap) by Mike ASHLEY.See also:
ARTS; COSMOLOGY; CYBORGS; ECONOMICS; EVOLUTION; GALACTIC EMPIRES;
HIVE-MINDS; INTERZONE; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; METAPHYSICS; MUSIC; NEW WAVE; NEW
WORLDS.

BEACH, LYNN
Kathryn LANCE.

BEACHCOMBER
J.B. MORTON.

BEACON MAGAZINES
Ned L. PINES; THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

BEALE, CHARLES WILLING
(1845-1932) US writer in whose The Secret of the Earth (1899) aeronauts
find a hole in the planet and penetrate a routine HOLLOW EARTH inhabited
by a lost race ( LOST WORLDS), which they fail to contact. [JC]Other
works: The Ghost of Guir House (1897).

BEAN, NORMAN
[s] Edgar Rice BURROUGHS.

BEAR, GREG
Working name of US writer Gregory Dale Bear (1951- ), son-in-law of Poul
ANDERSON. He began publishing sf with "Destroyers" for Famous Science
Fiction in 1967, and began to write full-time in 1975. His first stories
and novels were auspicious but not remarkably so, and he gave no immediate
signs of becoming one of the dominant writers of the 1980s. Between 1985
and 1990, however, he published six novels whose importance to the realm
of HARD SF-and to the world of sf in general - it would be hard to
overrate; he also served as President of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF
AMERICA 1988-90. Other new writers in that period, like Lucius SHEPARD,
had perhaps a greater grasp of the aesthetic trials and challenges of the
art of fiction; still others, like Kim Stanley ROBINSON, might conceive a
richer world; some, like David BRIN, might be handier with galaxies; and
William GIBSON, by giving CYBERPUNK a habitation, gave Bruce STERLING a
home. But only Orson Scott CARD could legitimately and centrally stand
with GB and manifest the voice of US GENRE SF.It would be a long trek from
Hegira (1979; rev 1987 UK), GB's first novel, a PLANETARY-ROMANCE quest
tale whose venue, a huge artificial hollow world comically called Hegira,
turns out itself to be questing through space at the end of time,
accompanied by a vast conglomeration of similar planets which constitute
en masse a singularity capable of surviving the end of the Universe, and
whose task it is to carry the burden of life into the subsequent reality.
Even in the extensively revised version of 1987, the narrative is
top-heavy with explanations pumped for SENSE OF WONDER. Though the
variegations of cast and scenery are typical of later GB creations - and
though the biological imperatives ( BIOLOGY), and the transcendental
COSMOLOGY at novel's close, would be reiterated time and again in his work
- Hegira seemed to show ambition far beyond the reach of talent. It was an
impression only slowly to be modified by the far-reaching (but frequently
lame) books which followed, like Psychlone (1979; vt Lost Souls 1982),
though Beyond Heaven's River (1980) - a tale which carries a Japanese
fighter pilot from WWII into a morally complex galactic venue 400 years
hence - manages both to create a plausible protagonist and to match his
understanding of the larger picture with ours. Set in a universe which
shares some features with the one in that book are Strength of Stones
(fixup 1981; rev 1988 UK) and some of the stories assembled in The Wind
from a Burning Woman (coll 1983; with 2 stories added, rev vt The Venging
1992 UK) and Tangents (coll 1989) - whose title story won both HUGO and
NEBULA awards. These tales depict with some confidence venues created by a
human civilization faced with the need to balance its nearly infinite
capacity to transform the Universe against ancient moral imperatives. The
title story of the first collection, for instance, evokes a conflict
between environmentalist Naderites and technophilic Geshels which would
echo down the aisles of EON (1985); and "Sisters", in the second
collection, brilliantly affirms a broad-church definition of the human
family.It was not, however, until the publication of BLOOD MUSIC (1985)
that GB began to show his true strength, which might be defined as the
capacity to incorporate the hardest and most cognitively demanding of
hard-sf premises and plot-logics into tales whose protagonists display far
greater complexity than anything unliving. It can be argued that the
singular failure of almost all hard-sf writers to create noteworthy
literature lies in their assumption that it is more difficult to
understand - say - plasma physics than to understand human beings. The
significance of GB's later 1980s novels lies in the fact that his human
beings are more difficult to describe than his physics. (It might be added
that his political views - like most hard-sf writers he constantly
expresses them - are also graced by a lack of dreadful simplicity.) In
BLOOD MUSIC - the 1983 novella version won both Hugo and Nebula - the hard
science is GENETIC ENGINEERING, and the character who ignites the plot is
a humanly ineffectual scientist who illicitly uses biochip technology to
tranform RNA molecules into living computers; these join together into
Gestalts which themselves combine into a single transcendental higher
consciousness incorporating all of life upon the planet into one
externally homogeneous biosphere. The close of the book, as the new
consciousness enters into rapport with the true Universe, has been
appropriately likened to the climax of Arthur C. CLARKE's CHILDHOOD'S END
(1953).GB's other 1985 novel EON, along with its sequel Eternity (1988),
is both more conventional and more enthralling. The conventionality lies
in a partial return to the large-scale enterprises of cosmological SPACE
OPERA, accompanied by a marked retreat from the nearly religious
transcendentalism evoked in GB by any application of information theory.
The grip of the sequence lies in the remarkable fertility of the concepts
presented: the hollowed-out asteroid, from an alternate timeline, whose
final chamber is literally endless; the extraordinary architectonics of
GB's demonstration of the nature of this phenomenon; the enormously
complex COMPUTER-run culture partway up the infinite corridor; the
relentless expansion of perspective, in a series of CONCEPTUAL
BREAKTHROUGHS, as the ordering and end of the entire Universe come into
question in the second volume. In the final analysis, this relentlessness
works perhaps best in the earlier portions of the tale - EON itself is
perhaps the best-constructed epic of cosmology yet written in the field -
but the two volumes together amply demonstrate GB's control over scale and
cognition.In something like the same spirit, The Forge of God (1987)
tackles the END OF THE WORLD by confronting NEAR-FUTURE humanity with a
sequence of ALIEN intrusions, one of which proves utterly and implacably
fatal to the existence of the planet. The bulldog inexorability with which
GB presents this scenario is darkly exhilarating, and seemed at the time a
welcome prophylactic to the assumption embedded in most hard-sf novels
that catastrophes, no matter how grave, will be sidestepped by the fit: a
sequel, however, Anvil of Stars (1992 UK), somewhat softens the blow of
the first volume by carrying a few human survivors in an alien ship on a
revenge mission directed against the apparent makers of the autonomous
weapons which destroyed Earth. Ultimately more interesting, though told
with a complexity that some readers have found congested, was Queen of
Angels (1990), which embodies a wide range of speculations about the
effects of recent theories about NANOTECHNOLOGY. Set mainly in a Los
Angeles transformed into a kind of beehive of human and para-human
activity, the book tells several kinds of story, in several venues: a
formal tale of detection (told from the complex viewpoint of a
biotransformed female cop); a prose-poem leading into voodoo; a tale of
VIRTUAL REALITY entrapments, and a narrative of the coming to
consciousness of an AI. Throughout, sustaining these strands of story, is
a boding sense of transcendental transformation, a sense that Queen of
Angels is perhaps a snapshot of one moment in an epic which will end in
the total victory of information that GB described in BLOOD MUSIC. A short
novel, Heads (1990 UK), set in something like the same Universe, concisely
conflates a Moon-based search for the Absolute Zero of temperature and the
threat that a cryogenically preserved head might turn out to be that of a
20th-century guru whose manipulative sect generations earlier proved
particularly attractive in some sf circles.Moving Mars (1993), which is
connected to the world depicted in Queen of Angels, and which won the 1995
Nebula Award, is a broader and more traditional tale. Its depiction of
MARS may lack some of the resolute arguments that accompany every
speculative suggestion in Kim Stanley ROBINSON's Mars sequence, but GB's
novel gains a commensurate freedom of sweep in its story - which
intermixes politics and an array of scientific discoveries - of the
emancipation of Mars from the hegemony of a paranoia-driven Earth. The
title, it may be fair to add, is meant literally.It is not easy to say
what might come next; it can be expected that whatever GB writes will
continue to bring sf and the world together, relentlessly. [JC]Other
works: The Speculative Poetry Review #1 (anth 1977 chap), an anthology in
magazine form; a STAR TREK tie, Corona * (1984); the Michael Perrin
fantasy sequence comprising The Infinity Concerto (1984) and The Serpent
Mage (1986), both assembled as Songs of Earth & Power (omni 1992 UK; rev
1994 US), the UK edition incorrectly implying revised status - GB's
modifications were not incorporated because of production difficulties,
and appear for the first time in the US edition; Sleepside Story (1988
chap); Early Harvest (coll 1988), containing also some nonfiction;
Hardfought (1983 IASFM; 1988 chap dos), reprinting the Nebula-winning
story; Bear's Fantasies (coll 1992).See also: ARKHAM HOUSE; ASTEROIDS;
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; AUTOMATION; BIG DUMB OBJECTS; CHILDREN IN SF;
CITIES; CYBERNETICS; DEVOLUTION; DISASTER; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION;
EVOLUTION; FANTASY; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GODS AND DEMONS; INTELLIGENCE;
INTERZONE; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; MACHINES; MATHEMATICS;
MEDICINE; METAPHYSICS; MUTANTS; OMNI; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PSYCHOLOGY;
SPACE HABITATS; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION.

BEASON, DOUG
(1953- ) US writer and officer in the USAF with a PhD in physics who
began publishing sf with "The Man I'll Never Be" for AMZ in 1987. Return
to Honor (1989), Assault on Alpha Base (1990) and Strike Eagle (1991) are
TECHNOTHRILLERS, but Lifeline (1990) with Kevin J. ANDERSON is of sf
interest, and marked both writers as names to watch. Further novels with
Anderson (whom see for further details of both books), The Trinity Paradox
(1991) and Assemblers of Infinity (1993), interestingly plumb the moral
perils of TIME TRAVELand examine some of the darker implications of
NANOTECHNOLOGY. [JC]See also: NUCLEAR POWER.

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE
Roger CORMAN.

BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, THE
Film (1953). Mutual Pictures/Warner Bros. Dir Eugene Lourie, starring
Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey. Screenplay
Lou Morheim, Fred Freiberger, based on "The Fog Horn" (1951) by Ray
BRADBURY. 80 mins. B/w.This was the second of the 1950s MONSTER MOVIES-the
first being The THING (1951) - and the one that established the basic
formula for most of those that followed. An atomic test in the Arctic
wakes a dinosaur frozen in the ice. It swims to its ancestral
breeding-grounds - an area now covered by the city of New York. It is
finally trapped and killed in an amusement park. This is the first film on
which model animator Ray HARRYHAUSEN had full control over the special
effects, though these are not remarkable. Nor is the film, though it looks
good: Lourie usually worked as an art director on mostly non-sf films,
including some of Jean Renoir's most distinguished; his other sf films are
BEHEMOTH, THE SEA MONSTER (1958), The COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK (1958) and
GORGO (1959). [JB]

BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES
Roger CORMAN.

BEAUJON, PAUL
Pseudonym of UK writer Beatrice Lamberton Warde (1900-1969), whose sf
novella, The Shelter in Bedlem (1937 chap; rev vt Peace Under Earth:
Dialogues from the Year 1946 1938 chap), expressed a grim view of the
DYSTOPIA which would follow the end of conflict. [JC]

BEAUMONT, CHARLES
(1929-1967) US story- and scriptwriter, born Charles Leroy Nutt but later
legally changing his name to CB; he wrote some non-sf under other names.
He began publishing his blend of horror and sf with "The Devil, You Say?"
for AMZ in 1951. Most of his work is collected in The Hunger (coll 1957;
with title story cut vt Shadow Play 1964 UK), Yonder (coll 1958), Night
Ride and Other Journeys (coll 1960), The Magic Man (coll 1965) and The
Edge (coll 1966 UK), which reassembles Yonder and Night Ride;
posthumously, this material was re-sorted and added to in Best of Beaumont
(coll 1982) and Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (1988; vt The Howling
Man 1992). CB's work combines humour and horror in a slick style extremely
effective in underlining the grimness of his basic inspiration. As a
writer of sf, fantasy and horror movies, he scripted or coscripted Queen
of Outer Space (1958), The Premature Burial (1962), Burn, Witch, Burn
(1962; vt The Night of the Eagle) - based on Conjure Wife (1943; 1953) by
Fritz LEIBER - The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), The
Haunted Palace (1963), The Seven Faces of Dr Lao (1964), The Masque of the
Red Death (1964) and BRAIN DEAD (1989). Several of these were directed by
Roger CORMAN. His numerous tv scripts include around 19 for The TWILIGHT
ZONE . He also collaborated with Chad OLIVER on the brief Claude Adams
series (FSF 1955-6) and edited a horror anthology, The Fiend in You (anth
1962). He was struck in 1964 by a savage illness which ravaged and
eventually killed him. [JC]About the author: The Work of Charles Beaumont
(2nd edn 1990 chap) by William F. NOLAN.See also: HORROR IN SF;
INVISIBILITY.

BEAUMONT, ROGER
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN AND THE HYDROGEN MAN
BIJO TO EKITAI NINGEN.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
US tv series (1987-90). A Witt-Tomas Production for CBS. Created Ron
Koslow. Prods Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, Koslow. Writers included
George R.R. MARTIN, Koslow, Shelly Moore, Linda Campanelli. Dirs included
Richard Franklin, Gus Trikonis, Ron Perlman. 3 seasons, totalling 55 50
min episodes. Colour.An urban fairytale, inspired in its make-up design if
not in its commitment to magic by Jean Cocteau's film La Belle et la Bete
(1946), BATB centres on the relationship between Catherine (Linda
Hamilton), a chic Manhattan district attorney, and Vincent (Ron Perlman),
a poeticizing, romantic, MUTANT lion-man who lives with his adopted father
(Roy Dotrice) in a world of derelicts in tunnels deep beneath the city. He
has a telepathic link with his ladylove. Despite the involvement of
distinguished sf writer George R.R. Martin as story editor, the show was a
combination of soap opera and crime thriller rather than a real sf/fantasy
offering, though the idea of a fantastic city beneath the real one is
interesting. The unorthodox team normally righted wrongs that could as
easily have served as springboards for episodes of any other action
adventure, while for two seasons Catherine and Vincent merely pussy-footed
around their relationship. The show's fragile charm being almost
exhausted, the format underwent severe changes in its final season, first
with the consummation of the central relationship, then with the casual
killing-off of the heroine and several other supporting cast members,
motivating Vincent's character change from mutant Care Bear to raging
vigilante. Catherine was replaced briefly by Diana Bennett (Jo Anderson),
a police officer, but the show never regained the-largely female - fan
following its earlier, more wistful episodes had picked up. A
novelization, largely of the first episode, is Beauty and the Beast *
(1989) by Barbara HAMBLY. [KN/PN]See also: SUPERHEROES.

de BEAUVOIR, SIMONE (LUCIIE ERNESTINE MARIE BERTRAND)
(1908-1986) French writer, famous for a wide variety of work, whose only
sf novel, Tous les hommes son mortels (1946; trans L. Friedman as All Men
Are Mortal 1955 US), examines the dilemmas of IMMORTALITY as experienced
by the protagonist of the book, who becomes deathless in the 13th century,
and retrospectively - from a contemporary point of view - makes a case for
regretting his condition. [JC]

BECHDOLT, JACK
Working name of US writer John Ernest Bechdolt (1884-1954) for his
fiction, though he used his full name for other writing. The Lost Vikings
(1931) features juveniles who discover a lost race ( LOST WORLDS) of
Vikings in Alaska. The Torch (1920 Argosy; 1948) is a post- HOLOCAUST
story set in the New York of AD3000; the torch is the Statue of Liberty's.
[JC]See also: CITIES.

BECK, CHRISTOPHER
T.C. BRIDGES.

BEDFORD, JOHN
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BEDFORD-JONES, H(ENRY JAMES O'BRIEN)
(1887-1949) Canadian author, later a naturalized US citizen, who was one
of the most prolific and popular pulp writers; of his more than 100
novels, a few - e.g., The Star Woman (1924) - were sf adventures. His
works appeared in the PULP MAGAZINES - The Magic Carpet, Golden Fleece,
All-Story Weekly and numerous others -under at least 15 pseudonyms. His
fictions were primarily historical and adventure, sometimes having sf or
weird elements as a basic framework. Among his earliest fantasies are the
LOST-WORLD adventures of his John Solomon series (in magazine form as by
HBJ, in book form as by Allan Hawkwood): Solomon's Quest (1915); Gentleman
Solomon (1915), about an unknown Middle Eastern pygmy race; Solomon's
Carpet (1915); The Seal of Solomon (1915 Argosy; 1924 UK), about a
community established by Crusaders in the Arabian desert; John Solomon
(1916); John Solomon Retired (1917); Solomon's Son (1918); John Solomon,
Supercargo (1924 UK); John Solomon, Incognito (1925 UK); The Shawl of
Solomon (1925 UK); The Wizard of the Atlas (1928 UK). In similar vein are
Splendour of the Gods (1924) and, in collaboration with W.C. Robertson,
The Temple of the Ten (1921; 1973), both of which appeared under his own
name.More germane to the genre were the several series that later appeared
in The BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE. The first of these was the Trumpets from
Oblivion series, 11 stories running from "The Stagnant Death" (1938) to
"The Serpent People" (1939). In these tales a device capable of recording
sounds and images from the past is used to establish a rational origin for
various myths and legends. A similar gadget is employed in the nine
Counterclockwise stories, running from "Counterclockwise" (1943) to "The
Gods do not Forget" (1944). Also in The Blue Book Magazine appeared two
futuristic series (as by Gordon Keyne) dealing, respectively, with the
struggle to maintain peace in the post-WWII years and with a post-WWII
Bureau of Missing Persons. The first, Tomorrow's Men, comprised "Peace
Hath her Victories" (1943), "The Battle for France" (1943), "Sahara Doom"
(1943) and "Tomorrow in Egypt" (1943). The second series was Quest, Inc.,
with 12 stories from "The Affair of the Drifting Face" (1943) to "The
Final Hoard" (1945). Other series included The Adventures of a
Professional Corpse (1940-41 WEIRD TALES), Carson's Folly (1945-6 Blue
Book Magazine) and The Sphinx Emerald (1946-7 Blue Book Magazine), which
last traces the malign influence of a gem throughout history. [JE]See
also: CANADA; MYTHOLOGY.

BEDSHEET
A term used to describe a magazine format, in contrast to pulp and
DIGEST. The bedsheet format - sometimes called large pulp format - is the
largest of the three; it varies slightly but approximates 8.5 x 11.75in
(216 x 298mm) - i.e., close to A4 (210 x 297mm). It was used by some of
the more prestigious PULP MAGAZINES in the 1920s and 1930s and, in a
slightly narrower version, became popular again in the late 1960s with
such magazines as NEW WORLDS and VISION OF TOMORROW; these, having fewer
pages than the earlier bedsheet magazines, were stapled rather than glued.
Magazines of this type, when printed on coated paper, are often called
slicks; although the term "slick" refers to paper quality rather than
size, slicks (e.g., OMNI) are normally in a smallish bedsheet format.
[PN]See also: SF MAGAZINES.

BED-SITTING ROOM, THE
Film (1969). Oscar Lewenstein/United Artists. Dir Richard Lester,
starring Rita Tushingham, Mona Washbourne, Arthur Lowe, Ralph Richardson,
Spike MILLIGAN, Michael Hordern, Roy Kinnear, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore.
Screenplay John Antrobus from the play by Antrobus Milligan. 91 mins.
Colour.BSR is a FABULATION, a black comedy set in England after WWIII,
where dazed survivors wander about pretending that nothing has happened,
even when some of them mutate into wardrobes, bed-sitting rooms and
parrots. The original play was a much-improvised piece of slapstick, and
what remains of it clashes awkwardly with chillingly bleak settings
showing the realistic aftermath of an atomic war: the shattered dome of St
Paul's Cathedral protruding from a swamp, a line of wrecked cars along a
disembodied length of motorway, a grim landscape dominated by great piles
of sludge and heaps of discarded boots, broken plates and false teeth. The
film effectively has no plot, and its disjointedness, while pleasantly
surreal, gives it an inconsequential air. [JB/PN]

BEEBEE, CHRIS
(? - ) UK writer known exclusively for his Cipola sequence, set in the
21st century on Earth and in a SPACE HABITAT: The Hub (1987) and The Main
Event (1989). The world of the sequence is dominated by COMPUTERS, and
trouble brews when the GRAIL programs go missing; the protagonist tries to
cope. [JC]

BEECHING, JACK
(1922- ) UK writer, mostly of poetry, and (with his first wife) of
juveniles as James Barbary. His novel The Dakota Project (1968) is a
TECHNOTHRILLER whose eponymous government project contains top secrets of
borderline sf interest. [JC]

BEEDING, FRANCIS
Joint pseudonym of UK writers John Leslie Palmer (1885-1944) and Hilary
Saunders (1898-1951) for numerous works in various genres, mainly
detective novels and thrillers; their sf novels are near-future political
thrillers. In The Seven Sleepers (1925 US) villainous Germans are kept
from starting a second world war. In its sequel, The Hidden Kingdom
(1927), Outer Mongolia is threatened with enslavement. The One Sane Man
(1934) features a man's attempt to enforce world peace by threatening
disaster, in this case via weather control. [JC]See also: CRIME AND
PUNISHMENT.

BEERE, PETER
(? - ) UK writer whose Trauma 2020 sequence of 21st-century action
thrillers-Trauma 2020: Urban Prey (1984), #2: The Crucifixion Squad (1984)
and #3: Silent Slaughter (1985) - has some efficient moments, as do his
two novels for young adults, Underworld III (1992), which is sf, and Doom
Sword (1993), which is fantasy. [JC]

BEESE, P.J.
(1946- ) US writer whose sf novel, The Guardsman (1988), with Todd
Cameron Hamilton, is an unremarkable example of interstellar-empire
adventure sf; its nomination for the 1989 HUGO caused some stir, and there
was evidence of block voting. When made aware of this, the authors
requested that their novel be withdrawn from the ballot. [JC]

BEGBIE, (EDWARD) HAROLD
(1871-1929) UK writer and journalist, author of The Day that Changed the
World (1912), as by "The Man who Was Warned", a religious fantasy in which
humankind's spiritual development is sharply uplifted by divine
intervention. HB also wrote On the Side of the Angels (1915), a reply to
Arthur MACHEN's The Bowmen (coll 1915; rev with 2 additional stories,
1915), and two political satires, Clara In Blunderland (1902) and Lost in
Blunderland: The Further Adventures of Clara (1903), both written with
M.H. Temple and J. Stafford Ransome (1860-1931) under the collaborative
pseudonym Caroline Lewis. [JE]

BEGOUEN, MAX
(? -? ) French prehistorian and author of three prehistoric novels, of
which only Les bisons d'argile (1925; trans as Bison of Clay 1926) has
been translated into English. His entry for the Prix Jules Verne (
AWARDS), Quand le mammouth ressuscita ["When the Mammoth Revives"] (1928),
although placed only second, was deemed of sufficient merit to warrant
publication. [JE]Other works: Tisik et Kate, aventures de deux enfants a
l'epoque du renne ["Tisik and Kate: The Adventures of Two Children in the
Time of the Reindeer"] (1946).See also: ORIGIN OF MAN.

BEHEMOTH, THE SEA MONSTER
(vt The Giant Behemoth US) Film (1959). Diamond/Allied Artists. Dir
Douglas Hickox, Eugene Lourie, starring Gene Evans, Andre Morell, Jack
MacGowran, Leigh Madison. Screenplay Lourie. 80 mins, cut to 72 mins. B/w.
Lourie made several MONSTER MOVIES during his career, including The BEAST
FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), of which BTSM - his least successful - is a
partial remake. The story is the usual one - a prehistoric reptile is
revived by atomic radiation and immediately sets out to demolish the
nearest city, in this case London. There is a good build-up of suspense in
some sequences but, despite the presence of the elderly Willis H. O'BRIEN
(designer of the original KING KONG) on the team, the very low budget
severely restricted the scope of the effects. [JB]

BEHOUNEK, FRANTISEK
[r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF.

BEKSICS, GUSZTAV
[r] HUNGARY.

BELAYEV, A.
[r] Alexander BELYAEV.

"BELCAMPO"
BENELUX.

BELDEN, DAVID (CORDEROY)
(1949- ) Swiss-born UK writer, in the USA from 1982, whose Galactic
Collectivity sequence - Children of Arable (1986) and To Warm the Earth
(1988) - depicts with clearly felt didactic urgency a FAR-FUTURE Earth
trapped in sterile stasis, with a stagnant galactic civilization
impotently observing the dying of the mother planet. In the first volume a
woman gives birth to a child, and this has a rejuvenating effect (the
novel is rich in feminist and religious discourse); in the second novel of
the sequence, another female protagonist looks to a Collectivity satellite
for a dubious technological fix. [JC]

BELGIUM
BENELUX.

BELIAEV, ALEXANDER
[r] Alexander BELYAEV.

BELIAYEV, ALEXANDER
[r] Alexander BELYAEV.

BELL, CLARE (LOUISE)
(1952- ) UK-born writer, in the USA from 1957; a test-equipment engineer
for a computer firm 1978-90. She began publishing sf with Ratha's Creature
(1983), the first volume of the Ratha Ya sequence of juveniles - continued
with Clan Ground (1984) and Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (1990)-which
delineates the lives of an ALTERNATE-WORLD tribe of intelligent
cougar-like felines, concentrating on Ratha, a rebel who becomes necessary
for the survival of her people. Tomorrow's Sphinx (1986), also an sf
juvenile but this time about an intelligent cheetah, is set on an Earth
abandoned by the humans who have devastated it. In People of the Sky
(1989), for adults, an Amerindian star-pilot discovers a planet inhabited
by Pueblos; their relationship to the indigenous insect ALIENS, which they
ride like horses, and the puzzle of their existence generate sufficient
mystery to keep the competent narrative on the move. CB might choose to
inhabit the consciousnesses of sentient animals - as in The Jaguar
Princess (1993), a fantasy - or of a member of a culture foreign to her
own (such as an Amerindian), but the true "aliens" in her imaginative
world are the (human) representatives of technological society. In
collaboration with M. Coleman EASTON, with whom she lives, both writing as
Clare Coleman, she has published the Ancient Pacific series, Daughter of
the Reef (1992), Sister of the Sun (1993) and Child of the Dawn (1994);
they are essentially historical in nature. [JC]

BELL, ERIC TEMPLE
[r] John TAINE.

BELL, NEIL
Pseudonym of UK writer Stephen Southwold (1887-1964), used on his early
poetry and most of his later novels. Born Stephen Henry Critten, he took
the name Southwold (from his birthplace) because he despised his father,
for reasons made clear in the semi-autobiographical chapters which recur
in many of his novels, including Precious Porcelain (1931) and The Lord of
Life (1933). He wrote juveniles and a few biographical novels under his
adopted name, and also used the pseudonyms Stephen Green, S.H. Lambert,
Paul Martens and Miles. His first sf novel, The Seventh Bowl (1930 as by
Miles; reprinted 1934 as by NB), is a bitter future HISTORY in which the
deployment of a technology of IMMORTALITY by corrupt politicians sets in
train a chain of events leading to the END OF THE WORLD. His second, The
Gas War of 1940 (1931 as by Miles; vt Valiant Clay 1934 as by NB), gives a
more detailed account of an incident - the use of poison gas in war - from
the same future history. The caustic outlook of these works is displayed
also in the apocalyptic black comedy The Lord of Life and in the stories
in his first and best collection, Mixed Pickles: Short Stories (coll
1935); these include the sf stories "The Mouse" and "The Evanescence of
Adrian Fulk" and the sarcastic messianic fantasy ( MESSIAHS) "The Facts
About Benjamin Crede" (also in Ten Short Stories, coll 1948).Precious
Porcelain, The Disturbing Affair of Noel Blake (1932) and Life Comes to
Seathorpe (1946) are three similarly structured mystery stories in which
peculiar happenings are ultimately revealed to have an sf explanation.
Death Rocks the Cradle (1933 as by Martens) is a hallucinatory fantasy
about a UTOPIA populated by covert sadists. One Came Back (1938) is an
interesting realistic novel which extends into the NEAR FUTURE in
describing the founding of a new RELIGION following an apparent miracle.
Occasional sf or fantasy stories crop up in NB's later collections, most
significantly the first of the three horror novellas in Who Walk in Fear
(coll 1954) and several items in Alpha and Omega (coll 1946); the latter
collection includes an introduction descriptive of his working methods.
His quirky studies in abnormal psychology, including Portrait of Gideon
Power (1944 as by Lambert; reprinted 1962 as by NB) and The Dark Page
(1951), are of marginal interest. [BS/JC]Other works: Ten-Minute Tales
(coll 1927 as by Southwold), children's fantasy stories; The Tales of Joe
Egg (coll 1936 as by Southwold), a non-sf juvenile story sequence narrated
by a ROBOTwithin a fantasy frame; The Smallways Rub Along (coll 1938) has
1 sf story; Forty Stories (coll 1948) has 2 sf stories; Three Pair of
Heels (coll 1951); The House at the Crossroads (1966); The Ninth Earl of
Whitby (coll 1966) has 1 sf story.About the author: My Writing Life
(1955), autobiography.See also: BIOLOGY; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; MEDICINE;
PSI POWERS; WAR; WEAPONS.

BELL, THORNTON
R.L. FANTHORPE.

BELLAMY, EDWARD
(1850-1898) US author and journalist, the latter from 1871, when he
abandoned the practice of law before having properly begun it; no lawyers
exist in the AD2000 of his most famous work, the UTOPIA Looking Backward,
2000-1887 (1888) and its sequel, Equality (1897), whose influence in the
19th century was enormous. His early works of fiction were Gothic; though
sentimental and labouredly influenced by Nathaniel HAWTHORNE, they are
nevertheless strangely moving. They do not, however, show any great hint
of the direction his work would take. Dr Heidenhoff's Process (1880),
although not sf, interestingly prefigures some of the tactics of his later
work; the doctor's process claims to mechanically wipe out diseased
memories from those who wish for a new start. The protagonist's girl, who
has been seduced by a rival, is persuaded to try the process, and is
transformed until the last pages of the novel, when it turns out that
Heidenhoff and his process have simply been dreamt by the protagonist, who
awakens to find that his disgraced lover has committed suicide.The
emotional exorbitance and Gothic extremity of this tale are transformed in
Looking Backward into a vision of a utopian society whose equally
exorbitant realization is achieved while the protagonist, whose confusion
upon his arrival into the world of the future is one of the best things in
this uneasy work of fiction, has been in hypnotized sleep ( SLEEPER
AWAKES). The people of AD2000 are devoid of irrational passions and their
highly communalized society reflects a reasonableness so radically opposed
to common sense that one is tempted to posit an impulse of deep violence
behind EB's creation of such a world. William MORRIS was so appalled by
the bureaucratic and machine-like nature of EB's utopia that he was
instantly driven to retort with News from Nowhere (1890 US), which
described an ideal world of a very different sort. EB's book has
nonetheless been extraordinarily popular, especially in the USA, which
suggests a greater receptivity to communist thought in that country than
is generally recognized, and has been treated as a serious model for the
positing of future societies by many thinkers and writers, including Mack
REYNOLDS. The sequel, an uninspired sequence of fictionalized essays, did
little to damage the effect of the earlier book. EB is more important to
the history of utopian thought than he is as a writer of PROTO SCIENCE
FICTION. His influence on the world of GENRE SF, except on didactic
writers like Hugo GERNSBACK, has been indirect and diffuse. [JC]Other
works: Miss Ludington's Sister: A Romance of Immortality (1884); The
Blindman's World and Other Stories (coll 1898), especially the title story
(written 1885).About the author: Utopian Novel in America, 1886-1896: The
Politics of Form (1985) by Jean Pfaelzer.See also: ARTS; AUTOMATION;
ECONOMICS; HISTORY OF SF; MACHINES; MUSIC; NEAR FUTURE; POLITICS;
PSYCHOLOGY; SUSPENDED ANIMATION; TECHNOLOGY.

BELLAMY, FRANCIS RUFUS
(1886-1972) US editor and writer. In his sf novel Atta (1953) a man is
struck by lightning and, after shrinking until 1/2 in (12mm) tall,
combines forces with a warrior ant by the name of Atta. [JC]See also: NEAR
FUTURE.

BELLOC, (JOSEPH) HILAIRE (PETER)
(1870-1953) French-born UK writer, known for his poetry - notably his
Cautionary Tales (coll 1907) for children - his anti-Semitism, his Roman
Catholic apologetics, and his novels. Most of his fiction was written
either to argue a political case or to potboil, and his habit of
displacing his venues from consensual reality served both motives, for his
politics are fantastical and his commercial work tends to commit acts of
vengeance against the hoi polloi. Mr Clutterbuck's Election (1908), A
Change in the Cabinet (1909) and Pongo and the Bull (1910) together make
up a NEAR-FUTURE assault on Edwardian politics in a 1920s UK. Of the
several novels for which his friend and colleague G.K. CHESTERTON provided
illustrations, But Soft - We Are Observed! (1928; vt Shadowed! 1929 US) is
genuine sf, a satirical tale of suspense set in the USA and Europe in
1979, the main target once again being the parliamentary form of
government. Other novels by HB of genre interest and illustrated by
Chesterton are Mr Petre (1925), The Emerald of Catherine the Great (1926;
vt The Emerald US), The Haunted House (1928), The Man who Made Gold (1930)
and The Postmaster-General (1932). Packed with energy though formally
negligent, HB's fiction awaits a modest revival. [JC]About the author:
Hilaire Belloc (1945) by Robert Hamilton.See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS;
POLITICS; TIME TRAVEL.

BELLOW, SAUL
(1915- ) Canadian-born US novelist. Winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for
Literature, SB is perhaps the premier MAINSTREAM novelist of his
generation in the USA today. Some of his books distantly resemble sf,
specifically Henderson the Rain King (1959), a picaresque partly set in a
quasimythical African kingdom. Mr Sammler's Planet (1970) has been wrongly
annexed as sf by several commentators, who perhaps relied on the title
alone; in the novel mankind's reaching of the Moon and establishment there
of a utopia are matters which occur only in conversation. [JC]

BELL PUBLICATIONS
UNIVERSE SCIENCE FICTION.

BELOT, ADOLPHE
(1829-1890) French writer. Of the tales collected in English in A
Parisian Sultana (coll trans H. Mainwaring Dunstan in 3 vols 1879 UK), one
features a superhuman female explorer in Africa and another a LOST WORLD
of Amazons. [JC]

BELYAEV, ALEXANDER (ROMANOVICH)
(1884-?1942) Russian writer whose surname has been variously
transliterated; further spellings include Beliaev, Beliayev and Belyayev.
His death-date is likewise insecure: he died during the German occupation
of the city of Pushkin and, while his body was discovered in January 1942,
it is possible that his death was in fact in late 1941. As one of the
originators of the sf genre in Soviet literature, AB's WELLS- and
VERNE-influenced writings dominated the field between the wars, providing
models for most other Soviet practitioners of the time. His first story,
Golova Professora Douellia (1925 in story form; 1937; trans Antonina W.
Bouis as Professor Dowell's Head 1980 US), is both a prophetic story about
organ transplantation and a dramatic account of life without motion - the
affect of the latter focus being intensified by the author's own invalid
status due to incurable illness. After dealing with traditional themes,
such as that of ATLANTIS in Poslednii Tchelovek Iz Atlantidy ["The Last
Man from Atlantis"] (1927), AB tackled space exploration in Bor'ba V Efire
(1927; trans Albert Parry as The Struggle in Space: Red Dream;
Soviet-American War 1965 US); he returned to this theme in Pryzhok V
Nichto ["Jump into Nowhere"] (1933) and Zvezda KETZ ["The KET Star"]
(1940), the latter promulgating the ideas of Russian space pioneer
Konstantin TSIOLKOVSKY.Though the literary style and themes of AB's sf had
standard pulp limitations, a personal note resounded through his otherwise
orthodox representations of potential SUPERMEN, a theme seemingly
encouraged by his own miserable condition. In Tchelovek-Amfibia (1929;
trans L. Kolesnikov as The Amphibian 1959 Russia), the protagonist - a boy
with transplanted shark's gills - is totally uncomfortable in the society
of "normal people"; in Vlastelin Mira ["The Master of the World"] (1929) a
morally wicked but ingenious biophysicist tries to control people through
the use of telepathy; and in Ariel (1941) the same dramatic
incompatibility afflicts a levitating boy, the victim of another mad
scientist's enthusiasms. Despite the manifest ideological content and
frequent cliches in AB's work, his books remain permanently in print,
maintaining his status as the first Soviet sf "classic". [PN/VG/JC]See
also: RUSSIA; UNDER THE SEA.

BEM
A common item of sf TERMINOLOGY, being an acronym of "bug-eyed monster"
and referring to the type of ALIEN being, usually menacing, regularly
pictured on the covers of SF MAGAZINES in the 1930s and 1940s.See also:
MONSTERS.

BEMMANN, HANS
[r] GERMANY.

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES
Film (1969). Apjac/20th Century-Fox. Dir Ted Post, starring James
Franciscus, Charlton Heston, Linda Harrison, Kim Hunter. Screenplay Paul
Dehn, Mort Abrahams, based on characters created by Pierre BOULLE. 95
mins. Colour.In this first and best of four sequels to PLANET OF THE APES
another time-warped astronaut (Franciscus) crashlands on the ape world.
Like his predecessor he is captured, befriended by the sympathetic
chimpanzee Zira (Hunter), and meets the girl savage (Harrison). But when
he escapes with her underground and discovers the remains of New York City
the film goes off in a blacker direction: he finds a race of deformed,
telepathic MUTANTS who worship a nuclear Doomsday Bomb, and meets the
astronaut hero (Heston) of the previous film, now half-crazed and
venomous, who ultimately detonates the bomb and brings about a HOLOCAUST,
wiping out apes, mutants and humans alike. In its replacement of whimsical
SATIRE by an altogether harsher judgement about the prospects for
intelligent life on Earth, this film is arguably stronger than its
original. The novelization is Beneath the Planet of the Apes * (1970) by
Michael AVALLONE. [JB/PN]

BENELUX
The Benelux consists of three nations: the Netherlands (Holland), Belgium
and Luxembourg. The Dutch language is spoken in the Netherlands and in the
northern part of Belgium, called Flanders. The French-speaking southern
and eastern part of Belgium is called Wallonia. In the field of literature
Flanders and the Netherlands are one domain, and the same can be said for
Wallonia and France. Flemish (from Flanders) and Walloon (from Wallonia)
authors are mostly published, respectively, in the Netherlands (Amsterdam)
and in France (Paris), for reasons of prestige and because of the small
number of Flemish and Walloon publishers.Dutch and Flemish sf took shape
in the 1960s, when several publishers began series of translated sf,
FANDOM was organized and some Dutch and Flemish authors began to write sf
novels. Before the 1960s there were isolated works (original or
translated), but no real tradition of sf. Even during those periods when
the fantastic was flowering everywhere in Western literature (as in the
Romantic era, and at the turn of the century), the quantity of Dutch and
Flemish sf was very small and all of it has been almost totally forgotten,
even by the most comprehensive histories of Dutch and Flemish sf.The sf
boom begun in the 1960s did not last very long. In the 1980s the market
declined to the figures of the early 1960s. In the late 1970s, for
instance, the established sf publishers together published almost 100
books a year (mostly translations); in the early 1990s this had declined
to some 25 books. Most publishers discontinued their sf lines, and by 1992
only two - Meulenhoff and Luitingh - were really active on the sf market.
So one can say that the old situation has been restored: sf (and fantasy
and horror) as genres consist of only isolated works scattered over the
whole literary field.During the early stage of the Romantic era, when the
influence of the Enlightenment was still very strong, several writers
produced, mostly in the form of IMAGINARY VOYAGES, descriptions of a
future Holland. This genre of utopian literature continued during the 19th
century. In the 1890s the Dutch publisher Elsevier produced a famous
complete edition in 65 volumes of the work of Jules VERNE, which was
widely sold but apparently had no real influence on Dutch literature
(except the juvenile market).In the first half of the 20th century only a
few original sf works appeared, and only one of them is still in print,
being considered a masterpiece of Dutch literature: Blokken ["Blocks"]
(1931) by F. Bordewijk (1884-1965). This short novel is set in a
NEAR-FUTURE Russia that has at the same time communist and fascist
characteristics. In part it is a pure description of the State and its
Ruling Council, in part a story about an unsuccessful revolt. A group of
dissidents is mercilessly slaughtered, but at the end it is suggested that
the upheavals will continue until the State is destroyed. It is a warning
not so much against communism or fascism as against every sort of
totalitarian government. Bordewijk also wrote a few sf short stories, most
of which are to be found in his collection Vertellingen van generzijds
["Tales from the Other Side"] (coll 1951). Not included in this collection
is the remarkable "Einde der mensheid" ["End of Mankind"] (1959), a
fictional essay in the manner of Jorge Luis BORGES about a Universe that
consists of layers of "positiva, neutra, and negativa" in an endless
continuation. Mankind is but an unimportant phenomenon in one of the
uncountable layers, and will eventually disappear, leaving no trace at
all.A writer of short fantasies and some sf stories was "Belcampo"
(pseudonym of H.P. Schonfeld Wichers [1902-1990]), whose clever and witty
tales are still popular. Of his sf stories the best are the ROBOT tale
"Voorland" ["Foreland"] (1935) and "Het verhaal van Oosterhuis" ["The Tale
of Oosterhuis"] (1946), a curious blend of imaginary voyage, UTOPIA,
DYSTOPIA and LOST WORLD.In the 1960s and 1970s some MAINSTREAM novelists
wrote one or two sf novels. Het reservaat (1964; trans as The Reservation
1978 UK) by the Fleming Ward Ruyslinck (1929- ) is a bitter dystopian
novel about a near-future Belgium where all dissidents are put away in
reservations disguised as psychiatric clinics. The Belgian government is
depicted as right-wing and as corrupted by the political imperialism of
the USA. However, the reservations are more reminiscent of repression in
the former USSR. As with Bordewijk's novella, the novel is essentially an
attack on repressive societies of all kinds.Hugo Raes (1929- ), also from
Flanders, wrote two imaginary voyages with sf elements, De lotgevallen
["The Events"] (1968) and Reizigers in de anti-tijd ["Voyagers in
Anti-Time"] (1971). His De verwoesting van Hyperion ["The Destruction of
Hyperion"] (1978) is straightforward sf, a post- HOLOCAUST novel about the
nearly immortal descendants of mankind and their fight with evolved rats.
Raes wrote some fine sf short stories, most of which are collected in
Bankroet van een charmeur ["Bankruptcy of a Charmer"] (coll 1967).De
toekomst van gisteren ["The Future of Yesterday"] (1972) by the Dutchman
Harry Mulisch (1927- ) is not a novel but a book-length essay in which the
author explains that he has not in fact written a projected novel of that
title. Had he done so, that novel would have presented an ALTERNATE WORLD
in which the Germans had won WWII (see also HITLER WINS). Within that
alternate world the protagonist is writing a novel about a world alternate
to his, in which the Germans lost the war. So far the concept shows a
remarkable resemblance to Philip K. DICK's THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
(1962), but - unlike Dick's - the second novel had to be fully reproduced
within the text of the first. What interested Mulisch was the difference
between the real world in which the Germans lost WWII and a world in
which, although the same thing has happened, the present is as imagined by
a writer who has grown up in a fascist world state. In his essay Mulisch
demonstrates that the combination of alternate-world novel and
novel-within-a-novel is rendered theoretically impossible by narrative
restrictions. The book should be obligatory reading for alternate-world
authors.Other relevant modern Dutch authors include Rein Blijstra
(1901-1975), whose 10 humorous stories about all kinds of sf CLICHES are
collected as Het planetarium van Otze Otzinga ["The Orrery of Otze
Otzinga"] (coll 1962). The novelist and playwright Manuel van Loggem
(1916- ) has written interesting FANTASY with slight sf leanings; his best
collection is Het liefdeleven der Priargen ["The Love Life of the
Priargs"] (coll 1968). The novelist and computer expert Gerrit Krol (1934-
) wrote De man achter het raam ["The Man behind the Window"] (1982), the
rather difficult story of Adam, a thinking COMPUTER, who contemplates the
problem of what a human being really is. When he has developed into a full
human being, he undergoes the fate of all mankind and dies. It is not so
much sf as a novel of ideas, or even a study (disguised as fiction) of
problems of identity and consciousness.In the late 1950s and especially in
the 1970s, some authors came to the fore who can be considered true sf
writers. The Dutch physicist Dionijs BURGER wrote Bolland (1957; trans as
Sphereland 1965 US), a continuation and expansion of Edwin A. ABBOTT's
famous Flatland (1884). As Abbott tried to demonstrate four-dimensional
geometry by means of a story about two-dimensional creatures, Burger tries
to explain Einstein's theories about curved space and the expanding
Universe. His story takes place two generations after the events described
by Abbott; the narrator is a grandson of Abbott's A Square. Abbott's book
may be of higher literary quality, but Burger's is more inventive and
humorous. The book has become a minor classic in the sf world.Sam of de
Pluterdag (1968; trans as Where Were You Last Pluterday? 1973 US), by the
Flemish author Paul VAN HERCK, is a funny satirical novel about a society
in which the higher social levels have access to an additional eighth day
of the week, the "Pluterday". In 1972 it won the first Europa Award.The
two most prolific sf writers are the Dutchman Felix Thijssen (1933- ) and
the Fleming Eddy Bertin (1944- ). Thijssen, originally a writer of
adventure fiction for the juvenile market, started to write sf in 1971
when the first volume of the so-called Mark Stevens cycle appeared. This
is a run-of-the-mill SPACE-OPERA series, whose first volumes seemed aimed
at young adults, but which gradually became more mature. The series ended
with a good eighth volume, De poorten van het paradijs ["The Gates of
Paradise"] (1974). Later Thijssen wrote several rather more serious
novels, the best of which is Emmarg (1976), a sad story about a pregnant
female ALIEN abandoned on Earth. Eddy Bertin has some reputation in the
English-speaking world, thanks to his own translations of several of his
stories. The Membrane Universe series can be called his best work; it is
collected in three volumes: Eenzame bloedvogel ["Lonely Blood-Bird"] (coll
1976), De sluimerende stranden van de geest ["The Slumbering Beaches of
the Mind"] (1981) and Het blinde doofstomme beest op de kale berg ["The
Blind Deaf-Mute Beast on the Bare Mountain"] (1983). The stories are
interspersed with lyrics, fake documents, comments, timetables and so on.
Together, they form a future HISTORY from 1970 to AD3666. Bertin is an
active fan who has been editing his own FANZINE, SF Gids ["SF Guide"]
since 1973, and an ardent bibliographer. In addition to sf, he has written
numerous horror stories, which are perhaps the better part of his opus.A
remarkable Dutch debut was De eersten van Rissan ["The First of Rissan"]
(1980) by Wim Gijsen (1893-1990), a lost-colony novel about the
descendants of mankind on the planet Rissan. In the sequel, De koningen
van weleer ["The Kings of Old"] (1981), it is discovered that the
mysterious First of Rissan are the descendants of the kings of ATLANTIS.
Both novels hold their own with the better US novels of this type. His
later novels are all young-adult fantasy.The most noteworthy forum for
original sf stories in the Dutch language may have been the Vlaamsche
Filmkens ["Flemish Movies"] sequence of booklets written for a young-adult
audience; more than 2000 volumes have been produced in the series, which
began in 1930 and continues. Of this total perhaps 200 have been sf, and
many more have been fantasies. The author involved most centrally was the
pseudonymous John Flanders (? -1964), who also wrote as Jean Ray; other
contributors included Eddy C. Bertin, Dries Nieuwland, Paul Van Herck and
John Vermeulen.The same can be said about Walloon sf as about its
Dutch/Flemish counterpart: only in the 1970s has there been a (small) sf
boom; before and after it, sf consisted of only some individual works by
writers whose output was primarily non-sf. The most prolific early author
was J.H. ROSNY aine, most of whose work was reprinted in France in the
1970s. He is best known for his prehistoric romances; sf proper is but a
small part of his output. In 1973 his sf stories were collected as Recits
de science-fiction ["SF Narratives"] (coll 1973 France); included is his
famous novella about aliens, Les Xipehuz (1887), his first published work.
Other authors from before WWII are Francois Leonard with Le triomphe de
l'homme ["The Triumph of Man"] (1911), a Verne-like novel in which Earth
is accidentally propelled from the Solar System and drifts away into the
Universe until its final destruction; Henri-Jacques Proumen with Le
sceptre est vole aux hommes [The Sceptre is Stolen from the People]
("1930"), about a race of MUTANTS who enslave the population of a Pacific
island; and the poet Marcel Thiry (1897-1977), who wrote the
alternate-world novel Echec au temps ["Set-Back in Time"] (written 1938;
1945), in which Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo.Only one author from
the 1950s and 1960s could be considered an sf writer: Jacques STERNBERG
(1923- ). He is influenced by prewar Surrealism and postwar Absurdism. His
best novel is perhaps La sortie est au fond de l'espace ["The Exit is at
the Bottom of Space"] (1956): the last remaining humans leave a
bacteria-infested Earth only to discover that deep space is even more
dangerous and that mankind has no real meaning in the Universe. A good
story collection, available in English, is Futurs sans avenir (coll 1971;
cut trans as Future without Future 1974 US).In the 1970s a small group of
young sf writers (Vincent Goffart, Paul Hanost and Yves Varende, among
others) formed around the paperback publisher Marabout, and for a while it
looked as if a sort of sf tradition might be beginning. However, after the
collapse of Marabout, the only sf publisher in Wallonia, most authors
moved to other fields of writing.Virtually nothing is known about sf in
tiny Luxembourg, the third country which forms the Benelux-except that it
was the homeland of Hugo GERNSBACK, who in a sense started it all. [JAD]

BENET, STEPHEN VINCENT
(1898-1943) US writer, mainly of poetry and stories, much published in
the Saturday Evening Post. He is best known for a single poem, "American
Names" (whose last line, "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee", gained a
peculiar and singular resonance in the campaign for Amerindian rights),
and for two fantasy stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937 chap),
also published with other fantasies in Thirteen O'Clock: Stories of
Several Worlds (coll 1937), and Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer (1938
chap), also included with other fantasies in Tales Before Midnight (coll
1939). These collections were brought together to make up Twenty-Five
Short Stories (coll 1943), though most of their contents had already
appeared in the 2-vol Selected Works of Stephen Vincent Benet (coll 1942;
cut vt The Stephen Vincent Benet Pocket Book 1946). Several of SVB's
stories are of genre interest, his best-known being "By the Waters of
Babylon" (1937), a clever post- HOLOCAUST story about a tribal adolescent
boy who discovers the ruins of a great destroyed city ( Hyperlink to:
CITIES). It was a main source of material for what became, after WWII, a
cliched subgenre in the field. [JC/PN]

BENFORD, GREGORY
(1941- ) US physicist and writer who graduated from the University of
Oklahoma 1963 and gained his PhD from the University of California, San
Diego, 1967; in 1971 he was appointed an Assistant Professor of Physics at
the University of California, Irvine, rising to full Professor in 1979.
One of a pair of identical twins, he has written some stories in
collaboration with his brother James. He edited a notable FANZINE, Void,
with various co-editors including Ted WHITE and Terry CARR. His first
published story was "Stand-In" (1965), which won second place in a contest
organized by The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION . He wrote
regular articles on The Science in SF for AMAZING STORIES in collaboration
with David Book 1969-72, continuing the series solo, somewhat less
regularly, until 1976. GB has also written fiction as Sterling Blake.GB
early established himself as a leading writer of HARD SF, although much of
his writing also has a lyrical aspect reminiscent of the work of Poul
ANDERSON. Some of his early work was with Gordon EKLUND, including the
stories combined in If The Stars are Gods (fixup 1977), the title-piece of
which won a NEBULA in 1975, and the less impressive Find the Changeling
(1980). His DISASTER novel Shiva Descending (1980) with William ROTSLER
also fails to convey the imaginative and cognitive energy of his solo
work. However, Heart of the Comet (1986) with David BRIN has moments of
shared power. He also undertook a curious "collaboration" with Arthur C.
CLARKE: Beyond the Fall of Night * (omni 1990; vt Against the Fall of
Night and Beyond the Fall of Night 1991 UK), an "authorised sequel" by GB
alone to Clarke's Against the Fall of Night (1948; 1953); both versions of
the tie include reprints of the earlier story. GB's sequel ignores
Clarke's own subsequent revision of his novel as The City and the Stars
(1956).GB's first solo novel was Deeper than the Darkness (1970; rev vt
The Stars in Shroud 1978), one of many stories in which humanity's
confrontation with ALIENS proves deeply disturbing. Another patchwork
novel, IN THE OCEAN OF NIGHT (fixup 1977), became the foundation-stone of
an extending series of novels, the Ocean sequence, whose titles all
contain metaphorical references to water. The central character of IN THE
OCEAN OF NIGHT, astronaut Nigel Walmsley, reappears in Across the Sea of
Suns (1984; rev 1987), which introduces the theme of a Universe-wide
struggle between organic and inorganic "lifeforms" in which
self-replicating MACHINES appear to have the upper hand; this scenario is
further developed in the Family Bishop sequence - comprising Great Sky
River (1987),Tides of Light (1989) and Furious Gulf (1994) - and centring
upon the forced flight of human Families towards a form of sanctuary in
the heart of the galaxy, harassed all the while by the inorganic mech.
Throughout the sequence, GB interestingly develops the concept of the
Aspect, voluble though partial versions of human ancestors electronically
stored within the minds of the living.GB achieved something of a
breakthrough with TIMESCAPE (1980), which won both the Nebula and the JOHN
W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD. In its description of an attempt to change
history by transmitting a tachyonic message across time it offers one of
the best ever fictional descriptions of scientists at work. Another
NEAR-FUTURE, almost MAINSTREAM novel is Artifact (1985), in which
archaeologists discover evidence of an alien visitation with almost
catastrophic consequences. Against Infinity (1983) is pure sf in terms of
its plot, which involves the search for an enigmatic alien on Ganymede,
but its structure is strongly reminiscent of William Faulkner's novella
"The Bear"; and the novella "To the Storming Gulf" (1985) contains strong
echoes of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Comments on these parallels by critic
Gary K. WOLFE caused some controversy. Chiller (1993) as by Sterling Blake
is again a near future tale, in this case involving CRYONICSand a fanatic
serial killer whose mission it is to prevent people from preserving their
minds.The best of GB's short fiction is collected in In Alien Flesh (coll
1986) and Matter's End (coll 1994). He has co-edited a number of
anthologies with Martin Harry GREENBERG: Hitler Victorious (anth 1986) (
HITLER WINS), Nuclear War (anth 1988), What Might Have Been? Vol I:
Alternate Empires (anth 1989), Vol II: Alternate Heroes (anth 1989) -
these two assembled as What Might Have Been, Volumes I and II (omni 1990)
-and Vol III: Alternate Wars (anth 1991). All but the second feature
stories of ALTERNATE WORLDS. [BS]Other works: Jupiter Project (1975; rev
vt The Jupiter Project 1980), an intelligent Robert A. HEINLEIN-esque
juvenile; Time's Rub (1984 chap); Of Space/Time and the River (1985 chap);
At the Double Solstice (1986 chap); We Could Do Worse (1988 chap); Iceborn
(1989 Synergy 3 as "Proserpina's Daughter" by GB alone; 1989 chap dos)
with Paul A. CARTER; Centigrade 233 (1990 chap); Matter's End (1991 chap).
See also: ASTRONOMY; AUTOMATION; BLACK HOLES; BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION
AWARD; COMMUNICATIONS; CRYONICS; END OF THE WORLD; ESCHATOLOGY; EVOLUTION;
GODS AND DEMONS; INVASION; JUPITER; LIVING WORLDS; MONSTERS; NEUTRON
STARS; NEW WAVE; OUTER PLANETS; PHYSICS; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; SCIENTISTS;
STARS; SUN; TACHYONS; TECHNOLOGY; TERRAFORMING; TIMESCAPE BOOKS; WEAPONS;
WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST.

BEN-NER, YITZHAK
[r] ISRAEL.

BENNET, ROBERT AMES
(1870-1954) US writer, more often than not of Westerns, and author of
three sf novels. Thyra: A Romance of the Polar Pit (1901) is set in a
clement LOST WORLD, hidden near the North Pole and full of prehistoric
beasts, clairvoyant priestesses and unusually tall socialists whose lives
are based on memories of old Scandinavia. The lost world of The Forest
Maiden (1913) as by Lee Robinet features a flawed SUPERMAN who uses his
PSI POWERS to create a new Eden, whose involuntary Eve is saved only when,
while walking on water in search of her, he slips and sinks. The Bowl of
Baal (1916-17 All Around Magazine; 1975) locates the lost world of Baal,
where dinosaurs survive, in Arabia. [JC]

BENNETT, ALFRED GORDON
(1901-1962) UK writer, documentary film-maker and founder of Pharos
Books, through which he published a fantasy, Whom the Gods Destroy (1946).
His sf novel The Demigods (1939) depicts a world menaced by giant ants,
who derive their abilities from a central controlling brain. His father
was Arthur BENNETT. [JC]Other works: The Forest of Fear (1924); The Sea of
Sleep (1926; vt The Sea of Dreams 1926 US).See also: HIVE-MINDS.

BENNETT, ARTHUR
(1862-1931) UK writer, father of Alfred Gordon BENNETT. His A Dream of an
Englishman (1893) describes in inadequately fictionalized terms the
history of the world in the 20th century; SPACE FLIGHT is mooted. The
Dream of a Warringtonian (1900), self-published in Warrington, UK,
describes a similar period as it applies to Warrington. [JC]

BENNETT, HARVE
TIME TRAX.

BENNETT, MARCIA J(OANNE)
(1945- ) US writer whose Ni-Lach sequence of PLANETARY ROMANCES includes
Where the Ni-Lach (1983), Shadow Singer (1984), Beyond the Draak's Teeth
(1986) and Seeking the Dream Brother (1989). The local-colour quotient is
high, but the sequence itself is unremarkable. Yaril's Children (1988), a
singleton, is set on a planet inhabited by human and MUTANT stock, and
deals with the inevitable problems which ensue. [JC]

BENNETT, MARGOT
(1912-1980) UK writer, from 1945 mostly of detective novels, in a subtle
and atmospheric style. A fantasy story, "An Old-Fashioned Poker for My
Uncle's Head" (1946), was reprinted in FSF in 1954. Her first sf novel,
The Long Way Back (1954), has become well known. Long after a 1984 nuclear
HOLOCAUST has ended European civilization, a reindustrialized and
regimented African state sends a colonizing expedition to legendary Great
Britain, where they find White people living in caves. The denouement
uneasily combines love interests, satire and adventure. [JC]Other works:
The Furious Masters (1968).See also: POLITICS.

BENNETT, RICHARD M.
[r] Granville HICKS.

BENNI, STEFANO
(1947- ) Italian journalist and writer who published several nonfiction
books before releasing his first novel, Terra! (1983; trans Annapaola
Cancogni 1985 US), set in a post- HOLOCAUST world racked by nuclear
winter; the action moves from the underground city of Paris to a race
through space to occupy a new and Edenic planet. Governing the farcical
tone is a genuinely satirical assault on human mores. SB has been likened
to Robert SHECKLEY. [JC]

BENOIST, ELIZABETH S(MITH)
(1901- ) US writer in whose sf novel, Doomsday Clock (1975), a passel of
disparate characters takes refuge from nuclear HOLOCAUST in a very deep
and luxurious bomb shelter, where they tell each other tales and prepare
to die. [JC]

BENOIT, (FERDINAND MARIE) PIERRE
(1886-1962) French writer remembered almost exclusively for L'Atlantide
(1919; trans Mary C. Tongue and Mary Ross as The Queen of Atlantis 1920
UK; vt Atlantida 1920 US), a rather heated romance. Two French Foreign
Legion officers discover, in North Africa, a lost race of Atlantean
survivors whose queen has a rough way with ex-lovers. The novel has
several times been filmed ( Die HERRIN VON ATLANTIS). [JC]See also:
ATLANTIS.

BENSEN, D(ONALD) R(OYNALD)
(1927- ) US editor and author, his novels being usually pseudonymous. The
two anthologies he has edited, The Unknown (anth 1963) and The Unknown
Five (anth 1964), are both fantasy and (all but one story) compiled from
UNKNOWN. He was more important within the sf field for his editorship of
Pyramid Books 1957-67, a period during which that firm became a
significant producer of sf novels in reprint and original forms. In 1968
he became executive editor of Berkley Books. He moved to Dial Press in
1975, directing their Quantum sf programme, and he has also acted as
consulting editor for Dell Books's sf since 1977. He wrote, in And Having
Writ . . . (1978), a smoothly humorous sf novel set in an ALTERNATE WORLD
engendered by the survival of the ALIENS whose crash-landing caused the
Siberian Tunguska explosion of 1908. Thomas Alva Edison and H.G. WELLS
make appearances. [JC]See also: HISTORY IN SF.

BENSON, A(RTHUR) C(HRISTOPHER)
(1862-1925) UK essayist, poet and novelist, elder brother of E.F. BENSON
and Robert Hugh BENSON. Much of his short fiction was fantasy, and can be
found in The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories (coll 1903) and The Isles
of Sunset (coll 1904) - the two books being assembled as Paul the Minstrel
and Other Stories (omni 1911) - and in Basil Netherby (coll 1926). The
Child of the Dawn (1912) is an IMMORTALITY tale, religiously sententious
but occasionally moving. [JC]

BENSON, E(DWARD) F(REDERICK)
(1867-1940) UK novelist, brother of A.C. BENSON and Robert Hugh BENSON
and by far the most prolific of them, with dozens of attractive, realistic
novels and romances to his credit. His fantasy stories are well known, and
some verge on sf: they can be found in The Room in the Tower and Other
Stories (coll 1912), The Countess of Lowndes Square (coll 1920), Visible
and Invisible (coll 1923), Spook Stories (coll 1928) and More Spook
Stories (coll 1934). The Tale of an Empty House (coll 1986) is a
convenient posthumous collection, while The Flint Knife (coll 1986) ed
Jack Adrian (1945- ) assembles mostly uncollected material, including "Sir
Roger de Coverley" (1927), an sf tale which reflects the time theories of
J.W. DUNNE. [JC]Other works: The Luck of the Vails (1901); The Valkyries
(1903); The Image in the Sand (1905); The Angel of Pain (1905 US); The
House of Defense (1906 Canada); David Blaize and the Blue Door (1918);
Across the Stream (1919); "And the Dead Spake - " and The Horror-Horn
(coll 1923 chap US); Colin (1923) and Colin II (1925); The Inheritor
(1930), in which Pan and Dionysius cause conniptions in Cornwall; Ravens'
Blood (1934).

BENSON, GORDON Jr
(1936- ) US bookseller, publisher and bibliographer. GB released the
first of many solo BIBLIOGRAPHIES of sf figures in 1980, and moved into
partnership with UK bibliographer Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE (whom see for
authors treated in collaboration) in 1983. By the late 1980s GB had become
relatively less active, although he continued to participate with
Stephensen-Payne in many projects. His earlier bibliographies were
sometimes technically deficient in their presentation of data, but the
material presented was scrupulously trustworthy, and later editions of
early publications, as well as projects dating from about the mid-1980s,
are far more user-friendly. GB's solo bibliographical work covers the
following authors (whom see for titles): Leigh BRACKETT, A. Bertram
CHANDLER, Hal CLEMENT, Edmond HAMILTON, Harry HARRISON, Edgar PANGBORN, H.
Beam PIPER, Margaret ST CLAIR, William TENN, Wilson TUCKER, Manly Wade
WELLMAN, James WHITE and Jack WILLIAMSON. [JC]

BENSON, ROBERT HUGH
(1871-1914) UK writer; third son of Archbishop Benson and brother of the
writers A.C. BENSON and E.F. BENSON. He was ordained in the Church of
England but later converted to Catholicism. His fiction is intensely
propagandistic; many of his short stories - including the fantasies
featured in A Mirror of Shalott, Composed of Tales Told at a Symposium
(coll 1907) - use Catholic priests as central characters. In his
remarkable apocalyptic novel, Lord of the World (1907), the Antichrist
woos the world with socialism and humanism, and the remnants of the Papal
hierarchy go into hiding. The Dawn of All (1911) shows the alternative as
Benson saw it - a future of utopian Papal rule. [BS]Other works: The Light
Invisible (coll 1903); The Conventionalist (1908); The Necromancers
(1909).See also: DYSTOPIAS; END OF THE WORLD; RELIGION.

BENTLEY, PETER
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BERESFORD, J(OHN) D(AVYS)
(1873-1947) UK writer. Son of a clergyman, he was crippled in infancy by
polio; both facts were influential in forming his worldview. A determined
but defensive agnosticism normally guides the development of his
futuristic and metaphysical speculations, but occasionally he allowed a
strong wish-fulfilment element into his work, as in The Camberwell Miracle
(1933), in which a crippled girl is cured by a faith-healer; like Arthur
Conan DOYLE he could adopt either an extremely hard-headed rationalism or
a naive mysticism. JDB's first sf novel was the classic The Hampdenshire
Wonder (1911; exp vt The Wonder 1917 US), a biographical account of a
freak superchild born out of his time; the theme was recapitulated in Olaf
STAPLEDON's Odd John (1935). His second, Goslings (1913; vt A World of
Women 1913 US), is the first attempt to depict an all-female society which
treats the issue seriously and with a degree of sympathy. Many of his
early speculative short stories were collected in Nineteen Impressions
(coll 1918) and Signs and Wonders (coll 1921). Some are allegories born of
religious doubt, such as "A Negligible Experiment", in which the impending
destruction of Earth is taken as evidence that God has become indifferent
to mankind; others are visionary fantasies, such as "The Cage", in which a
man is telepathically linked to a prehistoric ancestor for a few seconds;
and yet others are studies in abnormal PSYCHOLOGY - an interest which also
inspired the non-sf novel Peckover (1934). Revolution (1921) is a
determinedly objective analysis of a socialist revolution in the UK.JDB
began a second phase of speculative work in 1941. "What Dreams May Come .
. ." (1941) is a powerful novel about a young man drawn into a utopian
future he has experienced in his dreams, and then returned, altered in
body and mind, to a hopeless messianic quest in the war-torn present. A
Common Enemy (1942) is reminiscent of much of the work of H.G. WELLS,
showing the destruction of society by natural DISASTER as a prelude to
utopian reform. The Riddle of the Tower (1944), written with Esme
Wynne-Tyson (1898- ), is another wartime vision story following a future
history in which utopian prospects are lost and society evolves towards
"automatism", resulting in a hivelike social organization in which
individuality - and ultimately humanity - are lost.There are notable
similarities between the methods and outlook of JDB and Wells (JDB's H.G.
Wells, 1915, was the first critical study of Wells's early work), but JDB
never achieved the critical acclaim he deserved, either for his mainstream
fiction or for his sf. [BS]Other works: All or Nothing (1928) and The Gift
(1946, with Wynne-Tyson) are borderline fantasies about would-be MESSIAHS;
Real People (1929) has a subplot involving ESP; there is 1 sf story, "The
Man who Hated Flies", in The Meeting Place (coll 1929).See also: BIOLOGY;
CHILDREN IN SF; DYSTOPIAS; ECOLOGY; END OF THE WORLD; ESP; EVOLUTION;
HISTORY OF SF; HIVE-MINDS; INTELLIGENCE; POLITICS; RELIGION; SOCIOLOGY;
SUPERMAN.

BERESFORD, LEIGH
[r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED.

BERESFORD, LESLIE
(?1891-?1937) UK author who entered the genre with The Second Rising
(1910), a future- WAR novel about the Second Indian Mutiny, and continued
with two UTOPIAN novels published under the pseudonym Pan: The Kingdom Of
Content (1918) and The Great Image (1921). Reverting to his own name, he
wrote a novel about international air piracy, Mr Appleton Awakes (1924;
cut 1932), and a humorous novel about a sensuous ALIEN with supranormal
powers, The Venus Girl (1925; cut 1933). LB was quite prolific in the
magazine market, contributing "War of Revenge" (1921), "The Purple Planet"
(1922) and "The People Of The Ice" (1922) - respectively future-war,
interplanetary and LOST-WORLD adventures - to the BOYS' PAPERS, and "The
Octopus Orchid" (1921) and "The Stranger from Somewhere" (1922), among
others, to the pre-sf PULP MAGAZINES. [JE]Other works: The Last Woman
(1922); The Invasion of the Iron-Clad Army (1928); The Flying Fish (1931).

BERGER, THOMAS (LOUIS)
(1924- ) US writer best known for his work outside the sf field like the
Western epic Little Big Man (1964), which combines farce and FABULATION,
and was notably filmed in 1970. Regiment of Women (1973), which is sf,
presents a world about a century hence where the roles of men and women
have been completely reversed, direly for the men; the book is a blackly
comic and chastening argument from premise, and in this prefigures most of
TB's recent work, either outside the field, like the terrifying Neighbors
(1980), or chillingly within, like Nowhere (1986), a yawningly vacuous
Erewhonian spoof, Being Invisible (1987) and Changing the Past (1989), in
which the laws of human nature, operating like theorems, show that all
lives, even those we would aspire to could we ourselves enter a changed
past, are lived in bondage to the march of inalterable law. [JC]Other
works: Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (1978), a fine fantasy.See also:
ALTERNATE WORLDS; INVISIBILITY; SOCIOLOGY; TIME TRAVEL.

BERGER, YVES
(1936- ) French novelist, editor and literary journalist. His
ALTERNATE-WORLD novel, Le sud (1962; trans as The Garden 1963), is set in
an antebellum Virginia. [JC]

BERGEY, EARLE K(ULP)
(1901-1952) US illustrator known to fans as the "inventor of the brass
brassiere". For just over a decade, starting with the Aug 1939 cover of
STRANGE STORIES, EKB painted covers for some of the less sophisticated and
more lurid PULP MAGAZINES, especially those published by Standard
Magazines: 58 covers for Startling Stories, 59 covers for TWS and 13
covers for Captain Future, among others. These, often featuring
half-dressed pin-up girls in peril, represent the pulp style at its most
typical and thus were singled out for ridicule by non-sf readers, and
helped give the SF MAGAZINES a rubbishy reputation. In fact EKB was a
skilled commercial artist, painted faces well, and was by no means
restricted to the subject matter that made him famous. He helped to change
the emphasis of cover art, in which he specialized, from gadgetry to
people. [PN/JG]See also: THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

BERGSOE, VILHELM
[r] DENMARK.

BERGSTRESSER, MARTA
[s] Marta RANDALL.

BERK, HOWARD
(1926- ) US writer in whose interesting sf novel, The Sun Grows Cold
(1971), a man whose brain has been tampered with and whose previous lives
were disastrous reawakens ( SLEEPER AWAKES) in a terrifying future world.
He asks to be restored to his amnesia. HB has published in other genres.
[JC]

BERKLEY SHOWCASE, THE
Original anthology series from Berkley Books, consisting of The Berkley
Showcase: Vol 1: New Writings in Science Fiction and Fantasy (anth 1980),
Vol 2 (anth 1980), Vol 3 (anth 1981), Vol 4 (anth 1981), all ed Victoria
Schochet and John SILBERSACK, and Vol 5 (anth 1982), ed Schochet and
Melissa Singer. This shortlived but lively series published stories by
up-and-comers (Pat CADIGAN, Orson Scott CARD, John KESSEL, Howard WALDROP,
Connie WILLIS), established sf gurus (Thomas M. DISCH, R.A. LAFFERTY), and
a few surprises from almost outside the ballpark (Marge PIERCY, Eric VAN
LUSTBADER). Indeed, some of its work may have been too close to sf's
leading edge to be commercial. It was announced in the first issue,
unusually, that this "house" anthology did not expect to make money. [PN]

BERLYN, MICHAEL (STEVEN)
(1949- ) US writer and computer-game designer whose first novel, the sf
adventure Crystal Phoenix (1980), received some adverse comment for the
amount of female torture it contains. The Integrated Man (1980) projects a
DYSTOPIAN future for urbanized humanity, with a plot based on the shunting
of human consciousness into COMPUTER chips, reminiscent in this of John T.
SLADEK's The Muller-Fokker Effect (1970). Blight (1981), as by Mark
Sonders, is an sf/horror novel featuring mutated killer moths. During most
of the 1980s, MB restricted himself to the creation of interactive
fictions for computers ( GAME-WORLDS), including "Oo-Topos" (1982),
"Cyborg" (1982), "Suspended" (1983), "Infidel" (1984), "Cutthroats"
(1984), two titles in collaboration with his wife, Muffy McClung
Berlyn-"Tass Times in Tonetown" (1986) and "Dr Dumont's Wild P.A.R.T.I."
(1988) - and "Altered Destiny" (1990). He then returned to book sf with
The Eternal Enemy (1990), a tale whose dystopian undercurrents are
reminiscent of his second novel. Here an ALIEN race, almost magically
facile in its use of GENETIC-ENGINEERING techniques to change its members
at will, takes a moribund human and transforms him into a being who can
breed with them, and perhaps also carry over humanity's inbred capacities
as a killing-machine so that the aliens can defend themselves against an
insatiable enemy. As with many serious-minded sf writers, MB has some
tendency to hamper his effects through the use of generic plotting not
well designed to bear the burden of contemplation; but muscle may be felt
in his work, and greater focus hoped for. [JC]See also: ESCHATOLOGY;
REINCARNATION.

BERNARD, JOHN
Pseudonym of UK writer Anna O'Meara de Vic Beamish (1883-? ), whose The
New Race of Devils (1921) describes a NEAR-FUTURE German plan to create a
new race through artificial insemination. The King's Missal (1934) as by
Noel de Vic Beamish is a fantasy. [JC]

BERNARD, RAFE
(? -? ) UK writer whose first sf novel was The Wheel in the Sky (1954),
which datedly concerns itself with the construction of a pre-NASA-style,
privately financed space station. He also wrote a The INVADERS tie, The
Halo Highway * (1967; vt Army of the Undead 1967 US). [JC]

BERNAU, GEORGE (B.)
(1945- ) US writer whose two sf novels are both ALTERNATE-HISTORY
thrillers. In Promises to Keep (1988) John F. Kennedy recovers from the
attempt to assassinate him, and in Candle in the Wind (1990) Marilyn
Monroe survives her semi-accidental overdose. [JC]

BERRY, ADRIAN
(1937- ) UK science journalist (often in the London Daily Telegraph) and
occasional sf writer. His sf novels Koyama's Diamond (1982) and its sequel
Labyrinth of Lies (1984), set in a FAR-FUTURE planetary system with much
political intrigue, have some interesting ideas and plot turns, but are
written in a lurid style reminiscent of 1930s PULP MAGAZINES. His more
important service to sf has been the publication of a number of nonfiction
science books about the future ( FUTUROLOGY), including the bestselling
The Next Ten Thousand Years: A Vision of Man's Future in the Universe
(1974) as well as The Iron Sun: Crossing the Universe through Black Holes
(1977) and From Apes to Astronauts (coll 1980). The topics discussed in
these books - mostly to do with physics and speculative technology - are
among those much exploited by HARD-SF writers in the 1970s and since.
[PN]See also: BLACK HOLES; TERRAFORMING.

BERRY, BRYAN
(1930-1955) UK author who was active for only a few years. Along with
such writers as John Russell FEARN, E.C. TUBB and Kenneth BULMER, he
contributed many PULP-MAGAZINE-style sf novels to obscure paperback
houses, most notably the Venus trilogy as by Rolf Garner. And the Stars
Remain (1952) confronts men and Martians with a superior force. Born in
Captivity (1952) presents a rigid post-WWIII society. Other novels include
Return to Earth (1951), Dread Visitor (1952) and The Venom Seekers (1953).
The Venus trilogy - Resurgent Dust (1953), The Immortals (1953) and The
Indestructible (1954) - portrays in bold strokes mankind's fate on VENUS
after the destruction of life on Earth: the man who eventually eliminates
tyranny becomes Lord Kennet of Gryllaar. BB was closely associated with
AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION and also with TWO COMPLETE SCIENCE-ADVENTURE
BOOKS, both of which published some of his novel-length fiction.
"Aftermath" (1952) in the former became "Mission to Marakee" (1953) in the
latter; as in the first case the story occupied the space allotted to
fiction for an entire issue, it might better be listed as Aftermath
(1952). [JC]

BERRY, JAMES R.
(1933- ) US writer most noted for juveniles, beginning with Dar Tellum:
Stranger from a Distant Planet (1973) for younger children, in which the
eponymous ALIEN cures Earth of carbon-dioxide poisoning. The Galactic
Invaders (1976 Canada) and Quas Starbrite (1981) are sf-adventure novels,
and Magicians of Erianne (1988) is an Arthurian fantasy for older
children. [JC]

BERRY, STEPHEN AMES
(1947- ) US writer whose John Harrison sequence of space- WAR adventures
comprises The Biofab War (1984), The Battle for Terra Two (1986), The AI
War (1987) and Final Assault (1988); military engagements predominate
throughout. [JC]

BERRYMAN, JOHN
(c1919-1988) US writer and engineer, author of many stories in ASF and
elsewhere from the late 1930s to the mid-1980s. As Walter Bupp he also
wrote a series of linked telekinesis tales ( ESP) for ASF in the early
1960s. JB is not the poet John Berryman (1914-1972), and Walter Bupp is
not a pseudonym for Randall GARRETT, as often listed. [JC]See also:
LINGUISTICS.

BERTIN, EDDY
[r] BENELUX.

BERTIN, JACK
Pseudonym of Italian-born writer Giovanni Bertignono (1904-1963), who
early moved to the USA and who published frequently from the late 1920s in
various PULP MAGAZINES. His only sf novel, Brood of Helios (1966), is an
unremarkable adventure. The Pyramids from Space (1970) and The
Interplanetary Adventurers (1970), both signed JB and both likewise
unremarkable, were in fact written by the executor of his estate, Peter B.
Germano. [JC]

BERTRAM, NOEL
Pseudonym of Noel Boston (1910-1966), and not, as has often been thought,
of his friend R.L. FANTHORPE. NB privately published some supernatural
stories as Yesterday Knocks (coll 1954) and 10 tales 1960-62 in
Supernatural Stories, the BADGER BOOKS magazine whose contents were mostly
written by Fanthorpe. [SH]

BESANT, Sir WALTER
(1836-1901) UK writer known primarily for his work outside the sf field;
founder member of the Society of Authors; knighted 1895. His early novels
were written in collaboration with James Rice (1843-1882); their The Case
of Mr Lucraft and Other Tales (coll 1876) contains several fantasies,
including the bizarre title story about a man who leases out his appetite.
The Revolt of Man (1882 anon; 1897 as WB) is an anti-suffragette novel
depicting a female-dominated society of the future; it exemplifies the
sexual attitudes and imagination of the Victorian gentleman in a fashion
which modern readers might find unwittingly funny. The Inner House (1888)
is a significant early DYSTOPIA in which a technology of IMMORTALITY
results in social stagnation. The Doubts of Dives (1889; reprinted in
Verbena Camellia Stephanotis coll 1892) is an earnest identity-exchange
fantasy. Uncle Jack etc. (coll 1886) includes "Sir Jocelyn's Cap", an F.
ANSTEY-esque fantasy novella written in collaboration with Walter Herries
Pollock (1850-1926). A Five Years' Tryst (coll 1902) includes the sf story
"The Memory Cell". WB's abiding interests in social reform and abnormal
psychology bring a few of his other novels close to the sf borderline,
most notably the dual-personality story The Ivory Gate (1892); his
credulity concerning ESP is responsible for the introduction of (very
minor) fantastic elements into several others. [BS]See also: ANONYMOUS SF
AUTHORS; PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOLOGY.

BESHER, ALEXANDER
(? - ) US writer whose first sf novel,Rim: A Novel of VirtualReality
(1994), recounts its complex, NEAR-FUTURE tale in asurprisingly
straightforward, non-gonzo manner. A university professor in California -
ondiscovering that his son is trapped in a VIRTUAL REALITY world no
longer,after anenormous earthquake in Tokyo, under the control of its
Japanese owners - becomes a kind ofprivate eye, and experiences in the raw
the technology/biology interfaces that govern the newcentury. A version of
the book was first published in Japanese in MacPower, a Tokyo magazine.
[JC]

BESSENYEI, GYORGY
[r] HUNGARY.

BES SHAHAR, ELUKI
(1956- ) US writer who also writes as Rosemary Edghill, and who began
publishing work of genre interest with "Casablanca" for Hydrospanner Zero
in 1981; the tale became part of her first novel, Hellflower (fixup 1991),
featuring Butterfly St Cyr, a female space pilot whose smuggling
activities embroil her in an interstellar plot involving dynasties and a
young prince. The second novel in the sequence, Darktraders (1992), is
less energetic, though complicated; the final volume, Archangel Blues
(1993), some VIRTUAL REALITY riffs are explored, and the enormously
complicated plot is wrapped up. Speak Daggers to Her (1994) as by Rosemary
Edghill, is a mystery with borderline sf elements. [JC]

BEST, (OSWALD) HERBERT
(1894-1981) UK author of an sf novel, The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1940), in
which, after a 1965 DISASTER, two survivors - a North American female and
a European male - come together to participate in a UTOPIA founded in
Alexandria, Egypt. [JC]See also: WAR.

BESTER, ALFRED
(1913-1987) US writer and editor, born into a Jewish family in New York,
a city with which he was always closely associated. Educated in both
humanities and sciences - including PSYCHOLOGY, perhaps the most important
"science" in his sf - at the University of Pennsylvania, AB entered sf
when he submitted a story to THRILLING WONDER STORIES. Mort WEISINGER, the
editor, helped AB to polish it, and then suggested he submit it for an
amateur story competition that TWS was running. AB did so and won. The
story was "The Broken Axiom" (Apr 1939 TWS).AB published another 13 sf
stories to 1942, and then followed his friend Weisinger, along with Otto
BINDER, Manly Wade WELLMAN and others, into the field of COMIC books,
working on such DC COMICS titles as SUPERMAN, The Green Lantern and
Batman. He worked successfully for four years on comics outlines and
dialogue, later working on CAPTAIN MARVEL, and then moved into radio,
scripting for such serials as Charlie Chan and The Shadow. After the
intensive course in action plotting this career had given him, AB returned
(part-time) to the sf magazines in 1950, by now more mature as a writer.
(His main job at the time was scripting the new tv series TOM CORBETT:
SPACE CADET.) There ensued over the next six years a series of stories and
novels which are considered to be among the greatest creations of genre
sf.AB was never prolific in sf, which was more of a hobby than a career
for him, publishing only 13 more short stories - mostly in FSF - before
1960. (One of the five "Quintets" in FSF Sep 1959 was by AB writing as
Sonny Powell.) But these alone would have secured him a place in the sf
pantheon. Most of his stories were originally issued in book form in two
collections, Starburst (coll 1958) and The Dark Side of the Earth (coll
1964). These collections were reassembled with 6 stories dropped, and one
older novella-"Hell is Forever" - and 3 quite recent stories added along
with the amusing autobiographical essay "My Affair with Science Fiction"
(1975), in two further collections, The Light Fantastic (coll 1976) and
Star Light, Star Bright (coll 1976), which were in turn reissued as an
omnibus volume, Starlight: The Great Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (omni
1976). This last is the best available collection.AB's talents were
evident from the beginning. At least three stories from his 1939-42 period
are memorable: "Adam and No Eve" (1941) ( ADAM AND EVE; END OF THE WORLD),
"The Push of a Finger" (1942) and "Hell is Forever" (1942). The latter, a
long novella for UNKNOWN, exhibits in a slightly sophomoric way the
qualities for which AB would later be celebrated: it is cynical, baroque
and aggressive, produces hard, bright images in quick succession, and
deals with obsessive states of mind. The most notable later story is
"Fondly Fahrenheit" (1954), a breathless story of a man and his ANDROID
servant whose personalities intermesh in a homicidal folie a deux. Also
memorable are "Of Time and Third Avenue" (1951), "Disappearing Act" (1953)
and "The Men who Murdered Mohammed" (1958), which is perhaps the most
concentratedly witty twist on the TIME-PARADOX story ever written. At
about the time of this story AB addressed an sf symposium at the
University of Chicago; his paper is one of the four reprinted in the
anonymously edited The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social
Criticism (anth 1959; intro by Basil DAVENPORT).AB's first two sf novels,
THE DEMOLISHED MAN (1953) and Tiger! Tiger! (1956 UK; rev vt The Stars My
Destination 1957 US), are among the few genuine classics of genre sf. They
are the sf equivalent of the Jacobean revenge drama: both feature
malcontent figures, outsiders from society bitterly cognizant of its
corruption, but themselves partly ruined by it, just as in The Revenger's
Tragedy or The Duchess of Malfi; like them, too, AB's novels blaze with a
sardonic imagery, mingling symbols of decay and new life - rebirth is a
recurrent theme of AB's - with a creative profligacy.THE DEMOLISHED MAN,
which won the first HUGO for Best Novel in 1953, tells a story which in
synopsis is straightforward: industrialist Ben Reich commits murder (in a
society where murder is almost unknown because telepathic ESPERS can
detect the idea before the act is carried out), almost gets away with it,
is ultimately caught by Esper detective Linc Powell, and is committed to
curative brainwashing, "demolition" ( CRIME AND PUNISHMENT). It is the
pace, the staccato style, the passion and the pyrotechnics that make the
novel extraordinary. The future society is evoked in marvellously
hard-edged details; the hero is a driven, resourceful man whose obsessions
are explained in Freudian terms that might seem too glib if they were
given straight, but are evoked with the same New Yorker's painful, ironic
scepticism that informs the whole novel. AB's mainstream novel Who He?
(1953; vt The Rat Race 1956), about the tv and advertising businesses,
sheds some light on the milieu of THE DEMOLISHED MAN.Tiger! Tiger! tells
the story of the now legendary Gully Foyle, whose passion for revenge
transforms him from an illiterate outcast to a transcendent, ambiguous,
quasi- SUPERMAN in "an age of freaks, monsters and grotesques". Like the
first novel, this one lives as much through the incidentals of the setting
- in a lurid, crumbling, 25th-century world-as in the plot itself, which
AB confesses, too modestly, was borrowed from Alexandre Dumas's The Count
of Monte Cristo (1844-5). The first vol of a GRAPHIC-NOVEL version by
Howard V. CHAYKIN (adaptation by Byron PREISS), was The Stars My
Destination Vol 1 (graph 1979); the second vol, though widely bruited, was
not in fact published until it appeared, with the first, in The Stars My
Destination (1992).In the late 1950s AB was taken on by Holiday magazine
as a feature writer, ultimately becoming senior literary editor, a post he
held until the magazine ceased publication in the 1970s, at which time he
returned to sf. "The Four-Hour Fugue" (1974) shows the old extraordinary
assurance and inventiveness, and just a trace of over-facility. Two
decades after his last, his new novel, The Computer Connection (1974 ASF
as "The Indian Giver"; 1975; vt Extro UK), while full of incidental
felicities, did not quite recapture the old drive in its ornate story of a
group of immortals and an omniscient COMPUTER; perhaps it lacked a natural
"Besterman" as focus. The pace and complexity were still there, but
somehow looking like self-parody.The next book, Golem(100) (1980), was
more ambitious, had a more authentic Bester flavour, and was regarded by
AB as his best novel. It expands "The Four-Hour Fugue" into an
extraordinary but overheated tale of the jungle of New York in AD2175,
with diabolism, depth psychology (a Monster from the Id), bee superwomen,
pheromones, perverse sex, and overall a miasma of death. But the
1960s-style radicalism now looked a little out of date, and what used to
be spare and sinewy in his work had begun to seem prolix; the craziness
looked like ornamentation rather than what it once was, structural. His
last sf novel was The Deceivers (1981), which features a Synergist hero
who can perceive patterns; sadly, but interestingly in the light of AB's
fame, the sf press almost unanimously failed to review this, presumably
out of respect for his feelings. It is not good. When he died six years
later, after a long period of ill health, he willed his house and literary
estate to his bartender. The posthumously published Tender Loving Rage
(1991), written more than 20 years earlier, is a mainstream novel set in
1959, and appropriately features a scientist adopted by the New York
advertising/tv people.AB's innovative, ferocious, magpie (his word) talent
has certainly been influential in GENRE SF, on writers as disparate as
James BLISH, Samuel R. DELANY and Michael MOORCOCK. In many respects his
work was a forerunner of CYBERPUNK. He is one of the very few genre-sf
writers to have bridged the chasm between the old and the NEW WAVE, by
becoming a legendary figure for both - perhaps because in his sf imagery
he conjured up, with bravura, both outer and INNER SPACE. [PN]See also:
CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; ESP; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GOLDEN AGE OF SF;
GOTHIC SF; HISTORY OF SF; HUMOUR; IMAGINARY SCIENCE; LINGUISTICS; The
MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION; NEBULA; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM;
OUTER PLANETS; PERCEPTION; PSI POWERS; SF IN THE CLASSROOM; SUPERNATURAL
CREATURES; TRANSPORTATION; VILLAINS.

BESTER REMEMBERS
Writers sometimes don't live up to the image that admiring readers have
of them, especially when readers may have carried those idealized images
from their teens.Writer Alfred Bester described his first and only meeting
with John W. Campbell in 1951. Summoned to the offices of Astounding
magazine in northern New Jersey, Bester found Campbell in an enormous
warehouse, where Campbell occupied a tiny space.Campbell told Bester that
a few references to psychiatry would have to be removed from a story he
submitted because, he said, "Psychiatry is dead."He then took Bester to
lunch. Over a pastrami sandwich and a coke in a cafeteria, Campbell
explained how one can recall memories from the womb and urged Bester to do
so. Bester pretended to comply and managed to get away as quickly as he
could.Later Bester said, "It reinforced my private opinion that a majority
of the science fiction crowd, despite their brilliance, were missing their
marbles."

BETANCOURT, JOHN GREGORY
(1963- ) US editor and writer who became involved in SMALL-PRESS
publishing in his teens, his first professional sf sale-"Vernon's Dragon"
for 100 Great Fantasy Short-Short Stories (anth 1984) ed Isaac ASIMOV,
Terry CARR and Martin H. GREENBERG - being a reprint from a fan magazine.
In the early 1980s he worked with editor George SCITHERS at AMZ, soon
founding a literary agency with Scithers and Darrell SCHWEITZER; in 1987
the three of them relaunched WEIRD TALES. In 1989 JGB became an editor for
Byron PREISS Visual Publications, Inc., an important sf packager. His
first novel, Starskimmer * (1986), is a game tie. Rogue Pirate (1987) is
fantasy, as is the more impressive The Blind Archer (1988), in whose
ornate venue - the vast city of Zelloque - the CLUB STORIESassembled in
Slab's Tavern and Other Uncanny Places (coll 1990 chap) are also set. His
first book of direct sf interest, Johnny Zed (1988), embeds a somewhat
desultory political analysis of revolutionary movements in a portrait of a
NEAR-FUTURE USA whose Congress has become a hereditary gift of the rich,
and whose populace has become lassitudinous. The sf devices of his second
novel of interest, Rememory (1990), include brain-scans and the
bio-engineering of humans into animal shapes, but the mystery plot that
sends the cat-person protagonist down the mean streets of a corrupt
government does not, in itself, generate much interest. JGB seems an
author of very ample skill but limited perspective - a sense of his career
which, given his clear intelligence and ambition, could change overnight.
[JC]Other works: A tied instalment in the Dr Bones enterprise, Dr Bones
#4: The Dragons of Komako * (1989).As Editor: Issues of Weird Tales, all
with George Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer, are Weird Tales: Spring 1988,
Weird Tales: Winter 1990 and Weird Tales #290 (1988) through Weird Tales
#299, Winter 1990/1991 (1991); contributions to the Bryon PREISS Ultimate
sequence, includingThe Ultimate Frankenstein (anth 1991) and The Ultimate
Werewolf (anth 1991), both with David Keller, Megan Miller and Byron
Preiss, and The Ultimate Zombie (anth 1993) and The Ultimate Witch (anth
1993), both with Preiss alone; Letters of the Alien Publisher (coll 1991)
with Charles C. RYAN; Performance Art (coll 1992 chap).As Jeremy Kingston:
A tied contribution to the Time Tours sequence, Robert Silverberg's Time
Tours #6: Caesar's Time Legions * (1991).

BETHKE, BRUCE
(1955- ) US writer best known for his short stories, in particular his
first professional publication, "Cyberpunk" (1983), which appeared in AMZ
after circulating in manuscript and almost certainly inspiring Gardner
DOZOIS's use of the term CYBERPUNK to designate the new movement. A novel
based on this story has been projected for some time under the title Def
Cyberpunk but BB's only book to date is a SHARECROP: Isaac Asimov's Robot
City: Robots and Aliens 5: Maverick * (1990). [JC]

BETHLEN, T.D.
[s] Robert SILVERBERG.

BETTAUER, HUGO
(1877-1925) Austrian writer whose sf novel, Die Stadt ohne Juden (1925;
trans Salomea Neumark Brainin as The City Without Jews: a Novel of our
Time 1926 US), hopefully predicts that Gentiles will comprehend the worth
of Jews to civilzation, and will revoke their blanket expulsion from civic
life. HB was murdered. [JC]

BETTER PUBLICATIONS
CAPTAIN FUTURE; Ned L. PINES; STARTLING STORIES; STRANGE STORIES;
THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

BEVAN, ALISTAIR
[s] Keith ROBERTS.

BEVERLEY, BARRINGTON
(? -? ) UK writer in whose sf novel The Space Raiders (1936) the League
of Nations defends the world from an alien invasion. [JC]Other work: The
Air Devil (1934).

BEVIS, H(ERBERT) U(RLIN)
(1902- ) US house-painter, author of a series of unremarkable sf
adventures including Space Stadium (1970), which features wargames in
space, The Time Winder (1970), whose protagonists escape killer ROBOTS by
TIME TRAVEL, The Star Rovers (1970), To Luna with Love (1971) and The
Alien Abductors (1972). [JC]

BEWARE THE BLOB
The BLOB.

BEYER, W(ILLIAM) G(RAY)
(? -? ) US writer, active before WWII in only one magazine, The Argosy,
where he published all his novels. Minions of the Moon (1939 Argosy;
1950), along with three further serials, "Minions of Mars" (1940),
"Minions of Mercury" (1940), and "Minions of the Shadow" (1941), make up
the Minions series of interplanetary SPACE-OPERA adventures involving
humans and aliens. [JC]

BEYNON, JOHN
John WYNDHAM.

BEYOND FANTASY FICTION
US DIGEST-size magazine. 10 issues, July 1953-Jan 1955, published by
Galaxy Publishing Corp., ed H.L. GOLD.A companion magazine to GALAXY
SCIENCE FICTION, BFF was a fantasy magazine conceived in the same spirit
as UNKNOWN (to which Gold had contributed). It began promisingly, its
first issue featuring such stories as Theodore STURGEON's ". . . And My
Fear is Great" and Damon KNIGHT's "Babel II", but could maintain this
standard only fitfully. #2 contained Theodore R. COGSWELL's classic "The
Wall Around the World". Notable later stories included "The Watchful Poker
Chip" by Ray BRADBURY (1954) and "The Green Magician", a Harold Shea story
by L. Sprague DE CAMP and Fletcher PRATT (1954). The first 8 issues were
bimonthly and dated; the last 2, undated, were titled Beyond Fiction. BFF
was drab in appearance with uninspired cover paintings. Beyond (anth
1963), no editor named, reprinted 9 stories. An abridged UK edition of the
first 4 issues was published by Strato Publications, 1953-4. [MJE]

BEYOND FICTION
BEYOND FANTASY FICTION.

BEYOND INFINITY
US DIGEST-size magazine. 1 issue, Dec 1967, published by I.D.
Publications, Hollywood; ed Doug Stapleton. The fantasy element was
stronger than the sf in this rapidly aborted and not very strong magazine.
[FHP]

BEYOND WESTWORLD
WESTWORLD.

"BIBLES"
SHARED WORLDS.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Until the academic acceptance of sf there was no profit in
bibliographies. Compiling them was a labour of love, very often carried
out by fans or sometimes by book and magazine dealers; the first, tiny sf
bibliography of all, Science Fiction Bibliography (1935 chap), was
produced by The Science Fiction Syndicate, a group of fans. Until recent
decades, few academically trained bibliographers paid any attention to
fantastic literature; it was only the proliferation of work from about
1975 onwards that justified the publication of Reference Guide to Science
Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (1992) by Michael Burgess (Robert REGINALD),
which annotates and comments upon more than 550 relevant studies.The
Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and
Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language (1948) by Everett
F. BLEILER, the earliest important bibliography in the field, made no
distinction between sf and fantasy, was incomplete and had inevitable
errors, and contained no information on contents. It was nevertheless
invaluable for researchers from the first, although to look at it in 1995
is to contemplate the distance traversed since, both by the field as a
whole and, in particular, by its author - who has since concentrated on
more specialized bibliographical work (see below). For many years the only
comparable general effort was "333": A Bibliography of the Science-Fantasy
Novel (1953 chap) by Joseph H. Crawford Jr (1932- ) assisted by James J.
Donahue and the publisher Donald M. Grant (1927- ); this, though
restricted to the titular total, provided valuable synopses of the 333
selected books, categorizing them with considerable acumen. Bleiler's
Checklist was first added to by Bradford M. DAY in his The Supplemental
Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1963), which contained 3000 additional
titles; Bleiler himself then thoroughly reworked his original research,
publishing the result as The Checklist of Science-Fiction and Supernatural
Fiction (1800-1948) (1978), which presented, alongside the corrected list,
a useful category coding for most books included. But Bleiler's interest
had by this point shifted to more specialized studies, and his checklist
had in any case been superseded.Research in a field like sf, the basic
texts of which are often elusive, depends initially on the existence of
one central tool: the comprehensive checklist. Bleiler's selective version
served well for nearly three decades, and Marshall B. TYMN, in American
Fantasy & Science Fiction: Toward a Bibliography of Works Published in the
United States, 1948-1973 (1979), gave selective coverage up to 1973. In
the same year, however, the definitive work was published: this was
Reginald's 2-vol Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist,
1700-1974, with Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II (1979), which
listed, according to fairly strict criteria of eligibility, three times
the number of titles Bleiler covered and included a biographical
dictionary based on Reginald's earlier Stella Nova: The Contemporary
Science Fiction Authors (1970) and Contemporary Science Fiction Authors
(1974). Reginald later supplemented the checklist portion of this work in
Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1975-1991: a Bibliography of
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Fiction Books and Nonfiction
Monographs (1992) with Mary Wickizer Burgess (1938- ) and Daryl F.
MALLETT, which takes into account some errors (very few) and omissions
from the 1979 volumes while adding almost 22,000 new titles - more new
titles in 17 years, it might be noted, than had appeared in the previous
250. Although - unlike Bleiler's later work - the Reginald checklists do
not code cited texts according to the genres and subgenres contained
within the broad field of the fantastic, they now constitute the central
bibliographical resource for any sf/fantasy library.Also at the end of the
1970s appeared L.W. CURREY's Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A
Bibliography of First Printings of their Fiction (1979), a genuine
first-edition bibliography which covered about 200 of the principal genre
writers (a second volume is projected) and intensified Reginald's
coverage; and George LOCKE's remarkably accurate (and intriguingly
anecdotal) A Spectrum of Fantasy: The Bibliography and Biography of a
Collection of Fantastic Literature (1980), which suggested en passant
several titles that plausibly supplemented the Reginald Checklist; A
Spectrum of Fantasy: Volume 2: Acquisitions to a Collection of Fantastic
Literature, 1980-1993 (1994) continues the invaluable enterprise.Other
forms of extensive coverage were of varying use. The Dictionary Catalog of
the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
(1982) in 3 vols is a photographic record of the 37,500 cards recording
the 20,000 items then in the J. LLOYD EATON COLLECTION (it is now badly
out of date). In 1988, Kurt Baty began to produce what was intended to
constitute a comprehensive index in loose-leaf form entitled The Whole
Science Fiction Data Base Quarterly; by the end of 1991 about a third of
the alphabet had been traversed, though only in draft form, with a vast
proportion of titles omitted or only partially ascribed, and the project
has become embarrassingly dormant.After gaining some control over the
field as a whole, the sf researcher would then find her/himself needing
more specialized aids as well. Sf was for many years a genre dominated, in
the USA at least, by the MAGAZINES, and magazine indexes are an essential
tool. The publication of an exhaustive index from Stephen T. Miller and
William G. CONTENTO has been projected for several years; but partial
indexes do exist, and have served well. They include: Bill EVANS's The
Gernsback Forerunners (1944 chap), which indexes sf in Modern Electrics
and other journals founded by Hugo GERNSBACK before AMZ;Index to the
Science Fiction Magazines 1926-50 (1952) by Donald B. DAY; The Index of
Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965 (1968) by Norman METCALF or, for the
same period, The MIT Science Fiction Society's Index to the S-F Magazines
(1966) by Erwin S. STRAUSS; Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1966-70
(1971) by the New England Science Fiction Association; and The N.E.S.F.A.
Index to the Science Fiction Magazines and Original Anthologies 1971-1972
(1973). Since then N.E.S.F.A. has brought out magazine indexes usually on
an annual basis and usually compiled by Anthony R. LEWIS, either alone or
in collaboration. More specialized productions include Monthly Terrors: An
Index to the Weird Fantasy Magazines Published in the United States and
Great Britain (1985) by Mike ASHLEY and Frank H. Parnell (1916), and
Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction: A Checklist of Fiction in U.S.
Pulp Magazines, 1915-1974 (1988), in two vols, by Michael L. Cook and
Stephen T.Miller. Indexes to individual magazines - like The Complete
Index to Astounding/Analog (1981) by Ashley and Terry Jeeves (1922- ) -
are cited in this encyclopedia in the relevant magazine entries.Of course
stories are not published solely in magazines. In an ongoing project
complementary to his projected story index, Contento has produced, in
Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections (1978) and Index to
Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, 1977-1983 (1984), a highly
usable reference source which, in addition to listing stories not
initially published in magazine form, also covers those published
originally in magazines and for one reason or another thought worthy of
being made more generally available in book form. His Indexes, therefore,
are an aid to the researcher, as the stories they catalogue are both
valued and available; but Contento should be used with caution in this
regard. He does not himself make any qualitative claims about the stories
he lists in this format, nor is he complete within his declared remit, and
no researcher should assume that unlisted stories are necessarily less
rewarding. Contento's indexes for coverage of the years after 1983 appear
in the LOCUS annuals (see below).From yet another angle of approach, Jack
L. CHALKER and Mark OWINGS (1945- ), in The Index to the Science-Fantasy
Publishers (1966; rev vt Index to the SF Publishers 1979; very much exp vt
The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Critical and Bibliographic History
1991), provides a checklist of (and anecdotal commentary on) almost every
title released by the specialist sf houses, arranged by publisher. The
1991 version, 10 times the size of the first edition, gives its users an
invaluable grasp of the shape - though it is less secure on the detail -
of sf PUBLISHING through the 20th century; inconveniently, that first
edition has been several times revised in successive small unmarked
reprintings, with the result that readers cannot know the status of the
volume they have in front of them.Two ongoing index series by Hal W. HALL
are also essential. The first - comprising, the Science Fiction Book
Review Index, 1923-1973 (1975), Science Fiction Book Review Index,
1974-1979 (1981) and Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Review Index,
1980-1984 (1985) - along with its annual supplements - released under the
full latter title, and covering, as of the volume published in 1994, the
years up to 1990 - functions as an accurate if incomplete bibliography of
sf criticism. And Hall's 2-vol Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference
Index, 1878-1985 (1987), which incorporates early reference guides, covers
non-review research and criticism in the field; supplemental volumes,
including Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index, Volume 7 (1987),
covering 1986, and Volume 8 (1990), covering 1987 (and see below), were
incorporated into Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, 1985-1991
(1993).In the late 1980s, perhaps following Contento's lead, Hall made a
significant publishing decision. Although his Book Review Index remained a
separate production, he incorporated further issues of his Reference Index
into Charles N. BROWN's and Contento's ongoing Locus annual Science
Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror series, from the 1988 volume (published 1989)
onwards. The Brown/Contento production - each annual volume being
subtitled A Comprehensive Bibliography of Books and Short Fiction
Published in the English Language - extends from coverage year 1984 to
coverage year 1991, the last year covered representing the end of the
sequence. Although it does not precisely replace comprehensive
bibliographies like Reginald's (see above), it has served to supply sf
readers and researchers with an enormous amount of information for the
years 1984-1991; it is unlikely (unless the series is restarted) that any
other period in sf history will ever be treated to as thorough and
convenient a coverage. Its main deficiency as a research resource lay for
several years in the fact that it was based on a localized books-received
(rather than a books-published) basis, only books received for review by
Brown's Locus magazine during a particular calendar year tending to be
entered in the Brown/Contento volume for that year. As there is a very
considerable difference between books received during a year by one
magazine and books actually published during that year, early volumes of
the series needed some getting used to. But in later volumes, a
considerable effort was made to search out books not actually received for
review, and, once the researcher understands this gradual change for the
better, Brown/Contento begins to seem even more irreplaceable.Moving from
comprehensive bibliographies whose remit is to encompass the field rather
than to evaluate it, we come to research aids which are designed to
provide a critical commentary. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and
Fantasy through 1968 in 3 vols (1974, 1978, 1982) by Donald H. TUCK
engagingly annotated a wide variety of texts, but its author frequently
cross-referred readers to Bleiler for fuller listings. The first edition
of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979) ed Peter NICHOLLS attempted
to list or mention all sf or fantasy books published by the approximately
1700 fiction authors treated, but the ascriptions in that edition and in
this second edition (which treats about 3000 authors) are not arranged in
checklist form, and are not intended primarily for bibliographical
reference. Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers (1981; rev 1986; rev
1991), first 2 edns ed Curtis C. SMITH, 3rd edn ed Paul E. Schellinger
(1962- ) and Noelle Watson (1958- ), though valuable for its biographical
and critical sections, could not be recommended for its checklists, which
were eccentrically conceived, inaccurate, and which remained complacently
uncorrected from one edition to the next. The New Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction (1988) ed James E. GUNN lists without bibliographic detail
selected titles by those authors (about 500) given entries.Broadest in
scope of the non-encyclopedic projects are the three volumes ed Neil
BARRON. The most relevant of these is Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide
to Science Fiction (1976; exp 1981; further exp 1987; fourth edition
projected for 1995), which is a selective (but very broad) bibliography of
the field, complete with critical annotations on each volume chosen. The
other Barron productions, Fantasy Literature: A Reader's Guide (1990) and
Horror Literature: A Reader's Guide (1990), are smaller and less
definitive; but, it can be presumed, will also grow. Bibliography-based
studies of particular periods have begun to appear, to date concentrating
- very appropriately, considering the sf field's state of ignorance a
decade ago about its earlier years - on the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Darko SUVIN's Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of
Knowledge and of Power (1983) and Thomas D. CLARESON's Science Fiction in
America, 1870s-1930s: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources (1984)
supply complementary coverages from widely differing critical
perspectives. And Everett F. Bleiler, in his enormous Science-Fiction: The
Early Years (dated 1990 but 1991) provides what may be a definitive
coverage of the period up to 1930 in the form of story synopses.Some
thematic bibliographies had begun to appear before the end of the 1970s,
including Atlantean Chronicles (1971) by Henry M. Eichner, Voyages in
Space: A Bibliography of Interplanetary Fiction 1801-1914 (1975) by George
Locke, and Tale of the Future (1961; exp 1972; further exp 1978) by I.F.
CLARKE. More appeared in the 1980s, including Nuclear Holocaust: Atomic
War in Fiction, 1895-1984 (1987) by Paul Brians (1942- ), The First
Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel (1987) by Frederick
S. Frank (1935- ), and Lyman Tower SARGENT's British and American Utopian
Literature, 1516-1985 (1988). But there remains room for much further work
of this sort.Specialized bibliographies of individual authors have
proliferated since the late 1970s (many are cited at the foot of the
relevant author entries in this encyclopedia), often being published by sf
houses like BORGO PRESS and STARMONT HOUSE, or by individuals like Phil
STEPHENSEN-PAYNE in collaboration with Gordon BENSON Jr and like Chris
DRUMM, or by academic presses like GARLAND, G.K. Hall and Meckler. Several
pseudonym guides specifically devoted to sf and fantasy writers have also
appeared, including James A. Rock's not entirely reliable but intriguing
Who Goes There (1979) and Roger ROBINSON's fuller Who's Hugh? (1987).
Interestingly, although the fan bibliographers in general exhibit a wide
variety of ascription techniques (some of these being of Rube Goldbergian
complexity), they have often accomplished the most interesting work, and
their productions are very much more likely to be up-to-date than those
which appear, sometimes years after completion, from the staider firms.No
volume like this encyclopedia could be properly written without the
benefit of original research on the part of its authors. But, equally, no
volume like this encyclopedia could hope to exist without the constant
support and reassurance of every book mentioned above, and of 10 times
again as many. The editors of this book are in debt to them all; specific
acknowledgements can be found in the Introduction. [JC/PN]

BICKHAM, JACK M(ILES)
(1930- ) US writer who began publishing sf with Kane's Odyssey (1976
Canada) as by Jeff Clinton, and who later wrote two sf novels under his
own name. ARIEL (1984) posits a COMPUTER whose AI is both alarming and
charming. Day Seven (1988) is a TECHNOTHRILLER. [JC]

BIEMILLER, CARL L(UDWIG Jr)
(1912-1979) US businessman, journalist and writer, of sf interest for his
two series of novels for older children: the Jonny sequence comprising The
Magic Ball from Mars (1953) and Starboy (1956); and, more interestingly,
the post- HOLOCAUST Hydronauts sequence - The Hydronauts (1970), Follow
the Whales: The Hydronauts Meet the Otter People (1973) and Escape from
the Crater (1974)-focusing on the aquatic adventures of a group of
trainees in the Ranger Service, which controls oceanic food production
after radiation has devastated land-based farming. [JC]

BIERBOWER, AUSTIN
(1844-1913) US writer whose anthropological ( ANTHROPOLOGY) sf novel,
From Monkey to Man, or Society in the Tertiary Age: A Story of the Missing
Link (1894), suggests the Ice Age as the effective cause of the Missing
Link's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and struggles with snakes as the
basis for the symbol of the Serpent as evil. [JC]See also: EVOLUTION;
ORIGIN OF MAN.

BIERCE, AMBROSE (GWINETT)
(1842-c1914) US journalist and writer of short stories and SATIRES,
deeply affected by his experiences in the American Civil War (he was
breveted major for bravery and wounded twice). Like Bret Harte
(1836-1902), he went to California and became a journalist, and also like
Harte he soon went abroad, spending 1872-6 in the UK, publishing several
volumes of sketches as Dod Grile, most notably the savage little fables
assembled as Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (coll dated 1874 but 1873 UK; vt
Cobwebs: Being the Fables of Zambri, the Parsee c1873 UK); but afterwards
- unlike Harte, who had permanently departed the thin cultural pickings
there - he returned to California. At the close of 1913, after a hectic
career and some notably intemperate journalism, he disappeared into
Mexico, then in the middle of its own civil war. He is perhaps best known
for The Cynic's Word Book (coll 1906; vt The Devil's Dictionary 1911; exp
vt The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary 1967), a collection of brilliantly
cynical word "definitions". His numerous sketches and stories far more
closely approach the canons of FANTASY than of sf, though, like Mark
TWAIN's similar efforts, the speculative environment they create is often
sufficiently displaced to encourage the interest of sf readers. AB's
single most famous tale, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", in which a
condemned spy believes he has escaped the rope and returned to his wife
the instant after his fall from the bridge and before the noose tightens,
appears in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (coll 1891; vt In the Midst of
Life 1892 UK; exp under first title 1898 US). The early ROBOT story
"Moxon's Master", perhaps the closest thing to genuine sf he ever wrote,
in which a SCIENTIST's death is apparently caused by a chess-playing
automaton, appears in Can Such Things Be? (coll 1893). The same volume
contains the notable story of monstrous INVISIBILITY, "The Damned Thing",
which offers a scientific explanation of the phenomenon, and "Charles
Ashmore's Trail", the story of a man who vanishes, much as AB seemed to do
himself, into another DIMENSION. This and such similar volumes as
Fantastic Fables (coll 1899) have since been republished in a number of
forms. The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce (coll 1946) is valuable,
though not complete; Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce (coll
1964, ed Everett F. BLEILER) is probably the best single assemblage of his
works of interest to the reader of sf or fantasy. The Collected Short
Stories (coll 1970) and The Devil's Advocate: An Ambrose Bierce Reader
(coll 1987) are also of value. [JC/PN]Other works: The Fiend's Delight
(coll 1873 UK) and Nuggets and Dust Panned Out in California (coll 1873
UK), both as Dod Grile.About the author: Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's
Lexicographer (1951) by Paul Fatout; Ambrose Bierce (1970) by M.C.
Grenander.See also: GOTHIC SF; HORROR IN SF; HUMOUR; PARANOIA.

BIG DUMB OBJECTS
An unfailingly popular theme in sf is the discovery, usually by humans,
of vast enigmatic objects in space or on other planets. These have
normally been built by a mysterious, now-disappeared race of ALIEN
intellectual giants, and humans can only guess at their purpose, though
the very fact of being confronted by such artefacts regularly modifies or
confounds their mental programming and brings them that much closer to a
CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH into a more transcendent state of intellectual
awareness (see also SENSE OF WONDER).The enormous constructs described in
the titles and contents of Larry NIVEN's RINGWORLD (1970) and Bob SHAW's
Orbitsville (1975) are typical: artificial biospheres orbiting alien suns
(Shaw's is a DYSON SPHERE) and having a surface area millions of times
that of Earth. Not so big but every bit as enigmatic is the derelict
SPACESHIP Rama, a still-functioning technological artefact hugely in
advance of anything we could build, in Arthur C. CLARKE's RENDEZVOUS WITH
RAMA (1973). More recently Greg BEAR topped this with another space
habitat, bigger on the inside than the outside, one section of which is
infinite in extent, projecting through time as well as space, in EON
(1985) and Eternity (1988); exhausted by the sheer problems of scale he
paused in the hiatus between these books to write The Forge of God (1987)
in which we are visited by alien spacecraft modestly disguised as very
small mountains.John VARLEY's Gaean trilogy - Titan (1979), Wizard (1980)
and Demon (1984) - is also set in a space habitat, this one as large as a
medium-sized moon, containing a whole set of lesser, but still biggish,
dumb objects within, including the convenient staircases attached to its
600km (375-mile) spokes and at one point a 15m (50ft) Marilyn Monroe. The
habitat is owned by, and in effect is an extension of the body of, a
"goddess", Gaea, herself a construct (makers unknown) but sentient ( GODS
AND DEMONS). This makes her a LIVING WORLD and hence not truly dumb.
Self-awareness in BDOs, Varley correctly calculated, was the next logical
step.BDOs go back a long way in the history of written sf: the sun and
planets within the Earth in Ludvig HOLBERG's Nicolai Klimii iter
Subterraneum (1741 in Latin; trans as A Journey to the World Under-Ground
by Nicolas Klimius, 1742), not actually artificial but still awesome, are
proto-BDOs.BDOs have proved surprisingly difficult to create in film. The
difficulty is one of scale: the screen itself is not huge, so tiny humans
have to be superimposed on BDOs in order to create the apparent enormity
through contrast. Surprisingly, given the expertise of special-effects
crews through the 1980s and the nearly universal use of the wide-screen
format, one of the very best BDOs preceded all this (in a smaller format)
by decades. This was the enigmatic machinery of the Krel in FORBIDDEN
PLANET (1956), extending in a perspective to the vanishing point.BDOs can
also be plural in nature, and not restricted to orbiting a solitary star.
There are many of these, a good example, demonstrating the recent
popularity of grand-scale sentience, being "the swarm of the ten thousand
moon-brains of the Solid State Entity" in David ZINDELL's Neverness
(1988). (Many BDOs, as here, have been built by quasi-gods.) Charles
SHEFFIELD's dubious strategy in Summertide: Book One of the Heritage
Universe (1990), whose title gives fair warning, is to have 1200 or so
gigantic artefacts scattered through our spiral arm of the Galaxy,
necessitating a number of quotes from the "Lang Universal Artifact Catalog
Fourth Edition". This comes close to BDO self-parody. To be fair,
Sheffield concentrates on only one, a mildly spectacular bridge connecting
the two worlds of a double-planet system.The most endearing aspect of BDO
stories is the disjunction between the gigantic scale of the BDO and the
comparatively trite fictional events taking place on, in or about it. The
sf imagination usually, if charmingly, falls short at this point, and many
BDOs become backdrops for soap operas. For all that, they retain an
archetypal power, no matter what crudenesses they may encompass. Sf's much
vaunted SENSE OF WONDER is seldom more potently evoked than in a good BDO
story. The mystery, only to be explained by a new Carl Gustav Jung, is
why, even when these tales are awash with a bathetic failure to live up to
their own heroic ambitions, they nearly always work.The BDO story has
certainly become a new subgenre within sf, its parameters already clearly
defined. Newspaper critics of sf, in the face of the stupendous, have
shown a shameful failure of creativity in not having found an adequate
neologism to describe the BDO genre in a single, terse word. It is not
wholly certain which critic first used the phrase "Big Dumb Object" to
describe the subject of these tales - it may have been Roz KAVENEY in
"Science Fiction in the 1970s" in FOUNDATION #22, 1981 - but the term is
now commonplace in describing megalotropic sf. [PN]

BIGFOOT AND THE HENDERSONS
HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS.

BIGGLE, LLOYD Jr
(1923- ) US author and musicologist, with a PhD in musicology from the
University of Michigan. His interest in MUSIC and the other ARTS, perhaps
watered down more than necessary in an effort to make such concerns
palatable to his readers, appears throughout his sf, which began to appear
in 1956 with "Gypped", on a music theme, in Gal. His first novel, The
Angry Espers (1959 AMZ as "A Taste of Fire"; rev with cuts restored 1961
dos), features an Earthman involved in complicated adventures on an alien
planet, and sets the tone for much of his subsequent work in the field.
The Jan Darzek sequence - All the Colors of Darkness (1963), Watchers of
the Dark (1966), This Darkening Universe (1975), Silence is Deadly (1977)
and The Whirligig of Time (1979) - recounts the adventures of a
late-20th-century private eye who moves from investigating aliens to
chairing the Council of Supreme, which itself governs the home Galaxy; by
the third volume he is pitted against the inimical Udef, a Dark Force
destroying civilization after civilization in the Smaller Magellanic
Cloud. A similarly palatable Galaxy (LB's clearest affinity in his novels
is to writers like Murray LEINSTER) provides a backdrop and sounding board
for the Cultural Survey featured in The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets
(1961 ASF as "Still Small Voice"; exp 1968) and The World Menders (1971).
Monument (1962 ASF; exp 1974) is an effective (though ultimately amiable)
space-opera parable about imperialism. Selections of his stories, most of
which are competent but undemanding, appear in The Rule of the Door and
Other Fanciful Regulations (coll 1967; vt Out of the Silent Sky 1977; vt
The Silent Sky 1979 UK), The Metallic Muse (coll 1972), which contains
some of his best arts-related tales, and A Galaxy of Strangers (coll
1976). As a writer of SPACE OPERA, LB is seldom less than relaxed and
entertaining; it may be intellectual snobbery to ask for anything more,
but his stories often convey the sense of an unrealized greater potential,
and Orson Scott CARD argues his merits in his introduction to The
Tunesmith (1957 If; 1991 chap dos). LB has been an active member of the
SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, and edited Nebula Award Stories Seven
(anth 1972). [JC]Other works: The Fury Out of Time (1965); The Light that
Never Was (1972); Alien Main (1985) with T.L. SHERRED (whom see for
details); two Sherlock Holmes pastiches - The Quailsford Inheritance: A
Memoir of Sherlock Holmes from the Papers of Edward Porter Jones, his Late
Assistant * (1986) and The Glendower Conspiracy: A Memoir of Sherlock
Holmes from the Papers of Edward Porter Jones, his Late Assistant *
(1990); Interface for Murder (1987) ,A Hazard of Losers (1991), and Where
Dead Soldiers Walk (1994), detective novels.See also: ESP EVOLUTION;
MATTER TRANSMISSION; NEBULA; PASTORAL; SOCIAL DARWINISM.

BIG HEART AWARD
AWARDS.

BIG MEAT EATER
Film (1982). BCD Entertainment. Dir Chris Windsor, starring George
Dawson, Big Miller, Howard Taylor, Andrew Gillies. Screenplay Windsor,
Laurence Keane. 82 mins. Colour.This Canadian musical pastiche of sf and
horror films - a sort of designer midnight movie about an INVASION by two
ALIENS of a small town in the 1950s - waves its low budget like a flag
and, despite incoherences, is cheerfully enjoyable. The aliens are played
by toy robots. The plot, which defies description, involves a tank of
disgusting waste from the butcher's shop in which is being formed
radioactive baloneum (much desired by the aliens), a huge, murderous
butcher's assistant who sings jolly songs like "Bagdad Boogie", the
reanimated corpse of Mayor Rigatoni, a universal language, a car turned
into a SPACESHIP, and other absurdities. The target audience appears
similar to that for The ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Everyone in the film
seems to be having a very good time. [PN]See also: MUSIC.

BIG MESS, THE
Der GROSSE VERHAU.

BIG PULL, THE
UK tv serial (1962). BBC. Prod Terence Dudley. Written Robert Gould.
Starring William Dexter, June Tobin, Susan Purdie, Frederick Treves. 6
30-min episodes. B/w.This fondly remembered thriller about alien INVASION,
quite generously budgeted, has an astronaut returning to Earth after
contamination by something strange in the Van Allen belts. There follow a
series of strange "fusions" in which pairs of humans, one "dead" and one
disappeared, return as single, altered individuals. [PN]

BIG YEAR FOR ELLISON
Writer Harlan Ellison had a big year in 1967. In addition to editing
Dangerous Visions, perhaps the most famous anthology in the history of
science fiction, he published two of his most successful stories, "I Have
No Mouth and I Must Scream" and "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes."Even more
popular was his teleplay for "Star Trek, The Cityon the Edge of Forever."
Many people, including Ellison, felt that the manner in which the teleplay
was producedsimplified his complex and dark vision. But the programremains
- nearly thirty years later, the best-known - andbest - episode of Star
Trek.

BIJO TO EKITAI NINGEN
(vt The H-Man; vt Beautiful Women and the Hydrogen Man) Film (1958).
Toho. Dir Inoshiro Honda, starring Yumi Shirakawa, Kenji Sahara, Akihiko
Hirata, Koreya Senda. Screenplay Takeshi Kimura, based on a story by Hideo
Kaijo. 87 mins, cut to 79 mins. Colour.This Japanese film is,
coincidentally, similar to The BLOB (also 1958) but is more ingenious and
sinister. Fishermen examining a drifting freighter find only empty suits
of clothing - empty except for the captain's uniform, from which a pool of
green slime emerges and immediately runs up the leg of the nearest
fisherman to dissolve him on the spot. The freighter has entered a cloud
of fallout from an H-bomb and the crew has been transformed into a group
organism. The monster reaches Tokyo but, unlike Toho's typical prehistoric
MONSTERS (also awakened by radiation; GOJIRA), does not knock over
buildings; instead it slithers in and out of drains, under doors and
through windows, dissolving and absorbing anyone it can catch. There are
good special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, moody photography in the sewers,
and rather too much attention paid to a subplot involving gangsters; all
in all, a good, slightly surreal film noir. [JB]

BILAL, ENKI
(1951- ) Yugoslav/French illustrator, a very distinctive, innovative and
original creator of sensuous, decadent futures. EB was born in Belgrade,
moving with his family to France in 1961. He attended the Academie des
Beaux Arts briefly in the early 1970s. In 1971 he won a competition to
create an sf COMIC-strip story run by the magazine Pilote, in which he
subsequently published a number of strips later collected in book form as
L'appel des etoiles ["The Call of the Stars"] (graph coll 1974; vt Le bol
maudit ["The Cursed Bowl"] 1982). A further collection was Memoires
d'outre espace (graph coll 1978; trans as Outer States 1990 US). In 1973
he met and teamed up with sf writer Pierre Christin (1938- ) to produce 5
graphic novels: La croisiere des oublies (graph 1975; trans in Heavy Metal
Apr-Nov 1982 as "The Voyage of Those Forgotten"), Le vaisseau de pierre
(graph 1976; trans in Heavy Metal July-Nov 1980 as "Progress"), La ville
qui n'existait pas (graph 1977; trans in Heavy Metal Mar-Sep 1983 as "The
City that Didn't Exist"), Les phalanges de l'ordre noir (graph 1979; trans
as The Ranks of the Black Order 1989 US) and Partie de chasse (graph 1982;
trans in Heavy Metal June 1984-Mar 1985 as "The Hunting Party"). He
collaborated with writer Pierre Dionnet to produce Exterminateur 17 (graph
1979; trans in Heavy Metal Oct 1977-Mar 1978 as Exterminator 17; 1986). In
1981 he began to write and draw an as yet unfinished trilogy, so far
consisting of La foire aux immortels (graph 1983; trans as Gods in Chaos
1985) and La femme piege (graph 1986; trans as The Woman Trap 1986). In
1989-90 he collaborated with Christin on a series of reportage fictions
from five different cities, under the series title Coeurs sanglants
["Bleeding Hearts"], for which his illustrations comprised photographs
with additional features drawn or painted in. Since then (until mid-1992)
he has published only a series of limited-edition prints.EB has
collaborated with French film-maker Alain Resnais, providing set designs
for La vie est un roman (1983; vt Life is a Bed of Roses), and contributed
design work to Michael Mann's film The Keep (1983) and to the film version
of The Name of the Rose (1986), based on the novel by Umberto ECO. He also
directed the sf movie Bunker Palace Hotel (1990), a thriller set in the
future and involving ROBOTS. [RT]See also: HEAVY METAL; ILLUSTRATION;
METAL HURLANT.

BILDERDIJK, WILLEM
(1756-1831) Dutch writer of poetry and nonfiction on many subjects. His
one work of fiction was the novella Kort verhaal van eene aanmerklijke
luchtreis en nieuwe planeetokdekking (1813 anon; trans Paul Vincent as A
Short Account of a Remarkable Aerial Voyage and Discovery of a New Planet
1989 UK), in which a balloonist is cast away on a small satellite orbiting
within the Earth's atmosphere. Its flora and fauna are described, and he
finds the remains of an earlier castaway before undertaking a perilous
homeward journey. The text acknowledges a debt to the satirical tradition
of FANTASTIC VOYAGES, but is authentic sf, and has good claims to be
considered the first such work. [BS]

BILENKIN, DMITRI (ALEKSANDROVICH)
(1933-1987) Russian geologist and author of both fiction and
popular-science books. For most of his career he concentrated on short
stories - assembled as Marsianskii Priboi ["The Surf of Mars"] (coll
1967), Notch Kontrabandoi ["Night of Contraband"] (coll 1971), Proverka NA
Razumonst' ["Test for a Reason"] (coll 1974), Snega Olimpa ["The Snows of
Olympus"] (coll 1980), Litso V Tolpe ["A Face in the Crowd"] (coll 1985)
and Sila sil'nykh ["The Power of Power"] (coll 1986) - which were
generally more scientific than fictional but never boring or ill written.
Some of his typical work was assembled as The Uncertainty Principle (coll
trans Antonina W. Bouis 1978 US); some stories also appeared in World's
Spring (anth 1981 US) ed Vladimir GAKOV. DB's longer works are Pustynia
Zhizni ["The Life Desert"] (1984), a provoking comparison of different
historical/cultural human types on a future Earth transformed by
mysterious "timequakes", and an intellectual SPACE OPERA, Prikliuchenia
Polynova ["Polynov's Adventures"] (1986). [VG]

BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY
BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
Film (1989). Interscope Communications/Soisson-Murphey/De Laurentiis. Dir
Stephen Herek, starring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin.
Screenplay Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon. 89 mins. Colour.Because the
tranquillity of future life depends on the cultural changes brought about
by a late-20th-century rock band, Wyld Stallyns, a TIME MACHINE is sent
back to help the two teenaged future band-leaders pass their history test,
thus ensuring their continuing partnership. The boys successfully collect
Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, etc., to give colour
to their history presentation. This charming, silly film, made by a
relative newcomer who had previously directed CRITTERS (1986), does not
strain for credibility, but within its own relaxed, adolescent terms is
done with great conviction. The running joke is linguistic: the boys speak
a Southern Californian argot, "Valley Speak", so that, for example, bad
things are "heinous" and "egregious", good things "excellent" and
"bodacious". Their innocence (and ignorance) enables them, with a simple
"Party on, dudes", to survive perilous situations. There is a bodacious
new twist on the TIME PARADOX, and a splendid scene where Napoleon
discovers the joys of water slides.The sequel, Bill and Ted's Bogus
Journey (1991), dir Pete Hewitt but with the same screenwriters, has the
two boys visiting Hell and Heaven and outwitting the Grim Reaper (William
Sadler) and a megalomaniac leader (Joss Ackland). Though amusing, it lacks
the freshness of its predecessor. [PN]See also: CINEMA.

BILLIAS, STEPHEN
(? - ) US writer whose first novel, The American Book of the Dead (1987),
makes use of Zen points of view to approach an understanding of holocaust.
Quest for the 36 (1988) rather similarly convokes the 36 just men from
Jewish folklore to see if, together again, they can save the world from
fantasy-tinged chaos. SB's third and fourth novels were ties: Deryni
Challenge: A Crossroads Adventure in the World of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni
* (1988), and Rune Sword #4: Horrible Humes * (1991). [JC]

BINDER, EANDO
Most famous of the joint pseudonyms used by the brothers Earl Andrew
Binder (1904-1965) and Otto Oscar Binder (1911-1975), though they both
used other pseudonyms as well; after about 1940, when Earl became inactive
as a writer, Otto continued to sign himself EB, so that some EB books are
collaborative and some by Otto alone. Together, the brothers also wrote 11
stories as John Coleridge and one as Dean D. O'Brien. Alone, Otto also
wrote as Gordon A. Giles and, later, as Ione Frances (or Ian Francis)
Turek, did some work under the house name Will GARTH, and finally
published a couple of novels under his own name. A third brother, Jack, an
illustrator, did much of the early drawing on CAPTAIN MARVEL, which was
regularly scripted by Otto.The two brothers' best-known works were all
published as by EB, beginning with "The First Martian" for AMZ in 1932.
The Adam Link series, by Otto alone, is EB's most important work in the sf
field: Adam Link, a sentient ROBOT, narrates his own tales, quite
feelingly. Most of his story appears in Adam Link - Robot (1939-42 AMZ;
fixup 1965); uncollected stories, also from AMZ, are "Adam Link Fights a
War" (1940), Adam Link in the Past (1941 AMZ; 1950 chap Australia) and
"Adam Link Faces a Revolt" (1941). Link is highly anthropomorphic; though
Isaac ASIMOV's somewhat more austere sense of the nature of robots and
robotics was soon to establish itself in the sf field as an almost
unbreakable convention, the Adam Link sequence is an important
predecessor, significantly treating its robot hero (and his wife, Eve
Link) with sympathy. The brothers' other main series, the Anton York
tales, all collected in book form as Anton York, Immortal (1937-40 TWS;
fixup 1965), tells how Anton and his wife achieve IMMORTALITY and live
with it. Also as EB, the brothers published less interesting magazine
serials in the 1930s which were only gradually to see book publication.
Notable among them are Enslaved Brains (1934 Wonder Stories; rev 1951
Fantastic Story Quarterly; 1965) and Lords of Creation (1939 Argosy;
1949); in the latter, Overlords rule Earth but are resisted with ultimate
success. As Gordon A. Giles, Otto wrote a series for TWS 1937-42 (the last
story as by EB) in which a spaceship from Earth explores the Solar System,
finding Martian pyramids on each planet; known as the Via series (after
their individual titles, which always begin with "Via"), these stories
were assembled as Puzzle of the Space Pyramids (fixup 1971) as by EB.
Alone and in collaboration, Otto wrote a large number of additional
stories that were not part of any sequence; appearing in the PULP
MAGAZINES 1933-42, these were typical of the field before the revolution
in quality symbolized (and in part caused) by the arrival of John W.
CAMPBELL Jr at ASF. After 1940, Otto did script work on both Captain
Marvel and SUPERMAN comics, and late in life he published under his own
name a graphic-novel version of Jules VERNE's The Mysterious Island (graph
1974). Though his fiction production decreased, he did considerable
nonfiction work as well as taking on editorial tasks. He became interested
in UFOS. He began publishing sf stories again, briefly, 1953-4, but a
significant proportion of the books published in the 1960s and 1970s
contain material from before WWII. [JC]Other works: The Cancer Machine
(1940 chap); Martian Martyrs (c1942 chap) and The New Life (c1942 chap),
both as by John Coleridge; The Three Eternals (1939 TWS; 1949 chap
Australia); Where Eternity Ends (1939 Science Fiction; 1950 chap
Australia); Dracula * (graph 1966) with Craig Tennis; The Avengers Battle
the Earth-Wrecker * (1967) as OOB; the Saucer series comprising Menace of
the Saucers (1969) and Night of the Saucers (1971); The Impossible World
(1939 Startling Stories; 1970); Five Steps to Tomorrow (1940 Startling
Stories; 1970); The Double Man (1971); Get Off My World (1971); Secret of
the Red Spot (1971); Terror in the Bay (1971) as Ione Frances Turek; The
Mind from Outer Space (1972); The Forgotten Colony (1972) as OOB; The
Hospital Horror (1973) as OOB; The Frontier's Secret (1973) as Ian Francis
Turek, associational.See also: ADAM AND EVE; COMICS; DC COMICS; EC COMICS;
THRILLING WONDER STORIES; TIME PARADOXES.

BINDER, EARL ANDREW
[r] Eando BINDER.

BINDER, JACK
[r] Eando BINDER.

BINDER, OTTO O.
[r] Eando BINDER.

BING, JON
[r] SCANDINAVIA.

BINGHAM, CARTER
Pseudonym of Bruce Bingham Cassiday (1920- ), US editor and writer, who
worked as editor with various PULP-MAGAZINE publishers before going
freelance in 1954. His three sf works are ties: Gorgo * (1960), Flash
Gordon 4: The Time Trap of Ming XIII * (1974), as by Con STEFFANSON, and
Flash Gordon 5: The Witch Queen of Mongo * (1974). The first, based on the
film GORGO (1959), is notable for the added sex scenes, a custom of
Monarch's film adaptations. [PN]See also: FLASH GORDON; Dean OWEN.

BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
GENETIC ENGINEERING.

BIOLOGY
The growth of knowledge in the biological sciences has lagged behind that
in the physical sciences; Newton's synthesis of PHYSICS and ASTRONOMY
anticipated the linking of biology and chemistry by 200 years. The age of
mechanical inventions began in the early 19th century, that of biological
inventions is only just beginning, in the wake of the elucidation (during
the 1960s) of the "genetic code" which controls naturally occurring
biological processes of manufacture. Writers of speculative fiction have
always been interested in biological hypotheses but, while the
fundamentals of the science still remained mysterious, their handling of
them was of necessity markedly different from their deployment of ideas
borrowed from physical science. It is only in the last 20-30 years that sf
writers have begun thinking seriously about biotechnology ( TECHNOLOGY),
and the prospect of a usurpation of those mechanisms of organic production
previously the sole prerogative of natural species has not been
universally welcomed. As speculative writers have awakened to the awesome
possibilities inherent in the notion of GENETIC ENGINEERING there has been
a compensating investment of concepts like ECOLOGY and the biosphere with
a quasireligious significance. James Lovelock's observations regarding the
existence of long-term homeostatic mechanisms in the biosphere have helped
to re-personify the biosphere as "Gaia", whose suitability as an object of
worship seems to be taken seriously by many. There is in modern sf an
evident dialectical tension between opposing trends towards the
demystification and remystification of biological ideas.Early works of
PROTO SCIENCE FICTION which feature biological speculations include
Johannes KEPLER's Somnium (1634), which concludes with an interesting
attempt to design a lunar biology, and Francis BACON's New Atlantis
(1629), which foresees significant advances in MEDICINE and agronomy. The
positive outlook of the latter was, however, rarely found in works more
obviously fictional. Even the anticipation of progress in medicine was
capable of generating a particularly intimate kind of anxiety. Where
experiments in physical science tended to be seen, even by cynics who
thought no good could come of them, as perfectly legitimate adventures of
human inquiry, those in human biology frequently seemed blasphemous. The
undeniable fascination which many writers found in the possibilities of
biological science is characteristically tinged with a sense of threat, if
not an attitude of horror. This is very evident in Mary SHELLEY's
Frankenstein (1818), whose eponymous hero is led to despair and
destruction by the monster he creates, and in several of Nathaniel
HAWTHORNE's allegorical stories, particularly "The Birthmark" (1843) and
"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), where experiments on people have tragic
results. Later examples of the same reactionary response include Robert
Louis STEVENSON's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Harriet
STARK's The Bacillus of Beauty (1900). This suggestion of blasphemy is one
of the reasons why envisaged technologies that produce such at least
superficially desirable effects as IMMORTALITY get such a bad press in
fiction.The biological idea most widely discussed in the late 19th century
was, of course, EVOLUTION, and the conflict of ideas provoked by that
subject was an important stimulus to the development of sf. The response
to the controversy took several forms. Evolutionary speculation turned
towards both the FAR FUTURE and the distant past ( ANTHROPOLOGY; ORIGIN OF
MAN). The notion of evolution as an adaptive process inspired several
attempts to imagine life adapted to circumstances different from those on
Earth ( ALIENS; LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS). A rather more modest version of
this same inspiration encouraged a number of fantasies about exotic
Earthly creatures, of which the most notable are the sea stories of
William Hope HODGSON and the stories in In Search of the Unknown (coll
1904) by Robert W. CHAMBERS. Exotic survivals from prehistory (usually
dinosaurs) became a common feature of exploratory melodramas, most notably
in Jules VERNE's Voyage au centre de la terre (1864; trans as Journey to
the Centre of the Earth 1872) and Arthur Conan DOYLE's The Lost World
(1912). Other early sf writers who made prolific use of biological
speculations in their work include H.G. WELLS, J.H. ROSNY AiNe and J.D.
BERESFORD.Evolutionary fantasy remained the dominant species of biological
sf for many years, overshadowing fiction dealing with experimental
biology. Speculations related to medical science tended to engage
increasingly well defined CLICHES: new plagues and cures for all diseases.
The notion of biological engineering did appear in such novels as Wells's
The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), but the methods involved were either crude
or very vague. One real-world development which provoked a considerable
response was the discovery of the mutagenic properties of radiation. The
idea of mutation was implicitly intriguing ( MUTANTS), and was made
important by its crucial role in evolutionary theory. Sf writers were
already entranced with "rays" for a variety of melodramatic reasons (
POWER SOURCES; WEAPONS) and their recruitment to biological speculation
resulted in the swift growth of the "mutagenic romance". John TAINE was a
prolific author of such romances.Few of the early pulp-sf writers had any
knowledge of the biological sciences, and for the most part they handled
biological ideas - when they did at all - in a careless and cavalier
fashion. The principal exceptions were Taine, Stanley G. WEINBAUM, who
employed his expertise mainly in connection with designing exotic
life-systems for alien worlds, and David H. KELLER, a doctor who became a
psychiatrist yet whose medical training did nothing to render his accounts
of biological experiments - including the graphic eugenic fantasy
"Stenographer's Hands" (1928) - less negative. AMAZING STORIES reprinted
"The Tissue-Culture King" (1927) by biologist Julian Huxley (1887-1975),
but biological sf in the pulps very rarely transcended the deployment of
standardized cliches: loathsome alien invaders, man-eating plants, people
driven horribly mad by attempts to save them from death via
brain-transplantation. Contemporary UK material, though much more sober in
tone and serious in intent, was hardly less negative. The ideas in J.B.S.
HALDANE's prophetic manifesto for biotechnology, Daedalus, or Science and
the Future (1924) were transformed by Aldous HUXLEY into the nightmarishly
satirical substance of BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932), and there are several
horrific stories of the "no good will come of it all" school in S. Fowler
WRIGHT's The New Gods Lead (coll 1932). Neil BELL and John GLOAG also
dealt extensively with biological inventions in their sf, but their
approach was determinedly cautionary. UK scientific romance from the
period between the wars could find hope for the future only in a radical
transformation of human nature, but even Wells had lost whatever faith he
had had in the ability of 20th-century mankind to begin the work of
remaking its own nature in a planned and profitable manner. In the eyes of
the sf writers of the 1930s the real SUPERMAN-to-come was destined to be a
freak of benevolent nature; his time was not yet, and attempts to hurry it
by scientific endeavour were invariably disastrous. GENRE SF's handling of
biological ideas improved dramatically after WWII. Several new writers of
the 1940s were trained in biology, most notably Isaac ASIMOV, who held an
academic post in biochemistry, and (although he did not begin to publish
prolifically until the 1950s) James BLISH, who had studied zoology at
college and worked for a while as a medical technician. Blish was the
first genre-sf writer to import biological ideas on a considerable scale
and apply them with real ingenuity. A significant early attempt was "There
Shall Be No Darkness" (1950), about a kind of werewolf, one of a group of
stories which attempted to recruit biological ideas to the rationalization
of symbols borrowed from the supernatural imagination ( SUPERNATURAL
CREATURES); other examples include Jack WILLIAMSON's DARKER THAN YOU THINK
(1940; exp 1948) - more lycanthropy - and Richard MATHESON's I am Legend
(1954), about vampires. It was Blish's PANTROPY series, ultimately
collected in THE SEEDLING STARS (fixup 1957), which first treated the idea
of man-remade-by-Man seriously and sympathetically.As genre sf matured in
the 1950s there was a gradual increase in the sophistication of biological
analogies. ALIEN beings were still characteristically described and
defined by reference to the diversity of Earthly lifeforms, but the
subtlety with which this was done increased dramatically in the 1950s.
Many stories appeared which used the strange reproductive habits of the
lower organisms as models for the construction of exotic situations
involving humans and aliens. Authors who made fruitful use of this kind of
analogy included Philip Jose FARMER, notably in The Lovers (1952; exp
1961), "Open to Me, My Sister" (1960; vt "My Sister's Brother") and
"Strange Compulsion" (1953), and Theodore STURGEON, especially in "The
Perfect Host" (1948), "The Sex Opposite" (1952) and "The Wages of Synergy"
(1953). More recent users of the same strategy include James TIPTREE Jr,
in "Your Haploid Heart" (1969) and "A Momentary Taste of Being" (1975).
This kind of analogical device illustrates the manner in which biological
ideas are usually deployed in sf. In all these stories exotic biological
relationships are transformed into metaphors applicable to social
relationships (or vice versa), relationships between humans and other
intelligent beings or even, in a psychological sense, relationships
between humans and their environment. This is, of course, a totally
unscientific use of scientific ideas, but it can be very effective as a
literary device. It is applied not only to such hypothetical biological
ideas as LIVING WORLDS but also to such concepts as HIVE-MINDS, ECOLOGY
(see also COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS) and PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS.
Thus, for example, the hive-mind becomes in sf not so much a mode of
social organization pertaining to insect species as a metaphor for
considering possible states of human society. Similarly, symbiosis becomes
symbolic of an idealized relationship between humans, or between human and
other beings. This misapplication of ideas extends into the real world
where, in common usage as in much sf, terms like "ecology" have come to be
symbolic of some abstract and quasimetaphysical notion of harmony between
humanity and environment.This constant quest to find biological metaphors
has always tended to sidetrack or pervert realistic speculation about
likely developments in the biological sciences. Symbolism, metaphor and
crude analogical thinking dominate exploration in sf of such notions as
ANDROIDS, CLONES, CYBORGS, GENETIC ENGINEERING, IMMORTALITY and SEX.
Although much contemporary sf seems to be intimately concerned with
current trends in biology, hardly any of this speculation can be said to
be extrapolative in a purely rational fashion. These observations should
not be taken as altogether pejorative: this method of using ideas is
certainly not uninteresting and is often applied with considerable
artistry. But one can certainly argue that sf's enduring inability to get
to grips with the real possibilities of biotechnology, and to explore
those possibilities in a reasonably scrupulous fashion, is a lamentable
failure of the sciencefictional imagination.The last decade has produced a
number of attempts to be more positive about the possible rewards of
biotechnology (many are noted in the entry on IMMORTALITY), but there
remains an excessive reliance on the benevolence of chance. Such works as
Greg BEAR's Blood Music (1985), in which the apocalyptic consequences of a
biotechnologist's recklessness are declared by the author to be happy ones
(though many readers remain unconvinced), cannot reasonably be said to
constitute sensible apologias. Paul PREUSS's Human Error (1985) and
Charles SHEFFIELD's Sight of Proteus (fixup 1978) and Proteus Unbound
(1989) are other works which rely heavily on unplanned ecocatastrophes to
generate optimistic outcomes. Even an enthusiastic propagandist for
biotechnology like Brian M. STABLEFORD finds it easier to produce
sarcastic fantasies of biotechnological experiments gone awry than utopian
accounts of future humanity redeemed by careful effort, as evidenced by
Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution (coll 1991);
and even a calculatedly optimistic writer like David BRIN awards a minor
and relatively ineffectual role to biological science in describing
responses to ecological crisis in his bold and extravagant novel Earth
(1990).The recent boom in HORROR fiction has involved a massive borrowing
of ideas from sf, many of which involve extrapolations of biological
science; writers like Robin COOK and Dean R. KOONTZ have produced very
effective thrillers in this vein. The overwhelmingly negative image of
biological experimentation conveyed by such fiction is only to be
expected; it is the task of horror writers to horrify. It is perhaps
surprising, though, that so little genre sf counterbalances that negative
image with a more evenhanded investigation of the possible benefits of
such experiments. One horror novel which regards its depicted
biotechnological breakthrough - a potential cure for AIDS using a virus
found in vampires' blood - with optimism is Dan SIMMONS's Children of the
Night (1992).The use of biological ideas as metaphors to apply to
specifically human situations is inevitable, and the particular anxiety
which attends speculation about experiments in human biology is entirely
appropriate, but a too-ready acceptance of the horrified conviction that
all biological experimentation is a sin against God or Gaia which will
inevitably be punished by dire misfortune is a kind of intellectual
cowardice. In its handling of biological ideas, then, sf has not yet
attained a true maturity. [BS]

BIONICS
CYBERNETICS; CYBORGS.

BIONIC WOMAN, THE
US tv series (1976-8). Harve Bennett Productions and Universal for ABC.
Created and prod Kenneth Johnson, starring Lindsay Wagner. 3 seasons, 57
50 min episodes. Colour.In this spinoff from the successful series The SIX
MILLION DOLLAR MAN - its first episode being Part 2 of a story begun in
the parent series - Jaime Sommers is the former childhood sweetheart of
the bionic man, Steve Austin. After a serious accident she, too, has part
of her body artificially rebuilt and works for Oscar Goldman (Richard
Anderson), head of a government intelligence agency. Unlike Steve Austin,
who has a bionic eye, she has a bionic ear with which she can eavesdrop
from a mile away. There is a bionic dog called Max. Several episodes
involve ALIENS. The acting of the lead role is notably superior to that in
the parent series. Two book ties were published: The Bionic Woman #1:
Welcome Home Jaime * (1976 by Eileen LOTTMAN; vt Double Identity 1976 UK
as by Maud Willis) and #2: Extracurricular Activities * (1977 by Lottman;
vt A Question of Life 1977 UK as by Willis). [JB/PN]

BIOY CASARES, ADOLFO
(1914- ) Argentine writer, noted from his first book, Prologo
["Prologue"] (1929), for the surreal displacements of his work, which uses
sf or detective forms in an abstract, parodic fashion, and is generally
metaphysical in intent. La invencion de Morel (1940; trans Ruth I.C. Simms
in The Invention of Morel and Other Stories 1964 US), tells in this
fashion of its protagonist's eventually successful search through
appearances and realities for IMMORTALITY; it was filmed in Italy as
L'Invenzione di Morel, dir Emidio Greco, in 1974. Plan de evasion (1945;
trans Suzanne Jill Levine as A Plan for Escape 1975 US) had close thematic
links with the earlier novel. ABC's "El Perjurio de la Nieve" was filmed
by Leopoldo Torre Nilsson as El Crimen de Oribe (1950), and features a
house whose occupants are caught in a time-loop. ABC's most substantial
novel, El sueno del los heroes (1954; trans Diana Thorold as The Dream of
the Heroes 1987 US), features the saving of a workman from death by a
mysterious figure, possibly supernatural, and the repetition of the same
events years later, but without any intervention. Dormir al sol (1973;
trans Suzanne Jill Levine as Asleep in the Sun 1978 US), which has
soul-transplants, conflates the transformations of psychosurgery with
totalitarianism.ABC met Jorge Luis BORGES in 1932. They became close
literary friends, and under the shared pseudonym H. Bustos Domecq
published Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi (coll 1942; trans Norman
Thomas di Giovanni as Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi 1981 US), a set
of introvertive detections. Both authors, with ABC's wife Silvina Ocampo
(1903- ), collaborated in the editing of a fantasy collection, Antologia
de la Literatura Fantastica (anth 1940; rev 1976; trans as The Book of
Fantasy 1976 US). If ABC has for some years lived in the shadow of his
famous friend, the continuing translation of his work may rectify a
misprision. [JC]See also: ISLANDS; LATIN AMERICA; PARALLEL WORLDS.

BIRD, CORDWAINER
[s] Harlan ELLISON.

BIRD, WILLIAM HENRY FLEMING
(1896-1971) UK art lecturer and writer who published some magazine sf in
the 1950s under his own name, beginning with "Critical Age" for Futurist
Science Stories in 1953, and also as John Toucan and John Eagle, a house
name under which two novels almost certainly by WHFB appeared, Reckless
Journey (1947 chap) and Brief Interlude (c1947 chap); his later work was
almost exclusively written for the firm of CURTIS WARREN and was also
released under house names: War of Argos (1952) as by Rand LE PAGE; Two
Worlds (1952) as by Paul LORRAINE; Operation Orbit (1953) as by Kris LUNA;
Cosmic Conquest (1953) as by Adrian Blair and The Third Mutant (1953) as
by Lee ELLIOT. Most featured interstellar espionage agents fighting
revolutionary MUTANTS. The later Blast-off into Space (1966) - not a
Curtis Warren title - was written under a personal pseudonym, Harry
Fleming, and exhibits more character. [JC]

BIRDS, THE
Film (1963). Universal. Dir Alfred Hitchcock, starring Rod Taylor, Tippi
Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette. Screenplay Evan HUNTER, based on
"The Birds" (1952) by Daphne DU MAURIER. 119 mins. Colour.Ordinary birds
in a small seaside town suddenly and without explanation launch a series
of murderous attacks on people. The appearance of menace out of a clear
sky is paralleled, symbolically, by the eruption of strong feeling in the
too-perfectly groomed heroine of the Freudian love story that runs through
the film. It is the arrival of this woman which apparently precipitates
the bird attacks, and she herself is later imaged as a bird in a cage. The
attacks are set-pieces, and carry considerable conviction, achieved with
skilled editing and through use of a combination of real birds, models and
process work by the veteran animator Ub Iwerks (1900-1971), an early
colleague of Walt Disney and co-creator of Mickey Mouse. Although very
much more sophisticated than usual, this famous film belongs formally and
classically to the MONSTER-MOVIE genre, where the fragility of human
hegemony over Nature and the world is conventionally imaged by a tranquil
landscape ravaged without warning by some monstrous, inexplicable fury.
The film is not strictly sf, since interestingly it neither seeks nor
provides any rational explanation for its furies in terms of scientific
meddling, atomic radiation or anything else. But not only is its central
metaphor of human control vs natural disorder central to sf, historically
it was a focal point of the genre as the catalyst for a whole series of
revenge-of-Nature films over the next two decades. [PN]See also: CINEMA.

BISCHOFF, DAVID F(REDRICK)
(1951- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "The Sky's an Oyster; The
Stars are Pearls" in 1975, and who quickly established himself as a
versatile and adaptable novelist, though his practice of working in
collaboration has tended to muffle any sense that he has, in his own
right, either a distinctive style or concerns which could be thought of as
personal. His first novel, The Seeker (1976 Canada) with Chris LAMPTON, is
in a sense, therefore, typical, for there is nothing in particular to
remember about this competent sf adventure featuring a fugitive ALIEN on
Earth and a chase. Forbidden World (fixup 1978) with Ted WHITE is, in the
same way, efficiently anonymous; and the Dragonstar sequence - Day of the
Dragonstar (1983), Night of the Dragonstar (1985) and Dragonstar Destiny
(1989), all with Thomas F. MONTELEONE - explores with impersonal ingenuity
a giant artificial-world-cum-zoo in space (see BIG DUMB OBJECTS) full of
escaped menaces and a hidden agenda or two. The most memorable of his
collaborations are Tin Woodman (1979) with Dennis R. Bailey - a complex
adventure involving a telepathic human, a living alien starship, a
convincingly psychopathic villain, and a galactic chase - and The Selkie
(1982) with Charles SHEFFIELD, a fantasy.Much the same impression of a
genial but impersonal skilfulness is generated by some of DFB's solo
fiction, too, although Nightworld (1979) interestingly combines elements
of RECURSIVE SF - in the shape of an ancient ANDROID who replicates the
physique and personality of H.G. WELLS - and SCIENCE FANTASY as the
protagonist, Wells and a girl who must grow up combine to brave the
COMPUTER-generated vampires of the forgotten colony planet of Styx; but
the sequel, The Vampires of Nightworld (1981), merely exploits the
already-established venue. Set on a starship with a cosmic troubleshooting
mission, the Star Fall books - Star Fall: A Space Fantasy (1980) and Star
Spring: A Space Operetta (1982) - show an uneasy lightness of tone, though
the VIRTUAL-REALITY-like shuffling of pulp venues at its heart is
enjoyable. The Star Hounds sequence - The Infinite Battle (1985), Galactic
Warriors (1985) and The Macrocosmic Conflict (1986)-drifts dangerously
close to the routine. On the other hand the UFO Conspiracy sequence -
Abduction: The UFO Conspiracy (1990), Deception (1991) and Revelation
(1991) - is a gripping excursion into camp PARANOIA. Companionable and
chameleon, DFB seems at the time of writing (1992) to be a
jack-of-all-trades who might well, one day, speak out on his own.
[JC]Other works: Quest (anth 1977 chap); Strange Encounters (anth 1977
chap); The Phantom of the Opera * (1977), a juvenile version; Mandala
(1983 in Chrysalis 10, anth ed Roy Torgeson as "The Warmth of the Stars";
exp 1983); WarGames * (1983), a film tie; a Time Machine tie, Time Machine
#2: Search for Dinosaurs * (1984); The Crunch Bunch (1985); the Gaming
Magi fantasy sequence, comprising The Destiny Dice (1985), Wraith Board
(1985) and The Unicorn Gambit (1986); A Personal Demon (fixup 1985) with
Rich Brown (1942- ) and Linda Richardson (1944- ), comprising several
stories published in Fantastic as by Michael F.X. Milhaus; The Manhattan
Project * (1986), a film tie; Some Kind of Wonderer (1987); The Blob *
(1988), a film tie; Gremlins 2: The New Batch * (1990), a film tie; two
contributions to the sequence of Bill, the Galactic Hero tied sequels,
Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasures * (1991) and
Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Ten Thousand Bars * (1991; vt
Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Hippies from Hell 1993 UK),
both with Harry HARRISON; the Mutants Amok sequence, comprising Mutants
Amok (1991), #2: Mutant Hell (1991), #3: Rebel Attack (1991), #4:
Holocaust Horror (1991) and #5: Mutants Amok at Christmastime (1992), all
as by Mark Grant; Daniel M. Pinkwater's Melvinge of the Megaverse #1:
Night of the Living Shark! * (1991) ( Daniel M. PINKWATER); Star Trek, the
Next Generation: Grounded * (1993); the Dr. Dimension sequence of comic
science fantasies comprising Dr.Dimension (1993) and Dr. Dimension:
Masters of Spacetime (1994), both with John DECHANCIE; two Aliens ties:
Aliens: Genocide * (1993) and Aliens Vs. Predator: Hutner's Planet *
(1994); seaQuest DSV: The Ancient * (1994), tied to the televisions
series.See also: MONSTERS; UFOS.

BISHOP, MATTHEW
[r] M.H. ZOOL.

BISHOP, MICHAEL
(1945- ) US writer, much travelled in childhood, with an MA in English
from the University of Georgia, where he did a thesis on the poetry of
Dylan Thomas. He began publishing sf with "Pinon Fall" for Gal in 1970,
and in a short period established himself as one of the significant new
writers of the 1970s. Though his early stories and novels display
considerable intellectual complexity, and do not shirk the downbeat
implications of their anthropological ( ANTHROPOLOGY) treatment of ALIENS
and alienating milieux, there remained a sense in which MB could not be
treated as one of those writers, like Edward BRYANT, whose primary
influences could be seen as the US NEW WAVE of the 1960s combined with the
liberating influence of the numerous writing workshops of the succeeding
decade. MB's first novel, for instance, A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire
(1975; rev vt Eyes of Fire 1980; under original title with revs retained
and new introduction 1989 UK), is written ostensibly within the terms of
HARD SF, though laced with splashy Gothicisms (most of them removed as
part of the extensive revision): on an alien planet, the protagonist must
perform wonders or be sent back to a despotic Earth. But, inter alia, MB
mounts the first of his complex and sometimes moving analyses of alien
cultures. The finest of these anthropology-based interrogatory tales is
TRANSFIGURATIONS (1973 Worlds of If as "Death and Designation among the
Asadi"; fixup 1979), where the colonizing impact of a "superior" culture
upon less technologically advanced natives is complexly contrasted - in a
story which owes much to Joseph CONRAD - with the recursive unknowableness
of the Other. And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees (1976; vt Beneath the
Shattered Moons 1977; vt as coll Beneath the Shattered Moons and The White
Otters of Childhood 1978 UK), is a somewhat less convincing FAR-FUTURE
tale dealing with a world most of whose people, long ago genetically
engineered ( GENETIC ENGINEERING) into stoicism, are now apparently
incapable of aggression or any other display of emotion. Stolen Faces
(1977), again set on an alien planet, darkly offers a culture so diseased
that its inhabitants must designate themselves through gross
mutilations.However, while publishing these novels and many of the stories
collected in Blooded on Arachne (coll 1982) and One Winter in Eden (coll
1984), MB was increasingly focusing his sharp, earnest, exploratory vision
upon the eerier provinces of the US South. In A Little Knowledge (1977)
and its sequel, Catacomb Years (fixup 1979), a theocratic regime
repressively dominates a NEAR-FUTURE Atlanta, Georgia, until the
conversion of some apparent aliens begins to destabilize society; the
vision of Atlanta as a domed city whose various levels and intersections
literally map the new social order may be cognitively daring, but it thins
out in the mind's eye when described. However, MB's most public success
soon followed. NO ENEMY BUT TIME (1982), which won a NEBULA, intensified
the movement of his imagination to a local habitat, and for the first time
introduced a protagonist of sufficient racial (and mental) complexity to
carry a storyline immured in the particular and haunted by the exotic. In
this case, dogged by dreams of the Pleistocene, the new MB protagonist -
who is not dissimilar to the Habiline who later featured in the less
successful and overextended tale of Atlanta and Haiti, Ancient of Days
(1985) ( APES AND CAVEMEN) - is enlisted into a TIME-TRAVEL project,
returns to the Africa of his vision, fathers a child in the dawn of time,
and returns with her to the battering world.Through the 1980s, MB
continued to strive for an adequate form to engage his humanist
sympathies, the sociological (and anthropological) eye which found in the
South perhaps all too much material, the lurking humorist within the
preacher. Who Made Stevie Crye? (1984) is a strangely unengaged horror
novel, with laughs; The Secret Ascension (1987; vt Philip K. Dick is Dead,
Alas 1988 UK), set in an ALTERNATE-WORLDS USA, homages and stars DICK (see
also RECURSIVE SF); Unicorn Mountain (1988), once again set partly in
Atlanta, is a fantasy in which the dying of unicorns from another
dimension and the problem of AIDS in this world intersect encouragingly;
and Count Geiger's Blues (1992), another fantasy - set in the Atlanta-like
Salonika, capital of the imaginary southern state of Oconee - was
similarly told in MB's uneasily humorous, highly individual voice. Though
full of energy and strongly willed, these novels do not feel entirely
comfortably in focus.On the other hand, Brittle Innings (1994) gives a
powerful sense of smoothly released energies; retelling the story of the
FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER within a GOTHIC SF frame - it is set in the American
South, and the Monster is a professional baseball player - it amply
confirms a sense that MB, having been in search of a strong world to
illuminate, had found one. [JC]Other works: Windows & Mirrors: A Chapbook
of Poetry to Deep South Con XV (coll 1977 chap); Under Heaven's Bridge
(dated 1980 but 1981 UK) with Ian WATSON; Close Encounters with the Deity
(coll 1986); To a Chimp Held Captive for Purposes of Research (1986
broadsheet); Within the Walls of Tyre (1978 Weirdbook 13; rev as
screenplay 1989 chap UK); Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana
(1989 chap); Emphatically Not Sf, Almost (coll 1991); The Quickening (1981
Universe 11; 1991 chap), which won a Nebula for 1981.As Editor: Changes:
Stories of Metamorphosis (anth 1983) with Ian Watson; Light Years and Dark
(anth 1984); Nebula Awards 23 (anth 1989); Nebula Awards 24 (anth 1990);
Nebula Awards 25 (anth 1991).About the author: Michael Bishop: A Working
Bibliography (1988 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr.See also: APES AND CAVEMEN
(IN THE HUMAN WORLD); ARKHAM HOUSE; BIG DUMB OBJECTS; COSMOLOGY;
DEVOLUTION; ORIGIN OF MAN; POETRY; RECURSIVE SF; SEX; SOCIOLOGY;
SUPERHEROES; TIMESCAPE BOOKS.

BISSON, TERRY (BALLANTINE)
(1942- ) US author who has also worked as a New York publishing
copy-writer. His first novel, Wyrldmaker (1981), is a too-rapidly told but
intermittently dazzling GENERATION STARSHIP tale told in the guise of an
heroic fantasy. With his second, Talking Man (1986), he comes into his
full powers as a novelist whose narrative voice is urgently and lucidly
that of a teller of tales. The figure at the heart of Talking Man - who
does not talk - seems at the story's beginning to be nothing more than a
bemusedly eccentric rural Kentuckian with a knack for repairing motors; as
the novel develops into a quest west and then north across a USA more and
more radically transformed the further the search proceeds, the talking
man takes on qualities of Trickster and Redeemer, and eventually seems to
contain the world's reality in his hands. The tale closes back home, but
home is now an American South changed magically into a clement UTOPIA. In
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN (1988), which is in no ostensible sense a sequel,
this same utopia proves to be an ALTERNATE WORLD born from a different
course of US history. The enslaved Blacks of the Southern states had
successfully revolted during the course of the Civil War, founded an
independent Southern country, and by the late 20th century have
established an unracist, beneficent, courteous, livable comity. Those
parts of the tale set during this period are perhaps less convincing - and
certainly less moving - than the central passages of the book, which
represent the reminiscences of one of the Black revolutionaries; his
descriptions of the successful campaign to free his people intensely
invokes the haunted heartlands of the Civil War upriver from Washington,
though subtly and upliftingly transformed.TB's fourth novel, Voyage to the
Red Planet (1990), complicatedly combines spoof and elegy. In the 21st
century the USA has declined severely, and the Mary Poppins, an
umbrella-shaped spaceship once destined to take humanity to Mars, is in a
mothball orbit. But an entrepreneur decides that a good film could be made
of an actual trip to Mars, using the original ageing crew; and this is
done. The portrait of a spineless, privatized USA is scathing; but the
ship and the voyage - both described with considerable versimilitude -
evoke a powerful sense of genuine but wasted opportunity, while generating
at the same time a sense that humanity's dream of travelling outwards was
not yet, perhaps, over. TB wrote no stories during the 1980s, but
beginning in 1990 became a significant author of short fiction, with work
like "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), which won a NEBULA, a HUGO and a
THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD. The tale once again elegizes the land,
the loss of the dream of America; it is also very funny. TB's short work
is assembled as Bears Discover Fire (coll 1993). Fluent and moral and wry,
TB has become one of the writers whose sf speaks to the world. [JC]See
also: DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; EVOLUTION; FANTASY; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE
FICTION MAGAZINE; MARS.

BIXBY, (DREXEL) JEROME (LEWIS)
(1923- ) US writer and editor; an extremely prolific story-writer, though
relatively little of his work is sf. Pseudonyms used on magazine stories
include Jay B. Drexel, Harry Neal and Alger ROME, the last in
collaboration with Algis BUDRYS. His stories include many Westerns; he has
also written sf and horror screenplays and teleplays, including IT! THE
TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958), Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), the
original script, later rewritten, for FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), and several
episodes of STAR TREK; he claims that Isaac ASIMOV's Fantastic Voyage II:
Destination Brain (1987) was based on a treatment by him. JB edited PLANET
STORIES Summer 1950-July 1951 and initiated its companion magazine, TWO
COMPLETE SCIENCE-ADVENTURE BOOKS, editing its first 3 issues; he also
worked on GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, THRILLING WONDER STORIES, STARTLING
STORIES and several comics. He began publishing sf with "Tubemonkey" for
Planet Stories in 1949, and collected much of his output in this genre in
Space by the Tale (coll 1964). Devil's Scrapbook (coll 1964; vt Call for
an Exorcist 1974) is horror and fantasy. His widely anthologized and
best-known story is sf/horror: "It's a Good Life" (1953), about a
malignant superchild with PSI POWERS (see also CHILDREN IN SF); it was
dramatized on tv in The TWILIGHT ZONE, and later as an episode, directed
by Joe DANTE, of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). His work is
professional, as evidenced by his perfectly competent Star Trek novel, Day
of the Dove * (1978), but not of great significance in the field. [JC]See
also: MUSIC; PSYCHOLOGY; SUPERMAN.

BIZARRE
US SEMIPROZINE. 1 issue (Jan 1941), ed Walter E. Marconette and J.
Chapman Miske, effectively a continuation of Marconette's earlier FANZINE
Scienti-Snaps. Professional in appearance, with a colour cover by Hannes
BOK, it is remembered mainly for publishing for the first time the
original but previously unused ending of A. MERRITT's novel Dwellers in
the Mirage (1932; rev 1953), which ending has been in use ever since. B
also ran a discussion by John W. CAMPBELL Jr about writing styles.
[PN/FHP]

BIZARRE! MYSTERY MAGAZINE
US DIGEST-size magazine. 3 issues (Oct and Nov 1965, Jan 1966), published
by Pamar Enterprises, ed John Poe. B!MM had a strong horror/sf element
overriding the ostensible mystery content, and included reprint work by
Pierre BOULLE and new stories by Thomas M. DISCH, Avram DAVIDSON, James H.
SCHMITZ and Arthur C. CLARKE. [FHP/PN]

BJAZIC, MLADEN
[r] YUGOSLAVIA.

BLACK, LADBROKE (LIONEL DAY)
(1877-1940) UK writer of much boys' fiction, often as Lionel Day or Paul
Urquhart. He began publishing novels in 1902. The Buried World (1928), as
by Lionel Day, is a LOST-WORLD juvenile; the head in The Gorgon's Head
(1932) turns modern Britons to stone for a while; and The Poison War
(1933) is a future- WAR novel in which the UK is attacked by chemical
weapons. LB was not an innovative writer. [JC]Other works: The Wager
(1927), a RURITANIAN tale.

BLACK, ROBERT
Robert P. HOLDSTOCK.

BLACK AFRICAN SF
Only a small amount of sf is published in the Black African nations. What
follows is more a sampler than a full survey, since very few researchers
have even looked at the topic.Much of what is published is in English, and
most of that is juvenile. Typical are the novelette Journey to Space (1980
chap), by the Nigerian Flora Nwapa, and a novel about a scientist who
discovers ANTIGRAVITY, The Adventures of Kapapa (1976) by the Ghanaian
J.O. Eshun. One of the rare sf books for adults, a play, is The Chosen
Ones (1969) by Azize Asgarally of Mauritius; it is set partly in the 30th
century.More common are adventure and spy novels for adults containing sf
elements, much in the style of the James Bond movies based on Ian
FLEMING's books. Such is The Mark of Cobra (1980), by Valentine Alily of
Nigeria, in which a secret agent fights against a multimillionaire seeking
world domination by use of a "solar weapon". David G. Maillu of Kenya is a
prolific writer of adventure novels, of which some are sf; in his The
Equatorial Assignment (1980), for example, a secret agent penetrates a
criminal conspiracy which is trying to control the whole of Africa by the
use of fantastic weapons. More sf can be found in the so-called Onitsha
market literature; a typical example is the Nigerian adaptation of George
ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) done by Bala Abdullahi Funtua in the
mid-1970s.Sf in other languages is rare. Sony Labou Tansi is Congolese;
his NEAR-FUTURE sf novel, set in a fictitious African country in 1995, is
in French: Conscience de tracteur ["Consciousness of the Tractor"] (1979).
Another adaptation of Orwell, this time of Animal Farm (1945), is Pitso ea
liphoofolo tsa hae ["The Meeting of the Domestic Animals"] (1956); this,
by Libakeng Maile, was published in the Southern Sotho language. A
children's sf book written in Hausa, one of the languages of Nigeria, is
Tauraruwa mai wutsiya ["The Comet"] (1969) by Umaru A. Dembo; it tells of
the travels in space of a small boy, and of his encounter with a friendly
ALIEN. [JO]

BLACKBURN, JOHN (FENWICK)
(1923-1993) UK writer and antiquarian book dealer, author of many novels
whose ambience of HORROR derives from a calculated use of material from
several genres, including sf. His early books, such as his first, A Scent
of New-Mown Hay (1958; a reported vt The Reluctant Spy 1966 US, is
possibly a ghost title), A Sour Apple Tree (1958), Broken Boy (1959) and A
Ring of Roses (1965; vt A Wreath of Roses 1965 US) tended to use themes
from espionage and thriller fiction to buttress and ultimately provide
explanations for tales whose effects were fundamentally GOTHIC horror and
fantasy. Ex-Nazis often cropped up in these books, as in the first, where
a German scientist spreads around the world a mutated plague-bearing
fungus with the eponymous aroma. Even in later stories, like The Face of
the Lion (1976), which again (characteristically) deals with abominable
disease, loathsome though by now rather elderly SS officers make their
dutiful bows. JFB's use of sf is usually borderline, though not in
Children of the Night (1966), one of his better works, where an
underground lost race ( LOST WORLDS) in northern England kills by
telepathic powers. Often what seem to be sf plot devices on introduction
are satisfactorily explained in terms of contemporary science by the
story's close, or are MCGUFFINS or red herrings like the atom-bomb
conspiracy in The Face of the Lion. Though his use of sf situations is
often ingenious, and though even his most straightforward novels are prone
to internal generic mutations from one form to another, it would be unduly
stretching matters to describe JFB as a genuine sf writer. [JC]Other
works: Dead Man Running (1960); The Gaunt Woman (1962); Blue Octavo (1963;
vt Bound to Kill 1963 US); Colonel Bogus (1964; vt Packed for Murder 1964
US); The Winds of Midnight (1964; vt Murder at Midnight 1964 US); The
Young Man from Lima (1968); Nothing But the Night (1968); Bury Him Darkly
(1969); Blow the House Down (1970); The Household Traitors (1971); For
Fear of Little Men (1972); Devil Daddy (1972); a series comprising Deep
among the Dead Men (1973), Mister Brown's Bodies (1975) and The Cyclops
Goblet (1977); Our Lady of Pain (1974); Dead Man's Handle (1978); The Sins
of the Father (1979); A Beastly Business (1982); A Book of the Dead (1984)
and The Bad Penny (1985).See also: GOTHIC SF; MYTHOLOGY.

BLACKFORD, RUSSELL (KENNETH)
(1954- ) Australian industrial advocate, writer and critic. The best of
his small output of sf may be "Glass Reptile Breakout" (1985), the title
story of Glass Reptile Breakout (anth 1990) ed Van Ikin, a CYBERPUNK tale
of self-healing teenagers. His only novel, The Tempting of the Witch King
(1983), is ironic fantasy. Co-editor of AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE FICTION REVIEW:
SECOND SERIES, RB has two William Atheling Jr AWARDS for criticism. With
David King he edited Urban Fantasies (anth 1985), sf and fantasy stories,
and, with Jenny Blackford (1957- ), Lucy Sussex (1957- ) and Norman Talbot
(1936), Contrary Modes (anth 1985), essays on sf. [PN]

BLACK HOLE, THE
Film (1979). Walt Disney. Dir Gary Nelson, starring Maximilian Schell,
Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest
Borgnine. Screenplay Jeb RoseBrook, Gerry Day, based on a story by
Rosebrook, Bob Barbash, Richard Landau. 98 mins. Colour.The disappointment
of its year in sf movies, this was a ludicrous though expensive reprise in
space of Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954). Astronauts enter a
derelict survey vessel orbiting a BLACK HOLE (painted red so that we can
see it better); they find a Captain-Nemo-like figure (Schell) served by a
killer ROBOT and ANDROID henchmen, who turn out to be the original crew
evilly transformed by the mad SCIENTIST. His desire is to venture within
the hole. After adventures involving two post- STAR WARS cute robots and a
strike by a meteor (although the size of a house, it fails to bring about
the decompression of the spacecraft), all enter the hole, which appears to
Schell like DANTE ALIGHIERI's Inferno and to the good guys like a kitschy
cathedral. The screenwriters, who appear to have no knowledge of science
even to primary-school level, give all the fanatical oratory to Schell,
leaving the remainder of the cast quite wooden. The novelization is The
Black Hole * (1979) by Alan Dean FOSTER. [PN]

BLACK HOLES
Item of sf TERMINOLOGY borrowed from COSMOLOGY. The term was coined by
physicist John Wheeler (1911-) in 1969 and adopted immediately and
enthusiastically by sf writers. The concept of the black hole is quite
complex, and is best approached by the layman through a reliable book of
scientific popularization such as A Brief History of Time: From the Big
Bang to Black Holes (1988) by Stephen W. Hawking (1942- ), one of the
theoretical physicists to have done fundamental work on the concept. The
scientific element of the present discussion has been much simplified.The
possibility that a lump of matter might be compressible to the point at
which its surface gravity would be so powerful that not even light could
escape from it was first pointed out in the late 18th century by John
Michell (c1724-1793) and then by Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace
(1749-1827). It was resuscitated in the 20th century when the implications
of General Relativity became clear. It was not until the 1960s, however,
that physicists began to speculate as to whether a collapsing star of
sufficient mass, about three times that of the Sun, might pass beyond even
the NEUTRON-STAR state of collapsed matter to become a black hole of this
kind, centred on a singularity (a point where infinite gravity crushed
matter and energy entirely out of existence) and bounded by an event
horizon (defined by the distance from the singularity at which the escape
velocity is that of light; the name "event horizon" derives from the fact
that it is of course impossible to observe from outside any events
occurring closer to the singularity than this).Many early sf stories
dealing with the theme seized upon the extreme relativistic
time-dilatation effect associated with objects falling towards the event
horizons of such holes; examples include Poul ANDERSON's "Kyrie" (1968),
Brian W. ALDISS's "The Dark Soul of the Night" (1976) and Frederik POHL's
GATEWAY (1977). These stories make interesting metaphorical connections
between physics and psychology, perhaps helping to cast some light on the
intriguing question of why the black-hole concept has become one of the
most charismatic ideas in contemporary physics. Few other notions have had
such an immediate imaginative impact, or spawned so many exercises in
lyrical quasi-scientific philosophizing. John Taylor's Black Holes: The
End of the Universe? (1973), one of several books which helped to
popularize the notion in the 1970s, is a rather eccentric ideative
rhapsody built on the supposition that "the black hole requires a complete
rethinking of our attitudes to life".Further tense psychological
melodramas using black holes to develop analogies between extraordinary
physics and mental processes include Robert SILVERBERG's "To the Dark
Star" (1968), Barry N. MALZBERG's GALAXIES (1975) and John VARLEY's
"Lollipop and the Tar Baby" (1977) - which features an intelligent black
hole - but stories of this kind soon petered out. Familiarity bred
contentment if not contempt, and the black hole was soon domesticated by
sf writers into a standard image of no great moment. The idea proved,
however, to be surprisingly adaptable. At first it seemed that anything
falling into a black hole was destined for certain destruction, but this
narrative inconvenience was frequently sidestepped. It was independently
and for different reasons hypothesized by cosmologists and sf writers
alike that - supposing one could travel through a black hole - the point
of emergence might be far removed from the point of entry. Because this
property of black holes offered an apparent means of dodging the
relativistic limitations on getting around the Universe at
FASTER-THAN-LIGHT speeds, they quickly began to crop up as "star gates" -
rapid transit systems - as in Joan D. VINGE's THE SNOW QUEEN (1980). Early
examples of stories in which they perform this function tend, in order to
obscure the fundamental problem, to use fudge-names for them: George R.R.
MARTIN's "The Second Kind of Loneliness" (1972) speaks of a "nullspace
vortex" while Joe HALDEMAN's THE FOREVER WAR (1974) refers to
"collapsars". Obliging physicists soon began to speculate about the
possibility of avoiding destruction within a black hole. According to some
theoretical physicists, some solutions of the equations of General
Relativity as they apply to rotating (rather than static) black holes
offer the slim possibility that a spacecraft that entered such a hole
might be able to avoid the naked singularity and so, rather than being
crushed out of existence, might instantaneously re-emerge elsewhere in the
Universe (travelling via a hypothetical bridge or tunnel known as a
wormhole) - the word "elsewhere" referring to some other place, some other
time (which would create havoc with the principle of causality), or both.
Some physicists went further, proposing that the re-emergence might be
into a different universe. Sf writers gladly accepted the imaginative
warrant provided by these ideas, which were popularized by such bold works
of "speculative nonfiction" as Adrian BERRY's The Iron Sun: Crossing the
Universe through Black Holes (1977). Stories in which starships simply
dived into black holes and passed through wormholes to distant parts of
the Universe or to other universes began to appear in some profusion. The
popularity of the theme was further boosted by the film The BLACK HOLE
(1979), and quickly became so routine that recent writers have had to work
hard to sustain the melodramatic potential of the notion. A notable
example of conscientious work of this kind is Paul J. MCAULEY's Eternal
Light (1991), while a more casual approach is manifest in Roger MacBride
ALLEN's The Ring of Charon (1991), in which the Earth is kidnapped through
a wormhole. The idea of a return journey from a black hole is more
ingeniously deployed in Ian WALLACE's Heller's Leap (1979).Although black
holes formed through stellar collapse would have to be at least three
times the mass of the Sun, the concept of miniature black holes emerged in
the early 1970s, first in technical papers and then in sf. They were
featured in "The Hole Man" (1973) by Larry NIVEN and adapted for use in a
SPACESHIP drive in Arthur C. CLARKE's Imperial Earth (1975), but they
really came into their own when theorists attempting to figure out the
mechanics of the Big Bang decided that vast numbers of tiny black holes
might have been created at that time (along with even more peculiar
black-hole-like entities called cosmic strings). However, it was soon
theorized mathematically (Hawking described some of this work in a seminar
in 1973) that mini black holes would be unstable, slowly decaying as a
result of "quantum leakage" of radiation. (Such leakage would affect all
black holes, of course, but only in the case of mini black holes would it
be significant.) Any primordial black hole whose initial mass was less
than about a billion tons would already have disappeared, although more
massive (but still mini) primordial black holes might still exist.
However, sf writers have had little difficulty in imagining accessory
stabilizing methods, such as the one featured in Gregory BENFORD's
thriller Artifact (1985). David BRIN's Earth (1990) simply ties neat knots
in cosmic strings in order to make them available for mind-boggling high
jinks of various kinds; the knotting of cosmic strings had earlier been
examined less reverently by Rudy RUCKER in "The Man who was a Cosmic
String" (1987).Brin's Earth mentions an idea encountered elsewhere: that
even tiny black holes might qualify as entire universes in their own right
(thus, perhaps, re-opening some potential for the kind of microcosmic
romance that Ray CUMMINGS used to write; GREAT AND SMALL). Pohl, having
introduced black holes into GATEWAY, continued to explore their potential
in subsequent volumes of his Heechee series; the mysterious Heechee turn
out to be hiding inside one in Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1980) and
venture forth again in Heechee Rendezvous (1984). Pohl's fascination with
the notion is further extended in The Singers of Time (1991), with Jack
WILLIAMSON, which involves interuniversal travel via wormholes and
includes a series of rhapsodic infodump chapters celebrating the wonders
of modern theoretical physics.A series of theoretical papers in the 1970s
suggested that for every black hole there must somewhere else (perhaps at
the end of a wormhole) be a corresponding white hole gushing energy out
into the Universe in the same way that a black hole would suck it in. The
idea was popularized by John GRIBBIN in his "speculative nonfiction" White
Holes: Cosmic Gushers in the Universe (1977), but suffered from the
disadvantage that, although white holes should be by definition among the
most visible objects in the Universe, none had (or has) been detected. One
pleasing notion, however, equated the Big Bang with a white hole. The
white-hole idea never had quite the same success in sf as its black-hole
counterpart, but the New Sun in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series
appears to be a white hole.Yet another variant on the black-hole theme is
based on the concept that a low-density black hole of enormous mass -
perhaps 100,000 times greater than that of the Sun - might commonly occur
at the centre of galaxies, our own included; there is considerable
astronomical evidence that this is indeed the case. The physics
constraining the properties of such low-density black holes seems to admit
the possibility that whole stars and planets could go on existing inside
them. Even more massive black holes, of perhaps 100,000,000 times solar
mass, might exist at the heart of those incredibly distant, highly
energetic galaxies known to astronomers as Seyfert galaxies and quasars.
(The term quasar derives from their earlier description as "quasi-stellar
radio sources".) The immense black hole at the galactic core has become
almost a CLICHE of contemporary SPACE OPERA.Other uses of black holes
continue to be found. They become ultimate weapons in David LANGFORD's The
Space Eater (1982) and others, and Gregory Benford, in Beyond the Fall of
Night (1990), his sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's classic Against the Fall of
Night (1948; 1953), uses one as a prison for the Mad Mind from the earlier
novel, where Clarke describes it as the "strange artificial star called
the Black Sun." It remains to be seen whether the changes have now been
comprehensively rung, or whether there is further narrative colour yet to
be discovered in the notion.It is disappointing to learn that, while there
is strong empirical and overwhelming theoretical evidence, there is as yet
no concrete proof that even a single black hole exists anywhere in the
real Universe. It is difficult to explain such phenomena as Seyfert
galaxies and quasars without invoking black holes, and the existence of
black holes seems inevitable in the light of our current understanding of
the ways in which matter/energy behaves, but such theorizing is no
substitute for proof. It is generally supposed by astronomers, however,
that by far the likeliest explanation for certain intense periodic X-ray
sources in our Galaxy (the first discovered being Cygnus X-1, in 1971) is
that the X-rays are being emitted from particles falling towards a black
hole which is in orbital partnership with a supergiant star. It is known
that the objects concerned are too massive to be white dwarfs or neutron
stars, and they seem to be invisible. [BS/PN]

BLACK MOON RISING
John CARPENTER.

BLACK SCORPION, THE
Film (1957). Warner Bros. Dir Edward Ludwig, starring Richard Denning,
Mara Corday. Screenplay David DUNCAN, Robert Blees. 88 mins. B/w. Giant
scorpions and a rather good spider emerge from a cavern under the Mexican
desert in this slow-moving, low-budget MONSTER MOVIE obviously inspired by
THEM! (1954). The stop-motion animation of the scorpions, supervised by
Willis H. O'BRIEN at the age of 70, is vivid but does not really redeem
the wooden performances and routine direction. [JB/PN]

BLACKS IN SF
POLITICS.

BLACKSTONE, JAMES
John BAXTER; John BROSNAN.

BLACK SUN, THE
TEMNE SLUNCE.

BLACKWOOD, ALGERNON
(1869-1951) UK writer who spent a decade in Canada and the USA from the
age of 20. His work is essentially fantasy, though his tales of occult
pantheism - best exemplified in The Centaur (1911), which builds on the
theories of Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) in its projections of a sentient
Mother Earth - tend to argue a logic of history which might seem
sufficiently rational for his work to count as sf. His novels tend to the
ponderous; his very numerous short stories, beginning with A Mysterious
House (1889 Belgravia; 1987 chap ed Richard Dalby), are his best work and,
though frequently overlong, often reach heights of morose lyricism. It is
in his short stories, too, that AB most often became explicitly
sciencefictional in his treatment of the concepts of time and of PARALLEL
WORLDS. He was a friend of J.W. DUNNE, whose theories about the Serial
Universe he espoused in stories like "The Willows" (1907), "Wayfarers"
(1912), "The Pikestaffe Case" (1923), "The Man who was Milligan" (1923),
"Full Circle" (1925) and "The Man who Lived Backwards" (1930). His short
work is collected in The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (coll 1906),
The Listener and Other Stories (coll 1907), The Lost Valley and Other
Stories (coll 1910), Pan's Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories (coll 1910),
Incredible Adventures (coll 1914), Ten Minute Stories (coll 1914), Day and
Night Stories (coll 1917), The Wolves of God and Other Fey Stories (coll
1921), with Wilfred Wilson, and Tongues of Fire, and Other Sketches (coll
1924). With the exception of The Doll and One Other (coll 1946 US), later
collections rearranged earlier material (though AB in fact continued to
produce new work until the year before his death); the best of these are
Strange Stories (coll 1929), The Tales of Algernon Blackwood (coll 1938)
and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (coll 1949). In later years, AB
enjoyed a rebirth of fame on UK RADIO and tv. His occult detective John
Silence, some of whose adventures are collected in John Silence, Physician
Extraordinary (coll 1908), uses some PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC techniques. The
recurrent theme of REINCARNATION is developed most notably in Julius Le
Vallon: An Episode (1916) and its sequel The Bright Messenger (1921) and
in The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath (1916) and Karma: A Re-incarnation Play
(1918) with Violet Pearn. [JC/MA]Other works: The Education of Uncle Paul
(1909) and its sequel, A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913); Jimbo (1909); The
Human Chord (1910); The Extra Day (1915); The Garden of Survival (1918);
The Promise of Air (1919); Dudley and Gilderoy (1928); The Fruit Stoners
(1934); Tales of the Supernatural (coll 1983) and The Magic Mirror: Lost
Tales and Mysteries (coll 1989), both ed Mike ASHLEY.About the author:
Algernon Blackwood: A Bio-Bibliography (1987) by Mike Ashley.See also:
DIMENSIONS; HORROR IN SF.

BLADE, ALEXANDER
One of the longest-lasting ZIFF-DAVIS house names, originally the
personal pseudonym of David Vern (David V. REED), whose contributions
under the name have not been identified, though probably "The Strange
Adventure of Victor MacLeigh" (1941 AMZ) is by him. The name was later
used by Howard BROWNE, Millen Cooke, Chester S. GEIER, Randall GARRETT
with Robert SILVERBERG (who also wrote solo under the name), Roger P.
Graham (Rog PHILLIPS), Edmond HAMILTON, Heinrich Hauser, Berkeley
LIVINGSTON, Herb Livingston, William P. McGivern, David Wright O'BRIEN,
Louis H. Sampliner, Richard S. SHAVER, Don WILCOX and Leroy YERXA.
Approximately 50 stories were published as by AB, most in AMZ and
Fantastic Adventures and some in Imagination, Imaginative Tales and
Science Fiction Adventures. [JC]

BLADE RUNNER
Film (1982). Blade Runner Partnership-Ladd Co.-Sir Run Run Shaw/Warner.
Dir Ridley SCOTT, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl
Hannah, William Sanderson. Screenplay Hampton Fancher, David Peoples,
based on DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (1968) by Philip K. DICK.
117 mins (US). Colour.In a future Los Angeles, Rick Deckard (Ford), whose
job it is to destroy renegade "replicants" ( ANDROIDS), has to hunt down a
particularly dangerous group of advanced androids designed as slaves;
their anger against humanity is all the greater because they have been
given only a very limited lifespan.The screenplay and the film itself went
through a number of stages, with Peoples radically rewriting Fancher's
original script only to see much of his filling-out material lost. The
first US cut released (preview audiences only) was much longer than the
117min final US cut, and then for the UK/Europe distribution the film was
hardened again with some of the more brutal sequences restored. Some
important themes from Dick's book survive in a mystifying way: it is never
explained in the film that most healthy humans have emigrated off a
pollution-ridden Earth - though the prematurely ageing robotics expert,
Sebastian (Sanderson), is meant to be one of the sick ones that stayed
home; nor is the destruction of nearly all animal life explained - most
surviving animals being artificial - though references to it are made
throughout, notably in the android empathy test, where lack of sensitivity
to animal life is a key clue to the androids' supposed lack of real
feeling. Strangest of all, the possibility that Deckard himself may be a
"replicant" exists in the final cut only as a subtext, unmistakable once
pointed out, but missed by almost all audiences except, Ridley Scott has
said, the French. Scott's own revisionist version, Blade Runner: The
Director's Cut (1992, 114 mins), makes the subtext a little clearer and
deletes the voice-over narration, though it was somewhat less changed from
the original than many people expected.BR has many narrative flaws,
including a happy ending tacked on allegedly against the director's
wishes, but remains one of the most important sf movies made. The density
of information given right across the screen in the future setting
(production designer Lawrence Paull, visual consultant Syd Mead,
special-photographic-effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, with Scott
himself being primarily responsible for the look of the film) is
extraordinary, showing almost for the first time - though fans had spent
years hoping - how visually sophisticated sf in film form can be. BR's
film-noir mise-en-scene, with its ubiquitous advertisements (and rain),
its Los Angeles dominated by an oriental population, its punk female
android (Hannah), its high-tech traffic alongside bicycles, its steam and
smoke, its shabbiness and glitter cheek-by-jowl, is film's first (and
still best) precursor of the movement we now call CYBERPUNK. BR is even
better, particularly in the director's cut, and much more ambitious, than
Scott's previous sf film, ALIEN, and is especially interesting in its
treatment of the central theme: whether "humanity" is something innate or
whether it can be "programmed" in - or, indeed, out. [PN]See also: CINEMA;
HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; HUGO; MUSIC.

BLAINE, JOHN
Pseudonym of US writer Harold Leland Goodwin (1914-1990) who specialized
in sf-adventure novels for teenage readers. His books tended to emphasize
the nuts and bolts of science and technology, and were more carefully
written than most series books for teens. As Blake Savage he also wrote an
sf novel for teens, Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet (1952; vt Assignment
in Space with Rip Foster 1958; vt Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet
1969). Under his own name, Goodwin wrote some popular-science texts,
including The Real Book About Stars (1951), The Science Book of Space
Travel (1955) and Space: Frontier Unlimited (1962). He remains best known
for the long Rick Brant Science Adventure sequence, all as JB, a series of
tales - some incorporating EDISONADE elements - which feature a teenage
inventor on and off the planet: The Rocket's Shadow (1947) with Peter J.
Harkins writing together as JB; The Lost City (1947) with Harkins; Sea
Gold (1947) with Harkins; 100 Fathoms Under (1947); The Whispering Box
Mystery (1948); The Phantom Shark (1949); Smuggler's Reef (1950); The
Caves of Fear (1951); Stairway to Danger (1952); The Golden Skull (1954);
The Wailing Octopus (1956); The Electronic Mind Reader (1957); The Scarlet
Lake Mystery (1957); The Pirates of Shan (1958) (not to be confused with
Murray LEINSTER's The Pirates of Zan; 1959 dos); The Blue Ghost Mystery
(1960); The Egyptian Cat Mystery (1961); The Flaming Mountain (1963); The
Flying Stingaree (1963); The Ruby Ray Mystery (1964); The Veiled Raiders
(1965); The Rocket Jumper (1966); The Deadly Dutchman (1967); Danger
Below! (1968) with Philip Harkins (who may have been the same as Peter J.
Harkins, above) writing together as JB; The Magic Talisman (written 1969;
1990). [JC]

BLAIR, ANDREW
(? -1885) Scottish medical doctor and writer whose Annals of the
Twenty-Ninth Century, or The Autobiography of the Tenth President of the
World-Republic (1874) celebrates, at times ponderously, Earth-boring, the
complete ecospheric control of the planet, and interplanetary travels
during which the protagonist visits several worlds whose human inhabitants
demonstrate various levels of spiritual perfection. [BS/JC]See also:
ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS.

BLAIR, HAMISH
Pseudonym of Andrew James Frazer Blair (1872-1935), Scottish author,
journalist and editor, resident in India for many years. In 1957 (1930) he
described how air power overcomes the Second Indian Mutiny. In its sequel,
Governor Hardy (1931), he focused on the ensuing international intrigues
and WAR. A third futuristic novel, The Great Gesture (1931),
optimistically depicts the events leading to the founding in 1941 of a
United States of Europe. [JE]

BLAIR, JOHN (M.)
(1961- ) US writer and poet who began publishing sf with A Landscape of
Darkness (1990), an sf adventure in which a mercenary on a colony planet
must pit himself against an ALIEN who wears the guise of a Japanese
warrior. Though a plot of this sort offers many opportunities for action
routines, JB generally avoids the temptation. His second novel, Bright
Angel (1992), similarly concentrates upon the complex psychology of a
central figure invested with human responses and a planet-shaking burden;
in this case the protagonist must attempt to uncover a possible
correlation between his unwilled, sudden awakening in a DYSTOPIAN Earth
after surviving the onset of a fierce Ice Age on a colony planet and the
beginning of similar conditions in the Antarctic. At times, JB has
demonstrated a virtuoso control over complicated plot-lines and their
implications. [JC]

BLAKE, JUSTIN
John BOWEN.

BLAKE, KEN
Kenneth BULMER; Robert P. HOLDSTOCK.

BLAKE, ROBERT
[s] L.P. DAVIES.

BLAKENEY, JAY D.
Pseudonym of US writer Deborah A. Chester (1957- ), whose Anthi sequence
- The Children of Anthi(1985) and Requiem for Anthi (1990) - aroused some
interest. It is a far-reaching and moderately complex vision of humanity's
future EVOLUTION, guided by the eponymous AI, into a form that is
half-flesh and half-electronics. Set on a heavily populated galactic
stage, the sequence demonstrates JDB's sensitivity to the potential
differentness from 1990 of so multifarious a venue. Two singletons, The
Omcri Matrix (1987) and The Goda War (1989), are less remarkable. JDB
seemed to be a writer to watch with some interest, but the Operation
StarHawks sf adventures, all written as by Sean Dalton, were not
engrossing: Operation StarHawks #1: Space Hawks (1990), #2: Code Name
Peregrine (1990), #3: Beyond the Void (1991), #4: The Rostma Lure (1991),
#5: Destination: Mutiny (1991) and #6: The Salukan Gambit (1992). The
Time-Trap sequence - comprisingTime-Trap (1992), Showdown (1992), Pieces
of Eight (1992) and Restoration (1994) - begins with a man from the future
trapped in 14th-century Greece, and continues in other periods. [JC]

BLAKE'S SEVEN
UK tv series (1978-81). BBC TV. Created by Terry NATION. Prods David
Maloney (seasons 1-3), Vere Lorrimer (season 4). Script editor Chris
Boucher. Writers included Nation (all episodes in the first season),
Boucher, James FOLLETT, Robert Holmes, Tanith LEE. Starring Gareth Thomas
(Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally),
Jacqueline Pearce (Servalan), Stephen Grief (Travis, season 1), Brian
Croucher (Travis, season 2), Steven Pacey (Tarrant). 52 50min episodes.
Colour.The series - whose title is given on-screen as Blakes Seven (sans
apostrophe) - began rather crudely with some hoary sf CLICHES (political
rebels against the totalitarian Federation are sent to a prison planet)
but picked up considerably in later episodes of the first season, where
Blake and his allies take part in spirited SPACE-OPERA adventures in a
miraculous spaceship (later to be operated by an ill tempered computer
called Orac) which they find conveniently abandoned in space.
Althoughfree-spirited-rebels-vs-oppressive-empire is a theme straight from
STAR WARS - coincidentally, since the UK premiere of both was on the same
day - the feeling is very different. Blake's crew are quarrelsome,
depressive, pessimistic and - especially Avon - cynical. Blake himself
disappeared at the end of the second season, to reappear, apparently now
on the wrong side, only at the very end. After the first season BS
degenerated into sub-DR WHO tackiness, with much popping off of ray-guns
in extraterrestrial quarries and poaching of secondhand plots (The Picture
of Dorian Gray, etc.). The fourth season wound up on a depressing note as
the bulk of the somewhat-changed cast were killed off by the villains.
Despite this falling off, the series was addictive, and notable for the
sense of doomed helplessness with which the rebels managed to inflict mere
pin-pricks on the seemingly indestructible Federation-no doubt a
reflection of the times, and seemingly not too off-putting for the
audience, for BS developed a large and passionate fan following, which it
still retains. [PN/KN]

BLANCHARD, H(ENRY) PERCY
(1862-1939) US writer whose sf novel, After the Cataclysm: A Romance of
the Age to Come (1909), features a SLEEPER AWAKENING into 1934 to find the
world become an electricity-run UTOPIA, founded after the near passage of
a small planet in 1914 destroyed socialism and ended a world war caused by
Zionists. [JC]

BLASTER
In sf TERMINOLOGY, the hand-gun that blasts had an early place of honour
along with the DEATH RAY, ray-gun and DISINTEGRATOR. Blasters were
standard-issue WEAPONS in early SPACE OPERA, like six-guns in Westerns.
[PN]

BLAYLOCK, JAMES P.
(1950- ) US writer, based in California, whose first published sf was
"The Red Planet" (1977) in UNEARTH #3. JPB's first books were two
fantasies in his Elfin series, The Elfin Ship (1982) and The Disappearing
Dwarf (1983). The series, which includes the later and more assured The
Stone Giant (1989), is remarkable for its geniality and quirkiness, and
the general likeability of most of the characters, even the unreliable
ones. Though dwarfs and elves are featured, it is difficult to imagine a
fantasy series less like J.R.R. TOLKIEN's in tone.A similar tone continued
in JPB's next two books, which more closely resemble sf: The Digging
Leviathan (1984) and HOMUNCULUS (1986), the latter being the winner of the
PHILIP K. DICK AWARD for best paperback original (coincidentally
appropriate, since JPB was a friend of Philip K. DICK during Dick's last
years). It was by now clear that JPB's talent was strong, but sufficiently
weird and literary as to be unlikely to attract a mass-market readership.
Among his obvious and acknowledged influences are Laurence Sterne's
Tristram Shandy (9 vols 1759-67), Robert Louis STEVENSON and Charles
DICKENS. His books feature grotesques and eccentrics viewed with whimsical
affection. These people often have crotchets and obsessions, and live in
mutable worlds subject to curiosities and wonders whose explications -
while sometimes earnestly scientific - are seen as hopelessly inadequate
in the face of their absolute strangeness. The events of JPB's books fall
into odd patterns rather than linear plots, though the later works have a
stronger narrative drive. The Digging Leviathan is set in a modern Los
Angeles, beneath which is a giant underground sea, and some of whose
inhabitants hope to penetrate the centre of the HOLLOW EARTH. HOMUNCULUS,
a kind of prequel to the previous work, is set in a Dickensian
19th-century London, and likewise features the spirit of scientific or
alchemical inquiry, along with space vehicles, zombies and the possibility
of IMMORTALITY through essence of carp; Lord Kelvin's Machine(1985 IASFM;
exp 1992), a sequel, carries on in the same vein. These spirited
concoctions are reminiscent of the work of JPB's good friend Tim POWERS,
though even more lunatic; they both write at times (as do others) a sort
of sf set in the 19th century, featuring knowing pastiche - or at least
reconstruction - of all sorts of early pulp-sf stereotypes. This has been
a sufficiently marked phenomenon that the neologism STEAMPUNK has been
coined for it. (JPB's books, in fact, could be regarded as belonging to
the same metaseries as Powers's; they feature certain characters in
common, including the 19th-century poet William Ashbless, who apparently
originated as a pseudonym used by JPB and Powers for poetry they published
while at college.) Like many of his POSTMODERNIST generation of writers,
including Powers and another of his friends, K.W. JETER, JPB has no
interest at all in generic purity, mixing tropes from FANTASY, HORROR, sf,
magic realism, adventure fiction and MAINSTREAM literature with great
aplomb, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. One could call
his stories FABULATIONS.JPB's next novel, Land of Dreams (1987), again
mingles fantasy and sf tropes (mostly fantasy) with something of a dying
fall, as does the more cheerful The Last Coin (1988), which features an
ex-travelling salesman who turns out to be the Wandering Jew, and is
anxious that the 30 pieces of silver used to betray Christ should be kept
from the hands of a Mr Pennyman, who will use them for apocalyptic
purposes. Land of Dreams is set in the same fantastic northern-Californian
coastal setting as JPB's excellent short story Paper Dragons (1985 in anth
Imaginary Lands ed Robin McKinley; 1992 chap), which won a World Fantasy
AWARD. The Paper Grail (1991) is a quest novel, also set in northern
California, mingling Arthurian Legend, Hokusai paintings, pre-Raphaelites
and goodness knows what else. A children's book, The Magic Spectacles
(1991 UK), containing a magic window, an ALTERNATE WORLD and goblins, is
less successfully childlike than some of his work for adults. It may be
that JPB's unquenchable relish for sheer oddity will inhibit his artistic
growth, but meanwhile he is among the most enjoyable genre writers to have
emerged from the 1980s. [PN]Other works: The Shadow on the Doorstep (1986
IASFM; 1987 chap dos with short stories by Edward BRYANT); Night Relics
(1994); Doughnuts (1994 chap).See also: DEL REY BOOKS; GOTHIC SF; GREAT
AND SMALL.

BLAYNE, HUGO
John Russell FEARN.

BLAYRE, CHRISTOPHER
Pseudonym of UK biologist and author Edward Heron-Allen (1861-1943) who,
under his own name, wrote The Princess Daphne (1885), a novel of psychic
vampirism, and A Fatal Fiddle (coll 1890), which includes a story centred
on telepathy ( ESP). After a long period away from fiction he returned as
CB with a series of short weird and sf stories set in the NEAR FUTURE in
the University of Cosmopoli. They appeared in The Purple Sapphire (coll
1921; vt with other stories added The Strange Papers of Dr Blayre 1932),
The Cheetah-Girl (1923) (a story deleted from the previous volume), and
Some Women of the University (coll 1932), the latter two titles being
privately published. All are of high quality, but they have had little
influence.Similarities in style, content and sense of humour have led to
speculation that CB was responsible for the weird fantasies appearing
under the pseudonyms DRYASDUST and M.Y. HALIDOM. Hard evidence is,
however, lacking. [JE]

BLEILER, EVERETT F(RANKLIN)
(1920- ) US editor and bibliographer who for many years remained best
known as the compiler of The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A
Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the
English Language (1948; rev vt The Checklist of Science-Fiction and
Supernatural Fiction 1978), which SHASTA PUBLISHERS was formed to produce,
and which soon became recognized as the cornerstone of modern sf
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The fact that other works - like R. REGINALD's Science
Fiction and Fantasy Literature (1979 edn) - have hugely expanded on its
coverage (5000 books listed from the period 1800-1948) does not diminish
the significance of EFB's original work. In two further books he has
himself expanded upon that work: The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983),
solo, and Science Fiction: The Early Years (dated 1990 but 1991), with the
assistance of his son, Richard BLEILER, bibliographies of the categories
designated, are both annotated with an extraordinary thoroughness; they
are essential reference sources for any student of the field; any
otherwise unsourced quotations from EFB to be found in this encyclopedia -
to which he has also contributed several entries - come from these two
volumes. Two large edited studies - Science Fiction Writers: Critical
Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the
Present Day (anth 1982) and Supernatural Fiction Writers: Fantasy and
Horror (anth in 2 vols 1985) - cover much the same area, again thoroughly.
In collaboration with T.E. DIKTY, EFB produced in the late 1940s the first
series of best-of-the-year ANTHOLOGIES: The Best Science Fiction Stories,
1949 (anth 1949) and The Best Science Fiction Stories, 1950 (anth 1950;
cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories 1951 UK), both being assembled as
Science Fiction Omnibus (omni 1952); The Best Science Fiction Stories,
1951 (anth 1951; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Second Series
1952 UK; further cut vt The Mindworm 1967 UK); The Best Science-Fiction
Stories, 1952 (anth 1952; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Third
Series 1953 UK); The Best Science-Fiction Stories, 1953 (anth 1953; cut vt
The Best Science Fiction Stories, Fourth Series 1955 UK) and The Best
Science Fiction Stories, 1954 (anth 1954; cut vt The Best Science Fiction
Stories, Fifth Series 1956 UK) (the varying hyphenation of the titles is
sic). Frontiers in Space (anth 1955) presented a selection from the
second, third and fourth volumes. A second series presented a selection of
longer stories: Year's Best Science Fiction Novels, 1952 (anth 1952; cut
vt Year's Best Science Fiction Novels 1953 UK); Year's Best Science
Fiction Novels, 1953 (anth 1953; cut vt Category Phoenix 1955 UK) and
Year's Best Science Fiction Novels, 1954 (anth 1954; cut vt Year's Best
Science Fiction Novels, Second Series 1955 UK).EFB joined Dover
Publications in 1955, rising to Executive Vice-President in 1967, and
retiring in 1977. Beginning with Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose
Bierce (coll 1964), he edited for the firm a series of well produced,
cogently introduced and sometimes revelatory editions and anthologies of a
wide range of fantasy writers, some of whom had been forgotten. The
anthologies per se included Three Gothic Novels (omni 1960), Five
Victorian Ghost Novels (omni 1971), Three Supernatural Novels of the
Victorian Period (omni 1975) and A Treasury of Victorian Ghost Stories
(omni 1981). Of more original importance than any of these, perhaps, was
EFB's edition of The Frank Reade Library (omni 1979-86) in 10 vols, which
reprinted the complete sequence ( FRANK READE LIBRARY; Luis SENARENS). He
has also translated works from Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian,
Latin, Polish and Swedish; his Prophecies and Enigmas of Nostradamus
(trans 1979 US) as by Liberte E. LeVert (an anagram of Everett Bleiler)
was of some genre interest. EFB won the PILGRIM AWARD in 1984. [JC]Other
works: Imagination Unlimited (anth 1952) ed with T.E. Dikty; editions of
the work of Algernon BLACKWOOD, P. Busson, Robert W. CHAMBERS, Arthur
Conan DOYLE, Lord DUNSANY, M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, H.P. LOVECRAFT,
G. MEYRINK, G.M.W. Reynolds, Mrs J.H. Riddell and H.G. WELLS.See also:
ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DISCOVERY
AND INVENTION; HISTORY OF SF; LOST WORLDS; NEW ZEALAND; PREDICTION;
SLEEPER AWAKES.

BLEILER, RICHARD (JAMES)
(1959- ) US bibliographer whose The Index to Adventure Magazine (2 vols
1990) and The Annotated Index to The Thrill Book (1991) are invaluable
explorations into rich sources of pulp literature hitherto left generally
unexamined. Of more direct sf interest is his collaboration with his
father, Everett F. BLEILER (whom see for details), on the definitive
Science Fiction: The Early Years (dated 1990 but 1991). RB has contributed
several entries to this encyclopedia. [JC]

BLIJSTRA, REIN
[r] BENELUX.

BLIPVERTS
MAX HEADROOM.

BLISH, JAMES (BENJAMIN)
(1921-1975) US writer. JB's early career in sf followed the usual
pattern. He was a fan during the 1930s. His first short story, "Emergency
Refueling" (1940), was published in SUPER SCIENCE STORIES. He belonged to
the well known New York fan group the FUTURIANS, where he became friendly
with such writers as Damon KNIGHT and C.M. KORNBLUTH. He studied
microbiology at Rutgers, graduating in 1942, and was then drafted, serving
as a medical laboratory technician in the US Army. In 1945-6 he carried
out postgraduate work in zoology at Columbia University, abandoning this
to become a writer. He was married to Virginia KIDD 1947-63 and then, from
1964 until his death, to Judith Ann LAWRENCE. Three of his early short
stories, two of them collaborations, were written under the pseudonyms
Donald LAVERTY, John MACDOUGAL and Arthur Merlyn.JB worked hard to develop
his craft, but not until 1950, when the first of his Okie stories appeared
in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, did it became clear that he could become an
sf writer of unusual depth. The Okie stories featured flying CITIES,
powered by ANTIGRAVITY devices called SPINDIZZIES, moving through the
Galaxy looking for work, much as the Okies did in the 1930s when they
escaped from the dustbowl. The first Okie book, a coherent if episodic
novel, was Earthman, Come Home (1950-53 var mags; fixup 1955; cut 1958 ).
Three more followed: They Shall Have Stars (1952-4 ASF; fixup 1956UK; rev
vt Year 2018! 1957 US), The Triumph of Time (1958; vt A Clash of Cymbals
UK) and A Life for the Stars (1962). These four books were finally brought
together in a single volume, CITIES IN FLIGHT (omni 1970), where they
appeared in the order of their internal chronology: They Shall Have Stars,
A Life for the Stars, Earthman, Come Home and The Triumph of Time.
Underpinning the pulp-style plotting of much of this series is a serious
and pessimistic interest in the cyclic nature of HISTORY, partly derived
from JB's reading of Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), especially The Decline
of the West (1918-22). The cycle is carried, at the end of The Triumph of
Time, from the death of our Universe to the birth of the next, in a
memorable passage where Mayor Amalfi becomes, literally, the deep
structure of the new Universe.The years 1950-58 were extraordinarily
productive for JB, and many of his best short stories were published in
this period, including "Beanstalk" (1952), "Surface Tension" (1952),
"Common Time" (1953), which is probably his most praised story, "Beep"
(1954) and "A Work of Art" (1956). Several appear in his first collection,
Galactic Cluster (coll 1959; with 3 stories cut and "Beanstalk" added, rev
1960 UK). JB's own choice was published as Best Science Fiction Stories of
James Blish (coll 1965UK; with 1 story cut and 2 added, rev 1973 UK; rev
vt The Testament of AndrosUK). 6 of the 8 stories in this collection,
along with an introduction by Robert A.W. LOWNDES, appear with 6 new
stories in the posthumous THE BEST OF JAMES BLISH (coll 1979 US).These
years also saw the publication of his first novel in book form, Jack of
Eagles (TWS 1949 as "Let the Finder Beware"; rev 1952; cut 1953; full text
vt ESP-er 1958). It was followed by The Warriors of Day (1951 Two Complete
Science Adventure Books as "Sword of Xota"; 1953), THE SEEDLING STARS
(1952-6 var mags; coll of linked stories 1957), The Frozen Year (1957; vt
Fallen Star UK), A CASE OF CONSCIENCE (part 1 in If, 1953; 1958) and VOR
(part 1949 TWS with Damon Knight; exp 1958). Jack of Eagles contains one
of the few attempts in sf to give a scientific rationale for telepathy. A
CASE OF CONSCIENCE, which won the 1959 HUGO for Best Novel, was one of the
first serious attempts to deal with RELIGION in sf, and remains one of the
most sophisticated in its tale of a priest faced with a planet whose
inhabitants seem free of the concept of Original Sin. In THE SEEDLING
STARS and other stories of the period, JB introduced biological themes (
BIOLOGY). This area of science had previously been rather neglected in sf
in favour of the "harder" sciences - physics, astronomy, technology, etc.
THE SEEDLING STARS is an important roadmarker in the early development of
sf about GENETIC ENGINEERING.JB was interested in METAPHYSICS, and some
critics regard as his most important work the trilogy After Such
Knowledge: A CASE OF CONSCIENCE, Doctor Mirabilis (1964UK; rev 1971 US),
and Black Easter; or, Faust Aleph-Null (1968) and The Day after Judgment
(1971); he regarded the last two books as one novel, and indeed they were
so published in Black Easter and The Day After Judgement (omni 1980US; vt
The Devil's Day 1990 US) - hence his use of the term "trilogy". After Such
Knowledge poses a question once expressed by JB: "Is the desire for
secular knowledge, let alone the acquisition and use of it, a misuse of
the mind, and perhaps even actively evil?" This is one of the fundamental
themes of sf, and is painstakingly explored in Doctor Mirabilis, an
historical novel which treats the life of the 13th-century scientist and
theologian Roger Bacon (c1214-1292). It deals with the archetypal sf theme
of CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH from one intellectual model of the Universe to
another, more sophisticated model. Black Easter, a better and more unified
work than its sequel The Day After Judgment, is a strong fantasy in which
black MAGIC - treated here as a science or, as JB has it, a "scholium" -
releases Satan into the world again; Satan rules Heaven in the sequel. The
four books were collected in After Such Knowledge (omni 1991 UK).As a
writer, JB was thrifty - to the point of parsimony in his later years. He
returned to many of his best stories to revise and expand them, sometimes
into novel form. Apart from those already mentioned, he also used this
treatment on an early short story, "Sunken Universe" (1942 as by Arthur
Merlyn), and built it into another story, "Surface Tension" (1952 Gal),
which revised again became part of THE SEEDLING STARS; "Surface Tension"
was his most popular and most anthologized story. Other examples are
Titan's Daughter (1952, in Future Tense, ed Kendell Foster CROSSEN, as
"Beanstalk"; vt "Giants in the Earth" in The Original Science Fiction
Stories 1956; exp 1961) and The Quincunx of Time (1954 Gal as "Beep"; exp
1973).JB wrote two not very successful sf novels in collaboration: The
Duplicated Man (1953 Dynamic SF; 1959) with Robert A.W. LOWNDES and A
Torrent of Faces (fixup 1967) with Norman L. KNIGHT. The latter is a tale
of Earth suffering from, but to a degree coping with, OVERPOPULATION.JB's
later years were much preoccupied with the STAR TREK books. These are Star
Trek * (coll 1967), Star Trek 2 * (coll 1968), #3 * (coll 1969), #4 *
(coll 1971), #5 * (coll 1972), #6 * (coll 1972), #7 * (coll 1972), #8*
(coll 1972), #9 * (coll 1973), #10 * (coll 1974) and #11 * (coll 1975).
They are based on the original tv scripts, and hence are in fact
collaborations, but Spock Must Die * (1970) is an original work, the first
original adult Star Trek novel (it was preceded by Mack REYNOLDS's Mission
to Horatius * [1968], a juvenile). The posthumous Star Trek 12 (coll 1977)
contained two adaptations (out of five) completed by Judith Ann Lawrence,
who also completed some of the work in #11. Omnibus editions include: The
Star Trek Reader * (omni 1976), containing #2, #3 and #8; The Star Trek
Reader II * (omni 1977), containing #1, #4 and #9; The Star Trek Reader
III * (omni 1977), containing #5, #6 and #7; The Star Trek Reader IV *
(omni 1978), containing #10, #12 and Spock Must Die. Re-sorted in order of
tv appearance, they were reassembled as Star Trek: The Classic Episodes #1
* (coll 1991) with J.A. Lawrence, 27 first-season episodes, Star Trek: The
Classic Episodes #2 * (coll 1991), 25 second-season episodes, and Star
Trek: The Classic Episodes #3 * (coll 1991) with J.A. Lawrence, 24
third-season episodes.Aside from Spock Must Die and A Life for the Stars
(1962), the fourth of the Okie books, JB wrote four more juvenile novels,
none very successful. These are a short and rather didactic series - The
Star Dwellers (1961) and Mission to the Heart Stars (1965) - along with
Welcome to Mars! (1967) and, the weakest of them, The Vanished Jet (1968).
JB's output remained fairly steady during the 1960s and 1970s, but the
overall standard of his work had dropped, although his penultimate serious
work was interesting. This was Midsummer Century (1972US; with 2 stories
added, as coll 1974 US), in which the disembodied consciousness of a
scientist is cast forward into a FAR FUTURE where it meets different forms
of AI and intervenes in an evolutionary struggle. It is hard to read this
story of active mental life cut off from the physical world without
thinking of the frail JB's last years. He had a successful operation for
throat cancer in the 1960s but died from lung cancer in 1975,
characteristically turning out an essay on Spengler and sf on his deathbed
- its DEFINITION OF SF is "the internal (intracultural) form taken by
syncretism in the West". JB was also one of the earliest and most
influential of sf critics, under the pseudonym William Atheling Jr. Much
of his criticism was collected in two books, The Issue at Hand (coll 1964)
and More Issues at Hand (coll 1970). It is notably stern in many cases,
often pedantic, but intelligent and written from a much wider perspective
than was usual for fan criticism of his era. Further essays, including
that on Spengler noted above, appear in the posthumous, curate's egg
collection The Tale that Wags the God (coll 1987; published as by JB), ed
Cy Chauvin. As anthologist, JB edited New Dreams this Morning (anth 1966),
Nebula Award Stories 5 (anth 1970) and Thirteen O'Clock (coll 1972), a
collection of short stories by C.M. Kornbluth. He also edited the only
issue of the sf magazine VANGUARD SCIENCE FICTION (June 1958).JB did much
to encourage younger writers, and was one of the founders of the MILFORD
SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE (he and J.A. Lawrence also founded the
UK Milford workshop), and an active charter member of the SCIENCE FICTION
WRITERS OF AMERICA. He also became, in 1970, one of the founder members of
the SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION in the UK. The latter organization named
the James Blish AWARD for excellence in sf criticism in honour of him
after his death. The first award went in 1977 to Brian W. ALDISS, but it
then lapsed for lack of funds.His dominant intellectual passions, which
often recur in his writing, were, aside from Spengler, the works of Ezra
Pound, James Joyce (he published papers on both of them) and James Branch
CABELL (he edited the Cabell Society magazine Kalki), the music of Richard
Strauss, and relativistic physics. JB was an interesting example of a
writer with an enquiring mind and a strong literary bent - with some of
the crotchets of the autodidact - who turned his attention to
fundamentally pulp GENRE-SF materials and in so doing transformed them.
His part in the transformation of pulp sf to something bigger is
historically of the first importance. Nonetheless, he was not a naturally
easy or harmonious writer; his style was often awkward, and in its
sometimes anomalous displays of erudition it could appear cold. On the
other hand, there was a visionary, romantic side to JB which, though
carefully controlled, is often visible below the surface.JB had a
scholastic temperament, and in 1969 emigrated to England to be close to
Oxford, where he is buried. His manuscripts and papers are in the Bodleian
Library. These include several unpublished works of both mainstream
fiction and sf. [PN]Other works: So Close to Home (coll 1961); The Night
Shapes (1962); Anywhen (coll 1970; with 1 story added, rev 1971 UK); . . .
And All the Stars a Stage (1960 AMZ; exp 1971); Get Out of My Sky, and
There Shall Be No Darkness (coll 1980 UK); The Seedling Stars/Galactic
Cluster (omni 1983).About the author: By far the most complete critical
and biographical account is Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work
of James Blish (1988) by David KETTERER; also essential is A Clash of
Cymbals: The Triumph of James Blish (chap 1979) by Brian M. STABLEFORD;
relevant are "After Such Knowledge: James Blish's Tetralogy" by Bob
Rickard in A Multitude of Visions (anth 1975) ed Cy Chauvin, and the
special Blish issue of FSF (April 1972).See also: ADAM AND EVE; ALIENS;
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARTS; ASTEROIDS; CHILDREN'S SF; COLONIZATION
OF OTHER WORLDS; COMMUNICATIONS; COMPUTERS; COSMOLOGY; CRITICAL AND
HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; END OF THE WORLD;
EVOLUTION; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FASTER THAN LIGHT; GALACTIC EMPIRES;
GENERATION STARSHIPS; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; GOTHIC SF; GRAVITY; GREAT AND
SMALL; HISTORY OF SF; IMAGINARY SCIENCE; IMMORTALITY; JUPITER; LONGEVITY
(IN WRITERS AND PUBLICATIONS); The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE
FICTION; MARS; MATHEMATICS; MESSIAHS; MONSTERS; MUSIC; ORIGIN OF MAN;
PANTROPY; PARANOIA; PERCEPTION; PHYSICS; POLITICS; POLLUTION;
REINCARNATION; SHARED WORLDS; SOCIOLOGY; SPACE FLIGHT; SPACE OPERA;
SUPERMAN; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES; TERRAFORMING; THRILLING WONDER STORIES;
TRANSPORTATION; UNDER THE SEA; UTOPIAS; WEAPONS.

BLISS, REGINALD
H.G. WELLS.

BLOB, THE
1. Film (1958). Tonylyn/Paramount. Dir Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr, starring
Steve McQueen, Aneta Corseaut, Earl Rowe. Screenplay Theodore Simonson,
Kate Phillips. 85 mins. Colour.An ALIEN Blob which grows by absorbing
flesh reaches Earth in a hollow meteorite and begins to consume the
inhabitants of a small US town. Constantly enlarging, it is finally
defeated by a young man who discovers that extreme cold renders it
harmless. The special effects are by Barton Sloane. Simple, moderately
well made, TB is now affectionately remembered as one of the definitive
MONSTER MOVIES of the period. A 1971 sequel, Beware the Blob (vt Son of
Blob US), was dir Larry Hagman, better known as J.R. of the tv soap opera
Dallas. A black-comedy spoof, it is only mildly amusing.2. Film (1988).
Palisades California/TriStar. Dir Chuck Russell, starring Shawnee Smith,
Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Del Close. Screenplay Russell, Frank
Darabont. 95 mins. Colour.This remake, which nowhere credits its 1958
predecessor, follows the original story quite closely. Proficient and
exciting, with good and expensive state-of-the-art horror special effects
(imploding faces, a man sucked down a plughole) and a spunky heroine
(Smith), it is nonetheless rigidly formulaic. All the main changes (the
Blob is now the result of a US Government experiment in biological
warfare) are derived from other films, notably The CRAZIES (1973).
Distance may have lent too much charm to the original; this has none at
all. The novelization is The Blob * (1988) by David BISCHOFF. [PN]See
also: CINEMA.

BLOCH, ROBERT (ALBERT)
(1917-1994) US writer of FANTASY, HORROR, thrillers and a relatively
small amount of sf. Born in Chicago, RB was extremely active from 1935 in
his several areas of specialization, but is best known for Psycho (1959),
from which Alfred Hitchcock made the famous film (1960), and to which RB
wrote two sequels, Psycho II (1982) - not related to the 1983 film sequel
of the same name - and Psycho House (1990).RB began as a devotee of the
work of H.P. LOVECRAFT, who treated him with kindness. His first published
story was "Lilies" (1934) in the semi-professional MARVEL TALES; his first
important sale, "The Secret in the Tomb" (1935), appeared in Weird Tales,
the magazine which, along with Fantastic Adventures, published most of the
over 100 stories he wrote in the first decade of his career. Towards the
end of this period he contributed the 22 Lefty Feep fantasy stories to
Fantastic Adventures (1942-6); most were later assembled as Lost in Time
and Space with Lefty Feep (coll 1987). He published a booklet in the
AMERICAN FICTION series, Sea-Kissed (coll 1945 chap UK), the title story
of which was originally "The Black Kiss" (1937) by RB and Henry KUTTNER;
but his first book-length volume, collecting much of his best early
fantasy and horror and published by ARKHAM HOUSE, was The Opener of the
Way (coll 1945; in 2 vols as The Opener of the Way 1976 UK and House of
the Hatchet 1976 UK); confusingly, a US compilation volume was published
with a very similar UK vt, Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (coll 1962; vt The
House of the Hatchet, and Other Tales of Horror 1965 UK), extracting a
different mix of stories from The Opener of the Way plus some from the
later Pleasant Dreams - Nightmares (coll 1960; cut vt Nightmares 1961;
with fewer cuts and some additions vt Pleasant Dreams 1979); Yours Truly,
Jack the Ripper was accompanied by More Nightmares (coll 1962), selected
from the same sources. These titles have fortunately been superseded as
overviews of his career by The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch (coll 1988
in 3 vols: Final Reckonings - which single volume is misleadingly vt The
Complete Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 1: Final Reckonings 1990 - Bitter
Ends and Last Rites). During this period and afterwards, RB remained an
active sf and fantasy fan; a collection of fanzine articles, The Eighth
Stage of Fandom (coll 1962), ed Earl KEMP, was assembled for the 1962
World Science Fiction CONVENTION. It is quite likely that his use of the
term INNER SPACE, in his 1948 World Science Fiction Convention speech, was
the first formulation of the concept later articulated by J.B. PRIESTLEY
and J.G. BALLARD; the speech was printed in the Torcon Report, issued by
the convention committee. In the first decade of his career RB also turned
to radio work: Stay Tuned for Terror (1945), a 39-episode syndicated
programme of adapted RB stories, became popular. RB sometimes used the
pseudonym Tarleton Fiske during this period, and also contributed work to
sf and horror magazines under various house names, including E.K. JARVIS
and later Will Folke, Wilson KANE and John Sheldon. His best-known story
from this time was Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper (1943 Weird Tales; 1991
chap); much later he amplified his treatment of the fog-shrouded
phenomenon of 1888 in The Night of the Ripper (1984). After the 1940s he
continued to produce a wide variety of material, though less prolifically
than before. Much of his later work, after the success of Psycho, was in
Hollywood. His numerous collections published from 1960 combine old and
new work, so that much of his pre-WWII work has become available.His
output of sf proper has been comparatively slender; the stories assembled
in Atoms and Evil (coll 1962) are representative. A witty, polished
craftsman, he laced his horror with a wry humour which only occasionally
slips into whimsy. For half a century he was active as an sf fan and
patron, and his writing shows complete professional control over sf themes
when the need arises; Once Around the Bloch: an Unauthorized Autobiography
1993) reveals a humorous, self-deprecating person fully - but modestly -
aware of his wide competence. He was awarded a 1959 HUGO for Best Short
Story for "That Hell-Bound Train" (1958), though strictly speaking it is
fantasy, not sf; and was given a Special Award in 1984. [JC]Other works:
Terror in the Night and Other Stories (coll 1958); Blood Runs Cold (coll
1961; with 4 stories cut 1963 UK); Horror-7 (coll 1963); Bogey Men (coll
1963); Tales in a Jugular Vein (coll 1965); The Skull of the Marquis de
Sade (coll 1965), the title story of which was filmed as The Skull (1965)
and later published separately as The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (1945
Weird Tales; 1992 chap); Chamber of Horrors (coll 1966); The Living Demons
(coll 1967); This Crowded Earth (1958 AMZ; 1968 dos) and Ladies' Day (1968
dos), bound together; Dragons and Nightmares (coll 1968), humorous
fantasies; Bloch and Bradbury (anth 1969; vt Fever Dream and Other
Fantasies 1970 UK); Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow (coll 1971); It's All in
Your Mind (1955 Imaginative Tales as "The Big Binge"; 1971); Sneak Preview
(1959 AMZ; 1971); The King of Terrors (coll 1977); Cold Chills (coll
1977); The Best of Robert Bloch (coll 1977); Strange Eons (1978); Out of
the Mouths of Graves (coll 1978); Such Stuff as Screams are Made Of (coll
1979); Mysteries of the Worm: All the Cthulhu Mythos Stories of Robert
Bloch (coll 1981); The Twilight Zone: The Movie * (coll of linked stories
1983), screenplay adaptations; Out of my Head (coll 1986); Midnight
Pleasures (coll 1987); Fear and Trembling (coll 1989); Lori (1989),
horror; The Jekyll Legacy * (1990) with Andre NORTON, a sequel to the
Robert Louis STEVENSON novella; Psycho-Paths (anth 1991) and Monsters in
our Midst (anth 1993), both with (anon) Martin Harry GREENBERG; The Early
Fears (coll 1994), mostly early work reprinted elsewhere.Associational:
Two omnibuses conveniently assemble RB's most interesting non-genre
novels: Unholy Trinity: Three Novels of Suspense (omni 1986), which
contains The Scarf (1947; vt The Scarf of Passion 1949; rev 1966), The
Deadbeat (1960) and The Couch * (1962), from the 1962 film; and Screams:
Three Novels of Terror (omni 1989), which contains The Will to Kill
(1954), Firebug (1961) and The Star Stalker (1968). Further associational
titles of interest include The Kidnapper (1954), Spiderweb (1954),
Shooting Star (1958 dos), Terror (1962), The Todd Dossier (1969) as by
Collier Young, Night-World (1972), American Gothic (1974), There is a
Serpent in Eden (1979; vt The Cunning 1981).About the author: "Robert
Bloch" in Seekers of Tomorrow (1966) by Sam MOSKOWITZ; The Complete Robert
Bloch: An Illustrated, Comprehensive Bibliography (1987) by Randall D.
Larson.See also: FANTASY; MACHINES; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE
FICTION; RELIGION; ROBOTS; SF IN THE CLASSROOM; SEX; SOCIOLOGY.

BLOCK, THOMAS H(ARRIS)
(1945- ) US writer whose novels are often borderline TECHNOTHRILLERS,
especially Mayday (1980) and the NEAR-FUTURE ORBIT (1982), in which a
3900mph (6275kph) airliner is gimmicked by saboteurs into flying into
orbit. Airship Nine (1984) is a full-fledged post- HOLOCAUST tale, with
soldiers in Antarctica fending off nuclear winter and preparing to
repopulate the planet. [JC]

BLOOD BEAST FROM OUTER SPACE
The NIGHT CALLER.

BLOODSTONE, JOHN
J. Stuart BYRNE.

BLOOM, HAROLD
(1930- ) US academic and writer, best known for his Freudian analysis of
the relationship between strong male authors and predecessor authors over
the last several centuries of Western literature; The Anxiety of Influence
(1973) and its several increasingly talmudic sequels have become central
critical texts. His only novel, The Flight to Lucifer (1979), was
described as a Gnostic fantasy, accurately. Of the many anthologies of
critical pieces ed HB, several are of sf interest: Mary Shelley (anth
1985), Edgar Allan Poe (anth 1985), Ursula K. Le Guin (anth 1986) and
Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (anth 1987), Doris Lessing
(anth 1986), George Orwell (anth 1987) and George Orwell's 1984 (anth
1987), and Classic Horror Writers (anth 1993).

BLOT, THOMAS
Pseudonym of US writer William Simpson (? -? ). In his sf novel The Man
from Mars: His Morals, Politics and Religion (1891) the eponymous
telepathic traveller tells of his UTOPIAN world. Unfortunately - if his
desire was to communicate widely - the human he contacts is a hermit. [JC]

BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE, THE
US PULP MAGAZINE published by the Story-Press Corporation; ed Donald
Kennicott, Maxwell Hamilton and others. It first appeared May 1905 as The
Monthly Story Magazine, became The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine Sep
1906, The Blue Book Magazine May 1907, and Bluebook Feb 1952. Later issues
had no sf content.This general-fiction pulp, a major competitor of the
Frank A. MUNSEY group, had a long history of publishing sf and fantasy,
with works by George Allan ENGLAND, William Hope HODGSON and others
appearing in its opening years. Its heyday came in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, when it published serializations of many novels by Edgar Rice
BURROUGHS as well as others by Edwin BALMER and Philip WYLIE, James
Francis DWYER and Edgar JEPSON, with additional short stories from Ray
CUMMINGS. Later Nelson BOND came into prominence with his Squaredeal Sam
(1943-51) and Pat Pending (1942-8) series. [JE]

BLUEJAY BOOKS
US publishing house founded by James R. FRENKEL, who had previously been
the editor of Dell's sf line. BB began publishing in 1983, their books
being distributed by St Martin's Press. Among their titles were Gardner
DOZOIS's best-of-the-year anthologies ( ANTHOLOGIES), books by Frenkel's
wife Joan D. VINGE, Dan SIMMONS's first novel The Song of Kali (1985),
Patti Perret's book of photographic studies The Faces of Science Fiction
(1984) and Greg BEAR's EON (1985). Other authors included Jack DANN, K.W.
JETER, Nancy KRESS, Rudy RUCKER, Theodore STURGEON, Vernor VINGE, Connie
WILLIS and Timothy ZAHN. It was a strong list, concentrating on hardcovers
and trade paperbacks, with over 50 new sf, fantasy and horror titles as
well as a number of reprints published during the company's short life;
but this attempt of a small specialist publisher to enter the
mass-marketing field, traditionally difficult especially as regards
distribution, was apparently undercapitalized. BB ceased trading in 1986.
[PN]

BLUE RIBBON MAGAZINES
FUTURE FICTION; SCIENCE FICTION.

BLUE SUNSHINE
Film (1977). Ellanby/Blue Sunshine Co. Written and dir Jeff Lieberman,
starring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, Mark Goddard, Robert Walden. 95
mins. Colour.Lieberman's first film was a witty (if disgusting) MONSTER
MOVIE, Squirm * (1976) - the last word on killer worms; its novelization
was Squirm (1976) by Richard A. CURTIS. BS, Lieberman's second feature, is
also unusually sharp and amusing for a low-budget exploitation movie.
Middle-class ex-hippies inexplicably lose their hair and turn homicidal.
The culprit turns out to be Blue Sunshine, an LSD variant - the bad acid
they dropped a decade earlier has taken its toll on their chromosomes. As
Kim NEWMAN puts it in Nightmare Movies (1984; rev 1988), "the flower
children have become the Living Dead". The dialogue is good, the metaphor
potent. BS is as pointed a film of sf social commentary as any that
appeared in its decade, though its theme of human metamorphosis through
corrupt TECHNOLOGY perhaps owes something to David CRONENBERG. [PN]

BLUE THUNDER
Film (1983). Rastar/Gordon Carroll Productions. Dir John BADHAM, starring
Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern, Malcolm McDowell.
Screenplay Dan O'Bannon, Don Jakoby. 110 mins. Colour.Borderline sf set in
a very NEAR-FUTURE Los Angeles, BT tells the story of Murphy (Scheider), a
helicopter-based police officer, asked to try out a new supercopter: it
can see through walls, fire missiles, fly at 200 knots and hear
conversations from far away. Murphy gradually unravels a government
conspiracy to create rioting among Blacks and Chicanos as a justification
for the introduction of new, draconian police methods of surveillance and
riot control. The post-Watergate, post-Vietnam PARANOIA of the plot is
rather unconvincing, in part because of McDowell's overacting as a
right-wing extremist, and there is much moral confusion between the overt
theme - the dangers of using new TECHNOLOGY as an instrument of oppression
- and the subtext, which says that this same technology is exciting and
beautiful. BT is well made, suspenseful and meretricious, and owes
altogether too much to FIREFOX. Columbia TV produced a disappointing tv
series of the same title, Blue Thunder, starring James Farentino, which
ran briefly for 11 episodes in 1984; in it the same supercopter becomes
merely a useful aid for stereotypical police work. [PN]See also: CINEMA.

BLUM, RALPH
(1932- ) US writer involved in early drug research, which is reflected in
his sf novel, The Simultaneous Man (1970). A convict's mind is erased and
the memories and identity of a research scientist are substituted, rather
as in Robert SILVERBERG's The Second Trip (1972). The relationship between
the scientist and his "twin" is complex, and ends tragically for him in
the USSR, where he himself becomes a subject for experimentation. Of
borderline interest is Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks (1972). The Book
of Runes (1982) is nonfiction. [JC]

BLUMENFELD, F. YORICK
(1932- ) UK writer whose Jenny Ewing: My Diary (1981 chap; vt Jenny: My
Diary 1982 chap US) offers an exceedingly grim vision of the UK after a
nuclear HOLOCAUST, as seen by the reluctant survivor whose journal,
written in a shelter, makes up the text. The book was first published as
by Jenny herself. [JC]

BLUMLEIN, MICHAEL
(1948- ) US medical doctor and writer whose output in the latter
capacity, though still restricted to two published books, has had
considerable impact on the field. His first published story was "Tissue
Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report" for Interzone in 1984.
This tale remains one of the most astonishingly savage political assaults
ever published. The target is Ronald Reagan, whose living body is
eviscerated without anaesthetic by a team of doctors, partly to punish him
for the evils he has allowed to flourish in the world and partly to make
amends for those evils through the biologically engineered growth and
transformation of the ablated tissues into foodstuffs and other goods
ultimately derived from the flesh, which are then sent to the impoverished
of the Earth. "Tissue Ablation" and other remarkable tales including "The
Brains of Rats" (1986) and "The Wet Suit" (1989) were assembled as The
Brains of Rats (coll 1989), a publication that demonstrates the very
considerable thematic and stylistic range of modern sf, and shows how very
far from reassuring it can be.MB's only published novel, The Movement of
Mountains (1987), is told in a more immediately accessible style than some
of his short FABULATIONS, though at moments the narrative form of the text
- related by a doctor in the form of a confessional memoir - and some of
the ornate chill of the narrator's mind are reminiscent of the darker
tales of Gene WOLFE. The tale begins in a familiar, congested NEAR-FUTURE
California, moves to a colony planet mined by "mountainous", biologically
engineered, short-lived slaves - whom the doctor helps liberate while at
the same time analysing the plague which has killed his lover - and
finally returns to Earth, where the doctor, having discovered that the
plague has the effect of transforming humans into gestalt configurations,
disseminates it in secret in order to bring down a repressive government.
X,Y (1993) is horror.At his best, MB writes tales in which, with an air of
remote sang-froid, he makes unrelenting assaults on public issues (and
figures). He writes as though his aesthetic demands justice; as though, in
other words, beauty demands truth. [JC]See also: INTERZONE; MEDICINE.

BLYTH, JAMES
(1864-1933) UK writer, a fairly prolific author of popular fiction who is
best remembered in the field for The Tyranny (1907), a NEAR-FUTURE tale of
a UK dominated by a tyrant and at war with Germany. Ichabod (1910), which
is defaced by an antisemitism that seemed "robust" even for the UK of
1910, grants victory to the UK against an unholy alliance of Jews and
Germans through a MATTER TRANSMITTER and a machine which reads malign
thoughts. The Shadow of the Unseen (1907) with Barry PAIN, a tale of the
supernatural, was infused with JB's love of the motor car. [JC]Other
works: With a View to Matrimony and Other Stories (coll 1904); The Aerial
Burglars (1906), in which thieves use a flying motor car for nefarious
purposes; The Irrevocable and Other Stories (coll 1907); The Smallholder
(1908), a supernatural fiction;The Swoop of the Vulture (1909); A Haunted
Inheritance (1910); My Haunted Home (1914); The Weird Sisters (1919).

BOARDMAN, TOM
Working name of UK publisher and editor Thomas Volney Boardman (1930),
who went to work for the family publishing company, T.V. Boardman, in
1949, and stayed on as managing director when the company changed
ownership in 1954. The company published primarily mysteries, with some
sf. TB was sf adviser, successively, to GOLLANCZ, Four Square Books,
Macdonald and New English Library. He was business manager of SF Horizons.
He edited the anthologies Connoisseur's Science Fiction (anth 1964), The
Unfriendly Future (anth 1965), An ABC of Science Fiction (anth 1966),
Science Fiction Horizons 1 (anth 1968) and Science Fiction Stories (anth
1979), the latter for children. He then worked in educational publishing.
[MJE]

BODE, VAUGHN (FREDERICK)
(1941-1975) US COMICS artist and writer with a bold, loose line who
created a world of charming and whimsical - if somewhat cutesy - fantasy
characters; the most famous of these were Cheech Wizard - a strange figure
almost entirely engulfed in a star-spangled hat - a bevy of little busty
sexpots and a number of almost indistinguishable reptilian characters. VB
began by providing amateur material for FANZINES, and in 1969 won a HUGO
for Best Fan Artist. From 1970 until his premature death he worked
professionally for Cavalier and National Lampoon, and published his own
comic book, Junkwaffel (1972-4), creating a number of oddball joke strips
and short stories, plus a few longer ones. He won a Yellow Kid Award in
1975. His sf creations - apart from 14 covers for sf magazines (1967
onward), such as If and Gal-included the strips Zooks (1983), Sunpot
(1984; see also GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION) and Cobalt 60, the latter being
continued after VB's death, rather poorly, by his son Mark Bode in Epic.
[RT]See also: COMICS; HEAVY METAL; METAL HURLANT.

BODELSEN, ANDERS
(1937- ) Danish writer and journalist, author of several novels of
suspense. Villa Sunset ["Villa Sunset"] (1964) is a NEAR-FUTURE tale of
Fimbul-Winter and glacial transformation. Frysepunktet (1969; trans Joan
Tate as Freezing Point 1971 UK; vt Freezing Down 1971 US) is also sf. Its
protagonist is incurably sick, and is frozen until he can be cured (
CRYONICS). The world to which he awakens, complexly and satirically
described in AB's intense manner, offers him ambivalent (and restricted)
choices between an idle life (with death inevitable) and a life of
drudgery (with access to spare parts). It is a dark story, told urgently,
using a wide range of literary techniques. [JC]See also: DENMARK;
IMMORTALITY.

BODIN, FELIX
[r] P.K. ALKON; FRANCE; FUTUROLOGY.

BODY SNATCHERS
Film (1993). Warner Bros. Dir Abel Ferrara; screenplay Stuart Gordon,
Dennis Paoli, Nicholas St. John, based on a story by Raymond Cistheri and
Larry COHEN, based loosely in turn on the 1958 screenplay; starring Meg
Tilly, Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kinney, Billy Wirth, Forest Whitaker. 90
mins. Colour.This low budget remake (the second remake, the first being
1978) of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1958) in most areas went straight
to video, which was unfortunate. The producer, Robert H. Solo, was
interestingly also the producer of the 1978 Kaufman version, from which
this differs considerably. Marti Malone (Anwar) is the teenage daughter of
an inspector from the Environmental Protection Agency who has been
seconded to a deep-south military base where toxic waste is suspected to
exist. It turns out that the base has been infiltrated by alien pod-people
who replace real humans by inserting tendrils into their orifices while
they are asleep. Marti is already estranged from her stepmother (Tilly)
and it is no surprise when the stepmother is the first to be zombified,
though terrifying for her little brother who knows it is not his mother;
this same child is in a military day-care centre where all the other
children, sinisterly, produce exactly the same finger paintings. Events
proceed with a chilling logic; there is little upbeat in the film, as
Marti's family is stripped away from her. Ferrara is a director whose
career has been built around tacky, low budget, remorseless thrillers of
considerable power, but this film is more accessible and less offensive
than most of them. The metaphoric examination here of both the military
and the nuclear family corrupting is biting and thoughtful. The siren-like
alarm calls of the pod-people-like a military klaxon-provide a memorable
touch. [PN]

BOEHM, HERB
[s] John VARLEY.

BOETZEL, ERIC
[r] Herbert CLOCK.

BOGATI, PETER
[r] HUNGARY.

BOGDANOV, ALEXANDER
Pseudonym of Russian writer and political thinker Alexander
(Alexandrovich) Malinovsky (1873-1928); he survived criticism from
Vladimir Lenin only to die in a blood-transfusion experiment. He is
remembered for a UTOPIAN sequence - Krasnaia Zvezda ["The Red Star"]
(1908) and Inzhener Menni ["Engineer Menni"] (1913), both assembled with a
1924 poem as The Red Star: The First Bolsehvik Utopia (omni trans Charles
Rougle 1984 US) - depicting the flight of its protagonist, a Russian
revolutionary, to Mars where a technocratic utopia, based on principles of
"rational management" is built. The first volume was reprinted just after
the Socialist Revolution in 1917, and perhaps for that reason was thought
of as the first authentic example of "Soviet" sf; however, it was not
again reprinted until 1977, when it was purged of episodes describing
"free love" in the utopia. The second volume includes interesting
speculations that adumbrated the relationship of CYBERNETICS to modern
management and also anticipated the need for a COMPUTER on SPACESHIPS,
describing the ship itself as being driven by atomic energy. [VG]See also:
RUSSIA.

BOGORAS, WALDEMAR
Vladimir Germanovitch BOGORAZ.

BOGORAZ, VLADIMIR GERMANOVITCH
(1865-1936) Soviet anthropologist whose novel Zhertvy drakona (1927;
trans Stephen Graham as Sons of the Mammoth 1929 US as by Waldemar
Bogoras) reflects his professional concerns in a prehistoric tale in which
Neanderthals encounter rising human stock and a "mysterious" beast that
turns out to be natural. [JC]See also: ORIGIN OF MAN.

BOISGILBERT, EDMUND
Ignatius DONNELLY.

BOK, HANNES
(1914-1964) US illustrator, author and astrologer, born Wayne Woodard. Sf
ILLUSTRATION has had very few mavericks: HB was possibly the most famous.
He did not let editors and publishers dictate the way he designed his
work, and thereby lost hundreds of commissions. He was a master of the
macabre, a stylist par excellence. He painted many covers and did hundreds
of black-and-white illustrations for such magazines as COSMIC STORIES,
FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, FUTURE FICTION,
IMAGINATION, PLANET STORIES, STIRRING SCIENCE STORIES, SUPER SCIENCE
STORIES and, especially, 7 covers for WEIRD TALES. He also did
book-jackets for ARKHAM HOUSE, FANTASY PRESS, GNOME PRESS and SHASTA
PUBLISHERS, among others. His style was unique, though the colours and
techniques he used were heavily influenced by Maxfield Parrish
(1870-1966); his black-and-white illustrations are highly stylized, his
human figures angular and almost Byzantine. HB was much stronger
illustrating fantasy and horror than sf.HB was also a writer. Two of his
colourful, moralizing fantasy novels were published in book form after his
death: The Sorcerer's Ship (1942 Unknown; 1969) and Beyond the Golden
Stair (1948 Startling Stories as "The Blue Flamingo"; rev 1970); his other
novel was "Starstone World" (1942 Science Fiction Quarterly). He also
wrote several short stories. An admirer of A. MERRITT, he completed and
illustrated two of the latter's novels after Merritt's death in 1943 - The
Black Wheel (1947) and The Fox Woman and The Blue Pagoda (1946) - being
credited in both books. "The Blue Pagoda" was an episode written by Bok to
complete The Fox Woman, on which Merritt had worked sporadically for 20
years before his death.HB did little illustration after about 1952,
turning to astrology, about which he wrote 13 articles for Mystic Magazine
(retitled Search in 1956). With Ed EMSHWILLER he shared the first HUGO in
1953 for Best Cover Artist. After his death, his friend Emil PETAJA became
chairman of the Bokanalia Foundation, founded 1967. This group has
published folios of HB's artwork, some of his poetry, and And Flights of
Angels: The Life and Legend of Hannes Bok (1968) by Petaja. [JG/PN]See
also: FANTASY; FUTURIANS.

BOLAND, (BERTRAM) JOHN
(1913-1976) UK author and journalist, a prolific story producer, although
rarely of sf. His sf novels, White August (1955) and No Refuge (1956), are
both set in frigid conditions. The first is a DISASTER tale, dealing with
the dire effects of a botched attempt at weather control. No Refuge
depicts an Arctic UTOPIA into which two criminals accidentally irrupt;
after a good deal of discussion they are dealt with properly. Holocaust
(1974) has a solar-cell satellite running amuck, spraying heat-rays, and
being lusted after by the great powers as a weapon. A further novel,
Operation Red Carpet (1959), has some borderline sf components. [JC]

BOLDIZSAR, IVAN
[r] HUNGARY.

BOLLAND, BRIAN (JOHN)
(1951- ) UK COMIC-book artist highly regarded for his smooth line and
meticulous, sculptural drawing style. His first strip work appeared in the
underground magazine Oz in 1971. In 1975-7 he drew Powerman, a Black
SUPERHERO, for the Nigerian market, his episodes alternating with those by
Dave GIBBONS, and then he began producing covers for 2,000 AD. His most
lasting contribution to date has been his development of JUDGE DREDD: BB's
first Judge Dredd strip appeared in 2,000 AD #41 (26 Nov 1977), and in all
he drew 40, the last appearing in #244 (26 Dec 1981); he also provided a
run of 40 covers for Eagle Comics's 2,000 AD and Judge Dredd reprints
1983-6.He began to produce cover artwork for DC COMICS with Green Lantern
#127 (Apr 1980). For DC he also drew a number of short sf strips as well
as a 12-issue series, Camelot 3,000, Dec 1982-Apr 1985. He produced Batman
- The Killing Joke (graph 1988), a very successful 48pp quality comic book
written by Alan MOORE. Since then he has concentrated on artwork for
covers, including 48 (to early 1992) for Animal Man and those for the
Titan Books editions of the WILD CARDS graphic novels in 1991.He has also
written and drawn 48 12-panel strips featuring Mr Mamoulian, a mournful
middle-aged man with a hangdog expression who seems to be permanently
seated on a park bench. These have been published in the UK in Escape as
well as in Spain (Cimoc), Sweden (Pox) and the USA (Cheval Noir). Of his
other strip, The Actress and the Bishop, written in rhyme, only two
sections have appeared (in A1). [RT]See also: ILLUSTRATION.

BOLTON, CHARLES E.
(1841-1901) US writer whose posthumously published sf novel, The
Harris-Ingram Experiment (1905), conflates capitalist accomplishments,
romantic love, a genius inventor and UTOPIAN experiments. [JC]

BOLTON, JOHANNA M.
(? - ) US writer whose first novel, The Alien Within (1988), carries its
revenge-seeking female protagonist through a crumbling Galactic
Federation, introducing her to a variety of ALIEN empires. JMB's second
novel, Mission: Tori (1990), also featuring a bereaved female protagonist,
addresses but does not solve the mysteries surrounding the mineral-rich
and much desired planet of Tori. [JC]

BOMB PREDICTION
The year was 1944 and a science fiction story called "Deadline" appeared
in Astounding magazine. Cleve Cartmill, the writer, described the
invention of an atomic bomb a year before the first nuclear explosion at
Alamagordo. FBI agents, suspecting security leaks in the top-secret
Manhattan Project, soon converged on the magazine's office. But Editor
John W. Campbell successfully convinced the agents that Cartmill's sources
were those available at the local public library. SF fans like to point to
this episode as an example of the fine art of SF prediction.

BONANATE, UGO
[r] ITALY.

BONANNO, MARGARET WANDER
(1950- ) US writer whose first books were volumes of poetry. After a
mainstream novel,A Certain Slant of Light (1979), she made her mark on sf
with a highly successful Star Trek tie, Dwellers in the Crucible * (1985).
Two others followed - Strangers from the Sky * (1987) and Probe * (1992),
which latter she claimed had been extensively rewritten, and disavowed -
but MWB's main achievement lay in The Others, a PLANETARY-ROMANCE sequence
comprising The Others (1990) ,Otherwhere (1991) and Otherwise (1993), in
which the eponymous aliens, stranded on an Earthlike world, must attempt,
through telepathy and intermittent bouts of interracial breeding, to
survive the onslaughts of jealous, inferior humanlike natives. MWB has
written two novels under the house name Rick North in the Young Astronauts
sequence: #4: Destination Mars * (1991) and #6: Citizens of Mars * (1991).
[JC]

BOND, J. HARVEY
Russ R. WINTERBOTHAM.

BOND, NELSON S(LADE)
(1908- ) US writer and in later years philatelist, publishing works in
that field. He began his career in public relations, coming to sf in 1937
with "Down the Dimensions" for ASF. Later in that year he published "Mr
Mergenthwirker's Lobblies" in Scribner's Magazine, a fantasy which became
a radio series, was made into a tv play (1957), and in its original form
was collected in Mr Mergenthwirker's Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales
(coll 1946). It served as a model for the "nutty" fiction that NSB wrote
for Fantastic Adventures in the early 1940s, comic tales involving
implausible inventions and various pixillated doings, sometimes with an
effect of excessive coyness. He wrote only two stories under pseudonyms,
one as George Danzell (1940) and one as Hubert Mavity (1939).NSB's active
career in the magazines extended into the 1950s; his markets were not
restricted to the sf PULP MAGAZINES, and he became strongly associated
with The BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE for stories and series usually combining sf
and fantasy elements, often featuring trick endings reminiscent of O.
Henry. Further collections, assembling most of his best work, are The 31st
of February (coll 1949), No Time Like the Future (coll 1954) and
Nightmares and Daydreams (coll 1968). Since the early 1950s he has been
relatively inactive as a writer.His most famous single series, the
Lancelot Biggs stories concerning an eccentric space traveller, appeared
1939-43 in various magazines; it was published, with most stories revised,
as The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman (coll of linked
stories 1950). A similar series, about Pat Pending and his peculiar
inventions, appeared 1942-57, all but the last in Bluebook; it remains
uncollected. The Squaredeal Sam McGhee stories, also in Bluebook
(1943-51), are tall tales, not sf. A series of three stories about Meg the
Priestess, a young girl who comes to lead a post- HOLOCAUST tribe,
appeared in various magazines, 1939-42; they remain uncollected, as do the
four Hank Horse-Sense stories, which appeared in AMZ 1940-42.NSB's only
novel in book form, Exiles of Time (1940 Blue Book Magazine; 1949) is a
darkly told story about the end of things in Mu ( DISASTER), told in a
sometimes allegorical fashion. Perhaps because of the number of his
markets, NSB established a less secure reputation in the sf/fantasy world
than less versatile writers; not dissimilar in his wit and fantasticality
to Robert BLOCH or Fredric BROWN, he is considerably less well known than
either, though his work is attractive and often memorable. [JC]Other
works: The Monster (coll 1953 chap Australia); State of Mind: A Comedy in
Three Acts (1958 chap), a comic fantasy play; Animal Farm: A Fable in Two
Acts (1964 chap), a play based on the 1945 novel by George ORWELL; and the
supplemental material to James N. Hall's James Branch Cabell: A Complete
Bibliography, with a Supplement of Current Values of Cabell Books
(1974).See also: ADAM AND EVE; AMAZING STORIES; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION;
LIVING WORLDS.

BONE, J(ESSE) F(RANKLIN)
(1916-1986) US writer and professor of veterinary medicine who began
publishing sf with "Survival Type" for Gal in 1957. His first sf novel,
The Lani People (1962), is his most memorable, later works being routine.
It deals with an ALIEN people whose suffering from human exploitation is
graphically related. His short fiction-about 30 stories in all - remains
uncollected. [JC]Other works: Legacy (1976); The Meddlers (1976); Gift of
the Manti (1977) with Ray Myers (an almost certainly unintended pseudonym
for Roy MEYERS); Confederation Matador (1978).See also: ARTS.

BONESTELL, CHESLEY
(1888-1986) US astronomical illustrator. CB studied as an architect in
San Francisco, his birthplace, but never graduated; he was employed by
many architectural firms and aided in the design of the Golden Gate
Bridge. He worked as a matte artist to produce special effects and
background paintings for 14 films, including Citizen Kane (1941),
DESTINATION MOON (1950), WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951), WAR OF THE WORLDS
(1953) and The CONQUEST OF SPACE (1955). In the early 1940s he began
astronomical painting on a major scale, much of his work being used in
Life magazine, and during 1949-72 completed astronomical artwork for 10
books, including the classic science-fact book The Conquest of Space
(1949), with text by Willy LEY. In 1950-51 CB painted for the Boston
Museum of Science a 10 x 40ft (about 3 x 12m) mural; it was transferred to
the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in 1976.
His space paintings were used as cover illustrations for ASF (12 covers)
and FSF (38 covers) from 1947 onwards; he became a favourite of sf fans in
this period. His style was a photographic realism, showing great attention
to correctness of perspective and scale in conformity with the scientific
knowledge of the day, and some of his Moon paintings, for example, were
truly prophetic in their accuracy. But, more than that, his work held
great beauty and drama in its stillness and depth. Many book lovers of the
post-WWII generation can trace back their fascination for space
exploration as much to CB's paintings as to their reading of either
science or sf. The recipient of many awards, he earned a Special
Achievement HUGO in 1974. [JG/PN]See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION.

BONFIGLIOLI, KYRIL
[r] SCIENCE FANTASY.

BONHAM, FRANK
(1914-1988) US writer, most of whose adult novels were Westerns, and who
wrote in various modes for younger readers. The Missing Persons League
(1976), set in a starving DYSTOPIAN USA, presents its young protagonist
with the chance to find a better world. The Forever Formula (1979) is a
strong sf tale in which a young man awakens from SUSPENDED ANIMATION to
find himself torn between opposing factions: those who wish for his
father's IMMORTALITY formula, to which he has the secret, and those who
wish for normal mortality. Premonitions (1984) is a fantasy. [JC]

BOOTH, IRWIN
[s] Edward D. HOCH.

BOOTHBY, GUY (NEWELL)
(1867-1905) Australian-born writer, permanently in the UK from 1894, who
remains best known for his Dr Nikola sequence: A Bid for Fortune (1895;
rev vt Dr Nikola's Vendetta 1908 US; vt Enter Dr. Nikola! 1975 US), Doctor
Nikola (1896), The Lust of Hate(1898),Dr Nikola's Experiment (1899) and
"Farewell, Nikola" (1901). The heart of the series is devoted to the
Doctor's convoluted search for a Tibetan process that will resuscitate the
dead and ensure IMMORTALITY in the living, and there are some hints that -
unhampered by compunctions, armed with PSI POWERS, and blessed with a
powerful experimental intellect - he may have reached his goal. Of GB's 50
or so novels, several further titles were of fantasy interest. [JC]Other
works: Pharos, the Egyptian (1899); The Curse of the Snake (1902); Uncle
Joe's Legacy, and Other Stories (coll 1902); The Lady of the Island (coll
1904); A Crime of the Under-Seas (1905), a fantastic-invention tale.

BORDEN, MARY
(1886-1968) US-born writer and journalist, in the UK for the last
half-century of her life. After funding and running a field hospital in
WWI, she began to write novels and nonfiction, some of the latter being of
FEMINIST interest. Her sf novel, Jehovah's Day (1928), is a fable about
the emergence of humanity, carrying its narrative from the earliest times
to a NEAR-FUTURE catastrophe which destroys London. Throughout, the
mysterious figure of Eryops the Mud Puppy makes emblematic appearances.
[JC]

BORDEWIJK, F.
[r] BENELUX.

BORGES, JORGE LUIS
(1899-1986) Argentine short-story writer, poet, essayist and university
professor, known primarily for his work outside the sf field. Though much
of his fiction is local and drawn from Argentine history and events,
Borges is best known in the English-speaking world for his short
fantasies. Ficciones (coll 1944; rev 1961; trans Anthony Kerrigan 1962 US)
and El Aleph (coll 1949; rev 1952) contain his most important short
stories, including most of those considered closest to sf. Most of the
contents of these books, with some additional material, can be found in
English in Labyrinths (coll trans 1962; rev 1964). Another translated
collection - the author collaborating on the translation - is The Aleph
and Other Stories 1933-1969 (coll trans with Norman Thomas di Giovanni
1970 US), which is not a translation of El Aleph, containing a quite
different selection of stories.JLB has argued that "the compilation of
vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance" and claims to
have read few novels himself - and then only out of a "sense of duty". His
stories are accordingly brief, but contain a bewildering number of ideas.
Many are technically interesting, exploiting such forms as fictional
reviews and biographies to summarize complex and equally fictional books
and characters, or using the precise styles of the fable or the detective
story to encapsulate involved ideas.Among his most famous fantasies are:
"The Library of Babel" (1941), which describes a vast library or Universe
of books containing all possible combinations of the alphabet, and thus
all possible gibberish alongside all possible wisdom; "The Garden of
Forking Paths" (1941), which examines the potentials of ALTERNATE WORLDS;
"The Babylon Lottery", which details the history of a game of chance that
gradually becomes so complex and universal that it is indistinguishable
from real life; "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1941), which chronicles the
emergence in and takeover of everyday life by an entirely fictional and
fabricated world; "The Circular Ruins", which portrays a character
dreaming and giving life to a man, only to realize that he in turn is
another man's dream; and "Funes, the Memorious" (1942), which describes a
man with such perfect memory that the past is as accessible to him as the
present. (All the above appear in Ficciones.) The profound influence of
these - and other stories - on Gene WOLFE is reflected in The Book of the
New Sun (1980-83), where they are all made use of.JLB's interest in
METAPHYSICS is apparent in these stories, and his examination, through
FANTASY, of the nature of reality associates his fiction with that of many
modern US authors, such as Philip K. DICK, Thomas PYNCHON and Kurt
VONNEGUT Jr. He is an important influence on the more sophisticated recent
sf writers, especially those dealing with ABSURDIST themes and paradoxes
of PERCEPTION. His interest in puzzles and labyrinths is another stimulus
that has led him to fantasy and the detective story as media for
expressing his ideas in fiction.JLB has published other collections of
stories and sketches, some on the borderline of fantasy, as well as a
fantastic bestiary, Manual de zoologia fantastica (1957 Mexico; exp vt El
libro do los seres imaginarios 1967; the latter trans Norman Thomas di
Giovanni and JLB as The Book of Imaginary Beings 1969 US). With Silvina
Ocampo (1903- ) and Adolfo BIOY CASARES he also edited a fantasy
collection, Antologia de la Literatura Fantastica (1940; rev 1965; further
rev 1976; trans as The Book of Fantasy 1976 US; rev 1988 with intro by
Ursula K. LE GUIN), and revealed a first-hand (if inaccurate) knowledge of
sf by including H.P. LOVECRAFT, Robert A. HEINLEIN, A.E. VAN VOGT and Ray
BRADBURY in his Introduction to American Literature (1967; trans Keating
and Evans 1971). Translation of JLB's work into English is complex, and
there is no definitive collection. A number of his early works have been
reprinted in sf anthologies. [PR]Other works: Historia universal de la
infamia (coll 1935; trans Norman Thomas di Giovanni as A Universal History
of Infamy 1972 US); Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi (coll 1942;
trans Norman Thomas di Giovanni as Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi 1981
US) with Adolfo Bioy Casares; Cronicos de Busto Domecq (coll 1967; trans
Norman Thomas di Giovanni as Chronicles of Bustos Domecq 1976 US) with
Bioy Casares; El hacedor (coll 1960; trans M. Boyer and H. Morland as
Dreamtigers 1964 US); Antologia personal (coll 1961; trans Anthony
Kerrigan as A Personal Anthology 1961 US); El informe sobre Brodie (coll
1970; trans Norman Thomas di Giovanni as Doctor Brodie's Report 1972), his
last collection of original work; El libro del arena (coll 1975; trans
Norman Thomas di Giovanni as The Book of Sand 1977 US; exp 1979 UK);
Borges: A Reader (coll 1981); Atlas (coll 1984; trans Anthony Kerrigan
1985 US).About the author: Jorge Luis Borges (1970) by M.S. Stabb; Jorge
Luis Borges: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1984) by
D.W. Foster; A Dictionary of Borges (1990) by Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche
Hughes.See also: LATIN AMERICA.

BORGO PRESS
US publishing house, a SMALL PRESS with a fairly extensive list, based in
California, founded in 1975 by R. REGINALD, as publisher and editor, and
his wife, Mary Wickizer Burgess (1938- ), who played an increasingly large
role from the mid-1980s as co-publisher and managing editor. BP began by
publishing 35 64-page chapbooks on sf authors in the late 1970s in the The
Milford Series: Popular Writers of Today, which began with Robert A.
Heinlein: Stranger in his Own Land (1976 chap; rev 1977) by George Edgar
SLUSSER, as well as 10 full-length novels by Piers ANTHONY, D.G. COMPTON,
and others through 1979. In 1980 BP turned from the trade to the academic
market, moving to full-size books, and introducing other monographic
series of sf interest, including the I.O.Evans Studies in the Philosophy
and Criticism of Literature (from 1982),Bibliographies of Modern
Authors(from 1984, biblios of individual writers), Essays on Fantastic
Literature (from 1986) and Classics of Fantastic Literature (from 1994,
comprising original and reprint sf works). In 1991 BP purchased Brownstone
Books, Sidewinder Press, and St. Willibrord's Press, which it continued to
operate as separate imprints; and in 1993 acquired 100 titles of sf
interest from STARMONT HOUSE and FAX COLLECTOR'S EDITIONS when those lines
ceased operation, plus 30 unpublished manuscripts. New imprints were begun
in the 1990s, including Burgess & Wickizer, Emeritus Enterprises, and
Unicorn & Son (revived from Reginald's 1970 one-shot imprint). BP also
distributes over 1000 books from other lines, mostly not sf. The firm has
published 205 books through 1994, 2/3rds of sf relevance; and after a
period of slow releases now issues about 30-40 titles annually, making it
the largest single publisher (currently and cumulatively) of sf critical
works and bibliographies [JC/PN]See also: SF IN THE CLASSROOM.

BORIS
Boris VALLEJO.

BORN IN FLAMES
Film (1983). Lizzie Borden/Jerome Foundation/CAPS/Young Filmmakers.
Written, prod, ed and dir Lizzie Borden, starring Honey, Adele Bertei,
Jeanne Satterfield, Flo Kennedy, Kathryn Bigelow. 80 mins. Colour.This
underground movie, made over five years on 16mm film and video, was
deservedly given quite wide distribution. 10 years after a peaceful
social-democratic revolution in the USA, the Party is in power, the
position of women in society is still not much improved, and unemployment
(especially of women) is widespread. Radical FEMINIST groups (whose
differing political positions are shown with a sort of cartoon clarity)
are at first at odds; as disenchantment with the Party builds up they are
drawn together and a new revolution begins. Stereotyped conceptions of
feminists as humourless refugees from the middle classes are shaken (on
several grounds) by this pleasing and lively film, whose near-future
DYSTOPIA was imaginatively shot (out of low-budget necessity, a little as
with ALPHAVILLE) in contemporary New York. [PN]

BORODIN, GEORGE
Pseudonym of USSR-born surgeon and writer, George Alexis Milkomanovich
Milkomane (1903- ), who lived in the UK for many years from 1932; one of
his pseudonyms, George Alexis Bankoff, was for some time thought to be his
real name, but he himself has asserted the contrary. Other pseudonyms
include George Braddon, Peter Conway, Alec Redwood and - best known -
George Sava, under which name he wrote The Healing Knife (1938), a
bestseller about his profession, and many novels, none of sf interest, for
ROBERT HALE LIMITED. As GB he wrote a political tract, Peace in Nobody's
Time (1944), The Book of Joanna: A Fantasy Based on Historical Legend
(1947), in which a heavenly conclave attempts to determine the truth about
the legend of the 9th-century Pope Joan, and Spurious Sun (1948; vt The
Threatened People undated), a ponderously told but cogently meditated tale
about the effects of a nuclear explosion in Scotland; against the odds,
world peace comes closer. [JC]

BOSTON, BRUCE
(1943- ) US poet ( POETRY) and short-story writer whose early work tended
to the surreal, but who began - with stories like "Break" for New Worlds 7
(anth 1974) ed Hilary BAILEY and Charles PLATT - to invoke fantasy and sf
themes. His early poetry - much of it not genre at all, and almost all of
it couched in a classically lucid voice - can most easily be approached
through The Bruce Boston Omnibus (omni 1987), which assembles various
early chapbooks; titles of interest include Jackbird: Tales of Illusion &
Identity (coll 1976 chap). Later poetry appears in The Nightmare Collector
(coll 1989 chap) ,Faces of the Beast (coll 1990 chap), Cybertexts (coll
1992 chap), the impressive Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest (coll
1992), this last volume with Robert FRAZIER, Accursed Wives (coll 1993
chap) and Specula: Selected Uncollected Poems (coll 1993 chap). Because
his prose fictions tend to the densely surreal and to FABULATION, it is
not easy to know when his work first began to merge with FANTASY and sf,
though "Break" (noted above) may come close to being his first of genre
interest. Collections and prose works include She Comes when You're
Leaving & Other Stories (coll 1982 chap), Skin Trades (coll 1988 chap),
Hypertales & Metafictions (coll 1990 chap),Short Circuits (coll 1990 chap
dos), Houses & Other Stories (coll 1991 chap) and Night Eyes (coll 1993
chap); independent tales include Der Flusternde Spiegel (1985 chap
Germany; trans and rev as After Magic 1990 chap) and All the Clocks are
Melting (1991 chap). [JC]

BOUCHER, ANTHONY
Generally used pseudonym of US editor and writer William Anthony Parker
White (1911-1968), who began to publish stories of genre interest with
"Snulbug" for UNKNOWN in 1941; he soon became a regular contributor to
this magazine and to ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. Most of his 1940s tales
were humorous in approach ( HUMOUR); many are included in The Compleat
Werewolf (coll 1969), although Far and Away (coll 1955) provides a better
sense of his range. A notable TIME-TRAVEL story is "Barrier" (1942). AB
also used the pseudonym H.H. Holmes, publishing under this name the non-sf
detection Rocket to the Morgue (1942), in which several sf authors, thinly
disguised, appear in RECURSIVE roles; he went on to write several more
detective novels. In 1949 he became founding editor, with J. Francis
MCCOMAS, of The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION , which from its
inception showed a more sophisticated literary outlook than any previous
sf magazine, an accomplishment celebrated in The Eureka Years: Boucher and
McComas's The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1949-54 (anth 1982)
ed Annette Peltz McComas (1911-1994). After McComas left, AB was sole
editor from 1954 until his retirement, through ill health, in 1958; he won
the HUGO for Best Professional Magazine for the years 1957 and 1958. AB
occasionally published verse in FSF under the pseudonym Herman W. Mudgett.
(Mudgett was the real name and Holmes the nom de guerre of the USA's first
convicted serial murderer, hanged in 1896 after torture-murdering at least
27, possibly 200, young women.) AB wrote little sf after 1952. "The Quest
for Saint Aquin" (1951), on a theme of RELIGION, is generally considered
his best sf work. He was also a distinguished book reviewer, writing sf
columns for both the New York Times (as AB) and the New York Herald
Tribune (as Holmes); and he was influential in gaining for sf a certain
measure of respectability. He edited an annual anthology of stories from
FSF, beginning with The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1952)
with J. Francis McComas; he also produced the notable 2-vol A Treasury of
Great Science Fiction (anth 1959). An able and perceptive editor, AB did
much to help raise the literary standards of sf in the 1950s. [MJE]Other
works: Exeunt Murderers: The Best Mystery Stories of Anthony Boucher (coll
1983), with bibliography; Anthony Boucher (omni 1984 UK), collecting 4 of
AB's detective novels, including Rocket to the Morgue, with intro by David
LANGFORD.As Editor: Remaining volumes of the Best from Fantasy and Science
Fiction sequence were The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Second
Series (anth 1953) and Third Series (anth 1954), both with J. Francis
McComas, Fourth Series (anth 1955), Fifth Series (anth 1956), Sixth Series
(anth 1957), Seventh Series (anth 1958) and Eighth Series (anth
1959).About the author: A Boucher Bibliography (1969 chap) by J.R.
Christopher, D.W. Dickensheet and R.E. Briney, bound with A Boucher
Portrait (anth 1969 chap) ed Lenore Glen Offord.See also: EC COMICS; GODS
AND DEMONS; LINGUISTICS; ROBOTS.

BOULLE, PIERRE
(1912-1994) French writer who trained as an electrical engineer and spent
eight years in Malaysia as a planter and soldier. His experience of the
Orient permeated much of his early work (generally not sf); Le pont sur la
riviere Kwai (1952; trans as The Bridge on the River Kwai 1954 US) remains
his best-known novel. PB uses moral fable to pinpoint human absurdities,
and his relatively large body of work in the sf genre is a good
illustration of this method. La planete des singes (1963; trans Xan
Fielding as Planet of the Apes 1963 US; vt Monkey Planet 1964 UK) is a
witty, philosophical tale a la VOLTAIRE , full of irony and compassion,
quite unlike the later film adaptation, PLANET OF THE APES (1968), which
used only the book's initial premise. [MJ]Other works: Contes de l'absurde
(coll 1953 France); E = mc2 (coll 1957 France) (stories from these
collections trans Xan Fielding as Time Out of Mind 1966 UK); Le jardin de
Kanashima (1964; trans Xan Fielding as The Garden on the Moon 1965 UK);
Histoires charitables ["Charitable Tales"] (coll 1965); Quia absurdum
(coll 1970).See also: COMPUTERS; DEVOLUTION; FRANCE; MOON; ROCKETS;
SCIENTISTS.

BOULT, S. KYE
William E. COCHRANE.

BOUNDS, SYDNEY J(AMES)
(1920- ) UK writer, active in various fields from the late 1940s,
publishing his first HORROR fantasy, "Strange Portrait", for Outlands in
1946. He built a considerable (and well respected) oeuvre of short fiction
in various genres, though he has never published a collection. Since the
beginning of the 1970s he has concentrated on horror. Under at least nine
pseudonyms (and house names like Peter SAXON, which he used for a Sexton
Blake tale), SJB has published over 30 novels, mostly Westerns. His sf
includes The Moon Raiders (1955), which features stolen U-235, human
agents shanghaied to the Moon, and alien invaders, and The World Wrecker
(1956), which stars a mad SCIENTIST who blows up cities by placing
phase-shifted rocks under them and returning these rocks to normal
spacetime, with calamitous effects. Of his numerous COMIC strips, "Jeff
Curtiss and the V3 Menace" (Combat Library #44 1960) is typical. [JC]Other
works: Dimension of Horror (1953); The Robot Brains (1956).

BOUSSENARD, LOUIS HENRI
(1847-1910) French writer. His popular scientific romances, which have
some speculative content, often appeared in Journal des Voyages. He is
best known for Les secrets de Monsieur Synthese ["The Secrets of Mr
Synthesis"] (1888-9), and Dix mille ans dans un bloc de glace (1889; trans
John Paret as 10,000 Years in a Block of Ice 1898 US), a SLEEPER-AWAKES
tale in which the hero discovers a unified world- UTOPIA peopled by small
men - Cerebrals - who are descended from Chinese and black Africans and
can fly by the power of thought. [JC]Other works: Les francais au pole
nord ["The French at the North Pole"] (1893); L'ile en feu ["Island
Ablaze"] (1898).See also: CRYONICS; FRANCE.

BOUVE, EDWARD T(RACY)
(? -? ) US writer. His sf novel, Centuries Apart (1894), deals with the
discovery of lost-race-like UK and French colonies in the verdant heart of
Antarctica. [JC]

BOVA, BEN(JAMIN WILLIAM)
(1932- ) US writer and editor. He worked as technical editor for Project
Vanguard 1956-8 and science writer for Avco Everett Research Laboratory
1960-71 before being appointed editor of Analog ( ASTOUNDING
SCIENCE-FICTION) following the death of John W. CAMPBELL Jr in 1971. When
he took over at ASF it was a moribund magazine; although commercially
healthy, it had stagnated in the later years of Campbell's editorship. BB
maintained its orientation towards technophilic sf but considerably
broadened the magazine's horizons. In doing so he alienated some readers,
who shared Campbell's puritanism - such stories as "The Gold at the
Starbow's End" (1972) by Frederik POHL and "Hero" (1972) by Joe W.
HALDEMAN, inoffensive though they might seem in the outside world, brought
strong protests - but he revitalized the magazine. In recognition of this,
he received the HUGO for Best Editor every year 1973-7; although he missed
out in 1978 he gained it again in 1979 for his work during 1978, his final
year as editor. BB also involved the magazine's name in other activities,
producing Analog Annual (anth 1976) - an original anthology intended as a
13th issue of the magazine-initiating a series of records and inaugurating
a book-publishing programme. In 1978-82 he was editor of OMNI. From both
journals he extracted several anthologies (see listing below).BB was
active as a writer for many years before his stint at ASF, his first
published sf being a children's novel, The Star Conquerors (1959).
Considerable work in shorter forms followed over the next decades, the
best of it being assembled as Forward in Time (coll 1973), Viewpoint (coll
1977), Maxwell's Demons (coll 1979), Escape Plus (coll 1984), The Astral
Mirror (coll 1985), partly nonfiction, Prometheans (coll 1986) and Battle
Station (coll 1987). His best-known stories, those about Chet Kinsman, an
astronaut during the latter years of the 20th century, were assimilated
into the Kinsman Saga, whose internal ordering is Kinsman (fixup 1979) and
Millennium (1976), the two volumes being assembled as The Kinsman Saga
(omni 1987); Millennium, his best novel, is a tale of power- POLITICS in
the face of impending nuclear HOLOCAUST as the century ends. Colony
(1978), set in the same Universe, carries the story - and humanity -
further towards the stars, embodying the outward-looking stance BB has
held throughout his writing life, and about the necessity for which he has
been unfailingly eloquent. An earlier sequence, the Exiles series-Exiled
from Earth (1971), Flight of Exiles (1972) and End of Exile (1975), all
three being assembled as The Exiles Trilogy (omni 1980) - is children's
sf, as were all his novels before THX 1138 * (1971), based on the George
LUCAS filmscript. Other novels of interest include The Starcrossed (1975),
a humorous example of RECURSIVE SF whose protagonist is a thinly disguised
Harlan ELLISON ( The STARLOST ), The Multiple Man (1976), a
suspense-thriller built on the concept of CLONES, and Privateers (1985),
which - along with its sequel, Empire Builders (1993) - succumbs to an
assumption common to US sf: that governments will sooner or later fail to
conquer space, and that individual entrepreneurs (vast multinational
corporations exercising Japanese foresight need not apply) will take up
the slack.More tellingly, the Voyagers sequence - Voyagers (1981),
Voyagers II: The Alien Within (1982) and Voyagers III: Star Brothers
(1990) - treats humanity's expansion within a framework of SPACE-OPERA
romance, with technology-dispensing ALIENS establishing First Contact with
emergent humans, star-crossed lovers, biochips and a great deal more. The
Orion sequence - Orion (1984), Vengeance of Orion (1988) ,Orion in the
Dying Time (1990) and Orion and the Conqueror (1994) - puts into fantasy
idiom a similar expansive message. Triumph (1993), based on the somewhat
precarious premise that Winston Churchill poisons Stalin in 1943 with a
radioactive ceremonial sword, is an ALTERNATE HISTORY tale which posits a
more favourable outcome to World War 2. In his nonfiction and fiction
alike, BB is making it clear that survival for the race lies elsewhere
than on this planet alone, a thesis underlined in Mars (1992) by the
lovingly detailed verisimilitude with which he describes the first manned
flight to that planet. BB was president of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF
AMERICA 1990-92. [MJE/JC]Other works: Star Watchman (1964); The
Weathermakers (1967); Out of the Sun (1968), which was assembled with the
nonfiction The Amazing Laser (1971) as Out of the Sun (omni 1984); The
Dueling Machine (1963 ASF in collaboration with Myron R. Lewis; exp 1969),
assembled with Star Watchman as The Watchmen (omni 1994); Escape! (1970);
As on a Darkling Plain (fixup 1972); The Winds of Altair (1973; rev 1983);
When the Sky Burned (1973; rev vt Test of Fire 1982); Gremlins, Go Home!
(1974) with Gordon R. DICKSON; City of Darkness (1976); The Peacekeepers
(1988; vt Peacekeepers 1989 UK); Cyberbooks (1989); Future Crime (coll
1990), made up of City of Darkness and a number of short stories; The
Trikon Deception (1992) with Bill Pogue (1930- ); Sam Gunn, Unlimited
(fixup 1992), To Save the Sun (1992) and its sequel To Fear the Light
(1994), both with A. J. Austin; Challenges (coll 1993); Death Dream (1994
UK).As Editor: The Many Worlds of Science Fiction (anth 1971); Analog 9
(anth 1973); The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vols 2A and 2B (anths 1973;
vol 2B designated vol 3 in UK); The Analog Science Fact Reader (anth
1974); Closeup: New Worlds (anth 1977) with Trudy E. Bell; Analog Yearbook
(anth 1978); The Best of Analog (anth 1978); The Best of Omni (anth 1980)
with Don Myrus, and its sequels, all with Myrus, The Best of Omni Science
Fiction #2 (anth 1981), #3 (anth 1982) and #4 (anth 1982); Vision of the
Future: The Art of Robert McCall (anth 1982); The Best of the Nebulas
(anth 1989); First Contact: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(anth 1990) with Byron PREISS, containing fiction and
nonfiction.Nonfiction: The Uses of Space (1965); In Quest of Quasars
(1970); The New Astronomies (1972); Starflight and Other Improbabilities
(1973); Workshops in Space (1974); Through the Eyes of Wonder: Science
Fiction and Science (1975); Notes to a Science Fiction Writer (coll 1975;
rev 1981); The Seeds of Tomorrow (1977); The High Road (1981), on the
space programme; Assured Survival: Putting the Star Defense Wars in
Perspective (1984); Welcome to Moonbase (1987).See also: AMAZING STORIES;
CHILDREN'S SF; ECONOMICS; HISTORY IN SF; JUPITER; MOON; NEBULA; OUTER
PLANETS; SF MAGAZINES; SPACE FLIGHT; WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST.

BOWEN, JOHN (GRIFFITH)
(1924- ) UK novelist and playwright active in tv and radio; he often
derives his novels from his plays, some of which, like the Year-King
fantasy "Robin Redbreast" (produced by the BBC 1970; in The Television
Dramatist [anth 1973] ed Robert Muller), are of strong genre interest.
Such was the case with his first, also a fantasy, The Truth Will not Help
Us (1956), in which an 18th-century piracy trial is depicted, with much
anachronistic verisimilitude, as an example of McCarthyism, and with his
first sf novel proper, After the Rain (1958), in which a lunatic inventor
starts a second Flood. Most of the novel takes place on a satirically
convenient raft of fools, where survivors of the DISASTER act out their
humanness and win through in the end only because of the dour fanaticism
of one person. The stage version was later published as After the Rain: A
Play in Three Acts (1967 chap). No Retreat (1994) is a classic HITLER WINS
tale, set in an ALTERNATE HISTORY 1990s United Kingdom governed by a
triumphant Germany; the plot involves an attempted revolution under the
auspices of the British government in exile, which is housed in the United
States. JB is a supple, subtle, sometimes profound writer. [JC]Other
works: Pegasus (1957) and The Mermaid and the Boy (1958), both juvenile
fantasies; as Justin Blake (with Jeremy Bullmore), the Garry Halliday
children's sf sequence comprising Garry Halliday and the Disappearing
Diamond (1960), Garry Halliday and the Ray of Death (1961), Garry Halliday
and the Kidnapped Five (1962), Garry Halliday and the Sands of Time (1963)
and Garry Halliday and the Flying Foxes (1964).See also: HOLOCAUST AND
AFTER; MCGUFFIN.

BOWEN, ROBERT SIDNEY
(1900-1977) US author of the Dusty Ayres sf-adventure series: Black
Lightning (1966), Crimson Doom (1966), Purple Tornado (1966), The Telsa
Raiders (1966) and Black Invaders vs. the Battle Birds (1966). [JC]

BOWERS, R.L.
John S. GLASBY.

BOWES, RICHARD (DIRRANE)
(1944- ) US writer whose novels evoke a congested, magically altered New
York. Warchild (1986) and its sequel, Goblin Market (1988), set in an
ALTERNATE-WORLD version of the city, follow the growth and adventures of a
telepathic teenager who finds himself involved in time wars with a variety
of exorbitant friends and foes. Feral Cell (1987), set at the end of the
20th century, carries its ageing hero into a millennial conflict between
Good and Evil, seen in fantasy terms that evoke the New York of writers
like John CROWLEY and Mark HELPRIN. RB's first books are, perhaps,
insufficiently well organized; more are awaited. [JC]

BOWKER, RICHARD (JOHN)
(1950- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Side Effect" for Unearth
in 1977. His first novel, Forbidden Sanctuary (1982), treats a ticklish
theological problem - whether an ALIEN whose possession of a soul is moot
can claim sanctuary in a church - with due regard for the likely Roman
Catholic view on the issue ( RELIGION). Replica (1986), a political
thriller also set in the NEAR FUTURE, is less engaging, but Marlborough
Street (1987), a FANTASY about a man with PSI POWERS, is of considerably
greater interest, and Dover Beach (1987), set in Boston and the UK a
generation or so after a nuclear HOLOCAUST, is yet more substantial. The
protagonist of the book - that he is a detective obsessed by genre
thrillers from before the holocaust does not seriously detract from the
tale - serves as an effective mirror of our state, reflecting the new
world complexly and with wit. The title - it is that of Matthew Arnold's
1867 poem about the loss of faith and a world which continues - strikes an
appropriate note. There is some sense that RB's liking for thriller modes
- his next novel, Summit (1989), is an espionage thriller involving yet
another psychic - consorts uneasily with his gift for the elegiac anatomy
of individuals and their worlds; at the time of writing it is not certain
which direction he will next take. [JC]See also: ANDROIDS.

BOYAJIAN, JERRY
Working name of US bibliographer Jerel Michael Boyajian (1953- ), whose
main work has been the Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1977 (1982
chap) and its sequels through coverage year 1983, all with Ken JOHNSON
(whom see for details). JB produced solo A John Schoenherr SF Checklist
(1977 chap) and, with Anthony R. LEWIS and Andrew A. Whyte, The N.E.S.F.A.
Index: Science Fiction Magazines and Original Anthologies, 1976 (1977
chap). [JC]

BOY AND HIS DOG, A
Film (1975). LQJaf Productions. Dir L.Q. Jones, starring Don Johnson,
Susanne Benton, Jason Robards, Alvy Moore, Tim McIntire (as the dog's
voice). Screenplay Jones, based on "A Boy and his Dog" (1969) by Harlan
ELLISON. 89 mins. Colour.Set in AD2024, post- HOLOCAUST, this brutally
pragmatic film concerns two survivors, a young man and his dog; the latter
has high intelligence and the ability to communicate telepathically with
his partner. They move through a desolate landscape, inhabited by
dangerous scavengers, and find a girl from an underground society. She
lures the youth below to her home society, which is a venomous parody of
middle-class, small-town US values; here he is expected to become, in
effect, a convenient sperm bank to be mechanically milked. He rejects this
regimented existence and escapes back to the surface with the girl.
Finding his dog starving, he kills the girl to provide food, and the two
walk off into the menacing sunset, thus resolving an unusual love
triangle. The underground sequences are perhaps too stagey and share the
film uneasily with the gritty realism of the surface ones. Jones
(character-actor turned director) adapted the Ellison story honestly and
unfussily. This is one of the better small-budget sf films (it was the
recipient of a HUGO), once again showing small independent producers
taking risks that would horrify the big studios. [JB/PN]

BOYCE, CHRIS
Working name of (Joseph) Christopher Boyce (1943- ), Scottish writer and
newspaper research librarian who published his first sf, "Autodestruct",
in STORYTELLER #3 in 1964. In the mid-1960s he contributed to SF Impulse,
but his most important work to date is the sf novel Catchworld (1975),
joint winner (with Charles LOGAN's Shipwreck) of the GOLLANCZ/Sunday Times
SF Novel Award. Catchworld is an ornate, sometimes overcomplicated tale
combining sophisticated brain-computer interfaces ( COMPUTERS; CYBORGS)
and SPACE OPERA; the transcendental bravura of the book's climax is
memorable. In Brainfix (1980), a cautionary tale about social disorder in
the UK, CB had the misfortune of predicting a rise in unemployment to an
unheard-of three million in a fiction published just months before, in the
harsh reality of the first Thatcher recession, it actually reached four
million. [JC]Other work: Extraterrestrial Encounter (1979), a speculative
inquiry into XENOBIOLOGY and the search for extraterrestrial INTELLIGENCE
(SETI).See also: CYBERNETICS; GODS AND DEMONS.

BOYD, FELIX
[s] Harry HARRISON.

BOYD, JOHN
Pseudonym of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch (1919- ), US sf writer active in the
field for only a decade following publication of his first novel, THE LAST
STARSHIP FROM EARTH (1968), which received considerable critical acclaim;
it remains his most highly regarded work. A complex tale told with baroque
vigour, a DYSTOPIA, an ALTERNATE-WORLDS story, a SPACE OPERA with
TIME-TRAVEL components making it impossible to say which of various
spaceships actually is the last to leave Earth, and in what sense "last"
is intended, the book is a bravura and knowing traversal of sf protocols.
The protagonist, sent from a stratified dystopian Earth to the prison
planet Hell for machiavellian reasons, ends up travelling through time,
making sure Jesus terminates his career this time at the age of 33, which
will eliminate the dystopia by changing the future into ours; he becomes,
in the end, the Wandering Jew. None of JB's subsequent novels, some of
which are abundantly inventive, have made anything like the impression of
this first effort, though they are not inconsiderable. The Rakehells of
Heaven (1969), The Pollinators of Eden (1969) and Sex and the High Command
(1970) all deal amusingly and variously with sexual matters ( SEX), and
are full of rewarding hypotheses about the cultural forms human nature
might find itself involved in. Some later novels, like Andromeda Gun
(1974), a perfunctory comic novel involving a parasitic alien in the Old
West, show a reduction of creative energy, though Barnard's Planet (1975)
evinces a partial recovery, dealing with some of the same issues as his
first novel and with some of the same verve. The feeling remains that JB
has a larger talent than he allowed himself to reveal in his relatively
short career, and that carelessness about quality sometimes badly muffled
the effect of his wide inventiveness. [JC]Other works: The Slave Stealer
(1968), an historical novel under his real name; The Organ Bank Farm
(1970); The IQ Merchant (1972); The Gorgon Festival (1972); The Doomsday
Gene (1973); Scarborough Hall (1976), associational, under his real name;
The Girl with the Jade Green Eyes (1978; rev 1979 UK).See also: ECOLOGY;
UNDER THE SEA.

BOYE, KARIN
(1900-1941) Swedish writer known in translation for her DYSTOPIA,
Kallocain (1940; trans Gustav Lannestock 1966 US), a savagely
introspective narrative of a scientist who invents the eponymous truth
drug, and who suffers the consequences in his own being. [JC]

BOYER, ROBERT H.
[r] Marshall B. TYMN.

BOYETT, STEVEN R.
(1960- ) US writer whose first novel, Ariel (1983), is a fantasy, but
whose second, The Architect of Sleep (1986), is an sf tale set in a
PARALLEL WORLD occupied by an intricately and plausibly depicted species
which has evolved ( EVOLUTION) from raccoons. After crossing into this
world from a cavern in ours, the protagonist becomes involved in a complex
plot which is left incomplete, suggesting that sequels were intended or
indeed written. Their publication is still awaited. The Gnole (1991) with
Alan Aldridge (1943- ) is an ecological fantasy.[JC]

BOYS FROM BRAZIL, THE
Film (1978). Producer Circle. Dir Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Gregory
Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Jeremy Black. Screenplay Heywood
Gould, based on The Boys from Brazil (1976) by Ira LEVIN. 125 mins.
Colour.Like the novel on which it is based, this is an absurd but
entertaining concoction of pulp-thriller conventions with some rather
interesting scientific conjecture about environment and heredity. Joseph
Mengele (Peck), the notorious Nazi doctor, is discovered to be alive in
the Brazilian jungle, where he is manufacturing CLONES of Adolf Hitler.
Each of these is to be adopted by a family as close as possible to
Hitler's own - which means, among other things, the necessity of
engineering the deaths of 94 male civil servants as close as possible to
their 65th birthday - in the hope that Der Fuhrer will come again. Jewish
Nazi-hunter Lieberman (Olivier) slowly uncovers the truth. A main interest
of the film is that the arrow of narrative (genetic determinism) is turned
aside at the last minute, when the twitching young Adolf-clone turns out
to be his own man - or boy. [PN]

BOYS' PAPERS
Although boys' papers could easily be dismissed as being of negligible
literary value, perhaps unjustly since Upton SINCLAIR and other eminent
writers found their footing there, they played an important role in the
HISTORY OF SF in the last three decades of the 19th century and the early
years of the 20th century by creating a potential readership for the SF
MAGAZINES and by anticipating many GENRE-SF themes.The prevailing style of
US boys' papers was largely set in the 1870s and after by periodicals such
as The Boys of New York and Golden Hours, which published serialized
novels similar and often identical to those in dime-novel format (that is,
one single short novel per issue); these are discussed in detail under
DIME-NOVEL SF. Since US boys' papers were rare after WWI - American Boy
was an exception ( Carl CLAUDY) - the current discussion is
UK-oriented.Some sf did appear quite early in UK boys' papers. W.S.
HAYWARD's novel Up in the Air and Down in the Sea (1865) was serialized
c1863-5 in Henry Vickers's Boy's Journal, as were its sequels.
Nonetheless, the major impetus towards boys' sf in the UK came from
abroad. Jules VERNE appeared in UK periodicals with Hector Servadac (trans
1877 Good Things; 1878), The Steam House (trans 1880-81 Union Jack; 1881)
and 16 other serializations in The Boys' Own Paper. Andre LAURIE was
represented with "A Marvellous Conquest: A Tale of the Bayouda" (1888;
trans 1889 The Boys' Own Paper; vt The Conquest of the Moon: A Story of
the Bayouda, 1889), and US dime novels from the FRANK READE LIBRARY were
reprinted in The Aldine Romance of Invention, Travel and Adventure
Library.UK authors soon followed this lead with a variety of themes.
Several interplanetary adventures appeared in the mid-1890s in The Marvel
and elsewhere; e.g., "In Trackless Space" (1902 The Union Jack) by George
C. WALLIS, later a contributor to the sf pulps. LOST WORLDS were
prominent, notably Sidney Drew's Wings of Gold (1903-4 The Boy's Herald;
1908) and the works of Fenton Ash ( Frank AUBREY). World DISASTER appeared
in "Doom" (1912 The Dreadnought), a vehicle capable of travel through the
Earth in "Kiss, Kiss, the Beetle" (1913, Fun and Fiction), and an early
SUPERMAN in "Vengeance of Mars" (1912 Illustrated Chips).Overriding all
these themes was the future- WAR story, previously a minor genre - and
remaining so in US boys' fiction - but encouraged obsessively in the UK by
Lord Northcliffe, head of Amalgamated Press. Between 1901 and the outbreak
of WWI in 1914, numerous warnings of imminent INVASION were published,
foremost among them the works of John Tregellis, who contributed Britain
Invaded (1906 The Boy's Friend; 1910), Britain at Bay (1906-7 The Boy's
Friend; 1910), Kaiser or King? (1912 The Boy's Friend; 1913) and
others.When WWI did finally break out, many papers folded, but they were
replaced shortly after the Armistice by new periodicals firmly rooted in
the 20th century. Among these was Pluck; subtitled "The Boy's Wireless
Adventure Weekly", it published several sf stories linked by the common
theme of radio. Among its stories were Lester Bidston's The Radio Planet
(1923; 1926) and the first UK publication (1923) of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's
At the Earth's Core (1914 All-Story Weekly; 1922); the latter contributed
to the publication of Edgar WALLACE's Planetoid 127 (1924 The Mechanical
Boy; 1929) and adaptations of various stories in Sax ROHMER's Fu Manchu
series (1923-4 Chums). Notable among the many other stories published were
Leslie BERESFORD's "War of Revenge" (1922 The Champion), an account of a
German attack on the UK in 1956 using guided missiles, Frank H. Shaw's
world-catastrophe novel "When the Sea Rose Up" (1923-4 Chums) and Eric
Wood's DYSTOPIA The Jungle Men: A Tale of 2923 AD (1923-4 The Boy's
Friend; 1927).Most popular of all were the SPACE OPERAS then appearing in
Boy's Magazine (first published 1922). Typical was Raymond Quiex's "The
War in Space" (1926), which was very reminiscent of the 1930s PULP
MAGAZINES with its story of ASTEROIDS drawn from orbit and hurled as
missiles towards Earth, manmade webs of metal hanging in space, domed
cities on strange planets and giant insects stalking the surface of
hostile worlds. Many similar stories appeared: time machines, androids,
titanic war machines, robot armies and matter transmitters became
commonplace.When Boy's Magazine folded in 1934, its place was taken three
weeks later by SCOOPS, the first UK all-sf periodical. In spite of its
capable editor, Haydn Dimmock, and contributions by John Russell FEARN,
Maurice Hugi and A.M. LOW, Scoops folded after only 20 issues.Adult sf
magazines were available in the UK, both native and reprint, to fill the
temporary gap left by the demise of Scoops - and COMIC books made their
appearance in the later 1930s - but boys' papers continued to introduce
young readers to sf concepts: Modern Boy with the CAPTAIN JUSTICE series
that influenced a youthful Brian W. ALDISS, Modern Wonder with
serializations of John WYNDHAM and W.J. Passingham, and The Sexton Blake
Library, with pseudonymous contributions by E.C. TUBB and Michael
MOORCOCK, are among the titles of the next few decades.Sf continued until
more recently to play a role in boys' papers, with content modified to
suit the times. In 1976, for example, an anonymous adaptation - as "Kids
Rule, OK" - in Action of Dave WALLIS's Only Lovers Left Alive (1964)
proved so violent that public outcry led to temporary suspension of the
paper; in retrospect, the adaptation can be seen as a forerunner to such
modern favourites as JUDGE DREDD. [JE]

BPVP
Byron PREISS.

BRACK, VEKTIS
House name used on three sf novels by unidentified authors for Gannet
Press. The "X" People (1953) concerns an alien invasion, Castaway from
Space (1953) an alien crashlanding, and Odyssey in Space (1953)
(insecurely identified as being by Leslie Humphrys, who also wrote as
Bruno G. CONDRAY) space stations. [SH]

BRACKETT, LEIGH (DOUGLASS)
(1915-1978) US writer, for most of her career deeply involved in the
writing of fantasy and sf, for which she remains best known, though her
detective novels and her film scenarios have been justly praised. The
latter range from The Vampire's Ghost (1945) to The Long Goodbye (1973),
with memorable scripts for Howard Hawks, including The Big Sleep (1946)
and Rio Bravo (1958); her last effort, for The EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980),
for which she received posthumously a 1981 HUGO, was not typical of her
work in this form.She began publishing sf stories in 1940 with "Martian
Quest" for ASF, and although her first novel, No Good from a Corpse (1944)
was a detection the 1940s were her period of greatest activity in the sf
magazines; she appeared mostly in PLANET STORIES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES
and others that offered space for what rapidly became her speciality:
swashbuckling but literate PLANETARY ROMANCES, usually set on MARS, though
there is no series continuity joining her Martian venues.In 1946 she
married sf author Edmond HAMILTON, and may well have influenced his
writing, which improved sharply after WWII; but she continued to use the
name LB for her sf, for her other books, and for her film work. Some of
her work from this period can be found in The Coming of the Terrans (coll
of linked stories 1967) and The Halfling and Other Stories (coll 1973).
She approached all she wrote with economy and vigour: everything about her
early stories - their colour, their narrative speed, the brooding
forthrightness of their protagonists - made them an ideal and fertile
blend of traditional SPACE OPERA and SWORD AND SORCERY. She was a marked
influence upon the next generation of writers. One novelette, "Lorelei of
the Red Mist" (Planet Stories 1946), was written in collaboration with Ray
BRADBURY.From the mid-1940s LB tended to move into somewhat longer forms,
setting on her favourite neo- BURROUGHS Mars the first part of her Eric
John Stark series: The Secret of Sinharat (1949 Planet Stories as "Queen
of the Martian Catacombs"; rev 1964 dos), People of the Talisman (1951
Planet Stories as "Black Amazon of Mars"; rev 1964 dos) - both reportedly
expanded for book publication by Edmond Hamilton, and both later assembled
as Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars (omni 1982) - and "Enchantress of
Venus" (1949; vt "City of the Lost Ones"), the last being collected in The
Halfling. Stark concentrates all the virtues of the sword-and-sorcery hero
in his lean figure; along with Robert E. HOWARD's Conan, he has helped
spawn dozens of snarling, indomitable mesomorphs, though his attitude to
women is somewhat less utilitarian than that of his many successors. In
the 1970s the series was restarted, having been conveniently transferred
to an interstellar venue (as Mars and VENUS were no longer readily usable
for the sf-adventure writer), with The Ginger Star (1974), The Hounds of
Skaith (1974) and The Reavers of Skaith (1976), all three being assembled
as The Book of Skaith (omni 1976). Other novels involving Mars were Shadow
Over Mars (1944 Startling Stories; 1951 UK; vt The Nemesis from Terra 1961
dos US) and, perhaps the finest of them all, The Sword of Rhiannon (1949
TWS as "Sea-Kings of Mars"; 1953 dos), which is connected to "Sorcerer of
Rhiannon" (1942); it admirably combines adventure with a strongly romantic
vision of an ancient sea-girt Martian civilization. Where Burroughs's Mars
had been characterized by naive barbaric energy, LB's represents the last
gasp of a decadence endlessly nostalgic for the even more remote past.By
the 1950s, LB was beginning to concentrate more on interstellar space
operas, including The Starmen (1952; cut vt The Galactic Breed 1955 dos;
text restored vt The Starmen of Llyrdis 1976), The Big Jump (1955 dos) and
Alpha Centauri - or Die! (1953 Planet Stories as "Ark of Mars"; fixup 1963
dos). All three are efficient but seem somewhat routine when set beside
LB's best single work, The Long Tomorrow (1955), which is set in a
strictly controlled post- HOLOCAUST USA, many years after the destruction
of the CITIES and of the TECHNOLOGY that brought mankind to ruin. It is
the slow, impressively warm and detailed epic of two boys and their
finally successful attempts to find Bartorstown, where people are secretly
reestablishing science and technology. After 20 years, readers of the book
may be less hopeful than its author about Bartorstown's aspirations, but
on its own terms the novel is a glowing success.After 1955, LB generally
preferred to work in films and tv. She was a highly professional writer,
working with extreme competence within generic moulds that did not always,
perhaps, sufficiently stretch her. The Long Tomorrow and her film scripts
for Howard Hawks - whose positive attitude toward the creation of
Competent Women must have been a blessing to her for decades - did suggest
broader horizons for her work; but she declined to explore them fully. A
summatory collection, edited by her husband, The Best of Leigh Brackett
(coll 1977), confirms the muscular panache of her work and its refusal to
transcend competence. [JC]Other works: Stranger at Home (1946) as by the
actor George Sanders, An Eye for an Eye (1957), The Tiger Among Us (1957;
vt Fear No Evil 1960 UK; vt 13 West Street 1962) and Silent Partner
(1969), all crime novels; Rio Bravo * (1959), from the Hawks film, and
Follow the Free Wind (1963) are Westerns; The Jewel of Bas (1944; 1990
chap dos).As Editor: The Best of Planet Stories No 1 (anth 1974); The Best
of Edmond Hamilton (coll 1977).About the author: Leigh Brackett, Marion
Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography
(1982) by Rosemarie Arbur; Leigh Brackett: American Writer (1986 chap) by
J.L. Carr; Leigh Douglass Brackett and Edmond Hamilton: A Working
Bibliography (1986 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr.See also: ALIENS;
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; FANTASY;
GALACTIC EMPIRES; GENERATION STARSHIPS; JUPITER; MERCURY; MYTHOLOGY;
PASTORAL; SPACESHIPS; WOMEN SF WRITERS.

BRADBURY, EDWARD P.
Michael MOORCOCK.

BRADBURY MASSES
Ray Bradbury is one of the few writers who made the leap from writing for
science fiction aficionados to writing for a mass audience. One reason for
the crossover may have been that his novels and stories translated easily
to television and film.Two early B-movies - It Came From Outer Space and
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms - were released in 1953. In 1966, the French
filmmaker Francois Truffaut directed a successful film adaptation of
Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451. The Martian Chronicles became a
television miniseries in 1980, starring Rock Hudson. Adaptations of
Bradbury's work appeared on The Twilight Zone and on Ray Bradbury Theater.
And Bradbury himself plunged into the mainstream when he co-wrote the
screenplay for the 1956 film, Moby Dick.

BRADBURY, RAY(MOND) (DOUGLAS)
(1920- ) US writer, born in Waukegan, Illinois; in 1934 his father, a
power lineman who was having trouble gaining employment during the
Depression, moved with the family to Los Angeles, but images of the
small-town Midwest always remained important in RB's stories. RB
discovered sf FANDOM in 1937, meeting Ray HARRYHAUSEN, Forrest J. ACKERMAN
and Henry KUTTNER, and began publishing his FANZINE Futuria Fantasia in
1939. His first professional sale was "Pendulum" with Henry HASSE for
Super Science Stories in Nov 1941. In that year he met a number of sf
professionals, including Leigh BRACKETT, who generously coached him in
writing techniques. He later collaborated with her, completing her
"Lorelei of the Red Mist" (1946 Planet Stories).By 1943 RB's style was
beginning to jell: poetic, evocative, consciously symbolic, with strong
nostalgic elements and a leaning towards the macabre - his work has always
been more FANTASY and HORROR than sf. Many of RB's early stories, mostly
written 1943-7, were collected in his first book, Dark Carnival (coll
1947; cut 1948 UK; cut vt The Small Assassin 1962 UK); quite a few of them
had originally appeared in WEIRD TALES. All but 4 of the stories in the
later The October Country (coll 1955; 1956 UK edition drops 7 stories and
adds "The Traveller") had already appeared in Dark Carnival, but many were
revised for this new book. Although some of these stories had sf elements,
they could more accurately be described as weird fiction. RB used
occasional pseudonyms in those early years; in non-sf magazines he
appeared as Edward Banks, William Elliott, D.R. Banat, Leonard Douglas and
Leonard Spaulding, and he wrote one story, "Referent" (1948), in TWS under
the house name Brett STERLING. Much of his early sf was colourful SPACE
OPERA, and appeared in TWS and PLANET STORIES.One of these latter stories
was "The Million Year Picnic" (1946). Later it was to appear in his second
book, which remains RB's greatest work, THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (coll of
linked stories 1950; with "Usher II" cut and"The Fire Balloons"added, rev
vt The Silver Locusts 1951 UK; with"The Wilderness" added as well, rev
1953 UK). This book, which could be regarded as an episodic novel, made
RB's reputation. Almost at once he found a new market for short stories in
the "slicks", magazines such as Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, McCall's
and COLLIER'S WEEKLY. Of the more than 300 stories he has published since,
only a handful originally appeared in SF MAGAZINES. This was one of the
most significant breakthroughs into the general market made by any
GENRE-SF writer.THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES is an amazing work. Its closely
interwoven stories, linked by recurrent images and themes, tell of the
repeated attempts by humans to colonize Mars, of the way they bring their
old prejudices with them, and of their repeated, ambiguous meetings with
the shape-changing Martians. Despite the sf scenario, there is no hard
technology. The mood is of loneliness and nostalgia; a pensive regret
suffuses the book. Colonists find, in "The Third Expedition", a perfect
Midwest township waiting for them in the Martian desert; throughout the
book appearance and reality slip, dreamlike, from the one to the other;
desires and fantasy are reified but turn out to be tainted. At the
beginning, in a typical RB image, the warmth of rocket jets brings a
springlike thaw to the frozen Ohio landscape; at the end, human children
look into the canal to see the Martians, and find them in their own
reflections. All the RB themes that were later to be repeated, sometimes
too often, find their earliest shapes here: the anti-technological bias,
the celebration of simplicity and innocence as imaged in small-town life,
the sense of loss as youth changes to adulthood, and the danger and
attraction of masks, be they Hallowe'en, carnival or, as here, alien
mimicry. The book was dramatized as a tv miniseries, The MARTIAN
CHRONICLES (1980).For the next few years the evocative versatility of RB's
imagery kept a freshness and an ebullience unspoiled by occasional
overwriting; what later came to look like a too cosy heartland sentiment
was generally redeemed by the precision and strangeness of its expression.
RB's talents are very clear in the first of his few novels, FAHRENHEIT 451
(1951 Gal as "The Fireman"; with 2 short stories as coll 1953; most later
editions omit the short stories; rev 1979 with coda; rev 1982 with
afterword). In its DYSTOPIAN future, in which books are burned because
ideas are dangerous, we follow the painful spiritual growth of its
renegade hero, a book-burning "fireman" and secret reader who finally
flees, pursued by a Mechanical Hound attuned to his body chemistry, to a
pastoral society of book "memorizers". Francois Truffaut's interesting
film version, FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966), has as much of Truffaut as of
Bradbury.Two other books published as novels, neither of them sf, are
Dandelion Wine (1950-57 various mags; fixup 1957), in which an adolescent
life is recorded in terms of a single summer in a small town in a series
of vignettes, and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), an episodic,
rather heavily symbolic tale of GOTHIC transformations in a small town,
possibly written in homage to Charles G. FINNEY's The Circus of Dr Lao
(1935), which RB had already anthologized in The Circus of Dr Lao and
other Improbable Stories (anth 1956), a collection of fantasies.RB's
vintage years are normally thought to be 1946-55; his other short-story
collections of that period are certainly superior to those he produced
later. They began with The Illustrated Man (coll 1951; with 2 stories
added and 4 deleted, rev 1952 UK), in which the tales are given a linking
framework; they are all seen as magical tattoos which, springing from the
body of the protagonist, become living stories. Three were filmed as The
ILLUSTRATED MAN by Jack Smight in 1968. Later collections are The Golden
Apples of the Sun (coll 1953; with 2 stories deleted 1953 UK) and A
Medicine for Melancholy (coll 1959; vt with 4 stories removed and 5 added
The Day it Rained Forever 1959 UK). These last two books were combined as
Twice Twenty Two (omni 1966). No later RB collection approaches the above
in quality. The other important collection of early stories, drawing from
many of the books already listed, is The Vintage Bradbury (coll 1965),
which has now been superseded by the massive retrospective The Stories of
Ray Bradbury (coll 1980; UK paperback in 2 vols 1983).Yet in the late
1950s and 1960s RB's mainstream reputation continued to grow. He has
appeared in well over 800 anthologies. In the USA, at least, he is
regarded by many critics as a major literary talent. Sf as a genre can
take little credit for this: RB's themes are traditionally US and,
although early on he often chose to render them in sf imagery, it would be
mistaken to see RB as basically an sf writer. He is, in effect, a
fantasist, both whimsical and sombre, in an older, pastoral tradition. The
high regard in which he is held can indeed be justified on the basis of a
handful of works, with THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, FAHRENHEIT 451, and many
stories from the late 1940s and the 1950s among them; it is here, too,
that RB's small but very influential contribution to sf is located, which
had much to do with sf's ceasing to be regarded as belonging to a genre
ghetto.RB is a reasonably prolific writer, but some have found his work
from 1960s onwards to be increasingly disappointing, especially his plays
and poetry, which have often been described as both stiltedly rhetorical
and oversentimental. On the other hand, some of his theatrical work has
been well received ( THEATRE). Those of his subsequent collections to
include a substantial amount of previously uncollected work are The
Machineries of Joy (coll 1964; with 1 story cut, 1964 UK), I Sing the Body
Electric (coll 1969),Long After Midnight (coll 1976) and The Toynbee
Convector (coll 1988); it was I Sing the Body Electric that received the
most adverse criticism for its alleged soft-centredness.Just as it had
come to seem, in the 1980s, that RB was content to become a grand old man
(he won the NEBULA Grandmaster Award in 1989 for his lifetime
achievements), his career took a new turn. Like many sf writers in the
1940s he had published some crime fiction in the mystery pulps - some
collected in A Memory of Murder (coll 1984) - and now in the 1980s he
turned to crime fiction again. Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and its
sequel A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) are his strongest work for many
years. Some of the old density and power return in their almost surreal
conflations of appearance and reality. They are of strong associational
interest for readers of his sf and fantasy (deliberately returning to many
of the key metaphors of his work in these fields, with the canals of
Venice, Los Angeles, standing perhaps for those of Mars), and are good
examples of RECURSIVE fiction, in that both are to a degree romans a clef,
with recognizable sf characters in them, not least a 1950s version of RB
himself. Ray HARRYHAUSEN, for example, appears thinly disguised in the
second, which revolves around the film world.RB's work in film has been
interesting. Two important early sf B-movies were loosely based on short
stories by him: IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) and The BEAST FROM 20,000
FATHOMS (1953). Neither, however, has any perceptible Bradbury quality. By
far his best screenplay was that for Moby Dick (1956); RB shared credit on
this with John Huston. The 18min animated film Icarus Montgolfier Wright
(1962) was based on an RB story and screenplay, as was the made-for-tv
film Picasso Summer (1972), based on RB's "In a Season of Calm Weather"
(1957), on which he received a screenplay credit as Douglas Spaulding.
Several Russian films ( RUSSIA) have been based on Bradbury stories,
including VEL'D (1987), based on "The Veldt" (1950). Tv adaptations of his
work have appeared in The TWILGHT ZONE (both series) and, notably, on RAY
BRADBURY THEATRE (1985-6). Many of RB's stories have also received
COMIC-book adaptation. 16 can be found in two books: The Autumn People
(graph coll 1965) and Tomorrow Midnight (graph coll 1966). ( EC COMICS.)A
touching symbol of the high regard in which many of RB's peers hold him is
the interesting anthology of stories in Bradbury settings, The Bradbury
Chronicles: Stories in Honor of Ray Bradbury (anth 1991), ed William F.
NOLAN and Martin H. GREENBERG. [PN]Other works: Switch on the Night
(1955), a juvenile; Sun and Shadow (1953 Reporter; 1957 chap); The Essence
of Creative Writing (1962), nonfiction; R is for Rocket (coll 1962), all
but 2 stories having appeared in earlier collections; The Anthem
Sprinters, and Other Antics (coll 1963), short plays; The Pedestrian (1952
FSF; 1964 chap); The Day it Rained Forever: A Comedy in One Act (1966), a
play, not to be confused with the UK collection of the same title; The
Pedestrian: A Fantasy in One Act (1966), a play; S is for Space (coll
1966), all but 4 stories having appeared in earlier collections; Bloch and
Bradbury (anth 1969; vt Fever Dream and Other Fantasies 1970 UK),
collecting stories by RB and Robert BLOCH; Old Ahab's Friend, and Friend
to Noah, Speak his Piece (1971), verse; The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and
other Plays (coll 1972); Madrigals for the Space Age (coll 1972), words
with music by Lalo Schifrin; The Halloween Tree (1972), juvenile; Zen and
the Art of Writing (coll 1973; exp vt Zen in the Art of Writing 1990),
nonfiction essays; When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed (coll
1973), collected verse; Ray Bradbury (coll 1975 UK), retrospective
collection; Pillar of Fire, and Other Plays for Today, Tomorrow and Beyond
Tomorrow (coll 1975), plays; Long After Midnight (coll 1976); Where Robot
Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (coll 1977), verse; The
Mummies of Guanajuato (1978), illustrated version with photos by Archie
Lieberman of "The Next in Line" (1947);To Sing Strange Songs (coll 1979
UK); The Ghosts of Forever (coll 1981), a large-format illustrated book
with essays, stories, verse; The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope
(coll 1981), verse; The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (coll 1982);
Dinosaur Tales (coll 1983); Fahrenheit 451/The Illustrated Man/Dandelion
Wine/The Golden Apples of the Sun/The Martian Chronicles (omni 1987 UK);
Fever Dream (1948 Startling Stories; 1987 chap), juvenile illustrated by
Darrel Anderson; Classic Stories 1 (coll 1990), reprint anthology
containing all but 5 stories from The Golden Apples of the Sun and R is
for Rocket; Classic Stories 2 (coll 1990), reprinting most of A Medicine
for Melancholy and S is for Space, with 4 of the 5 stories omitted from
Classic Stories 1; On Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays (coll 1991), 10
one-act plays, being effectively an omnibus of The Anthem Sprinters, The
Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Pillar of Fire; a series of stories put into
COMICS format: The Ray Bradbury Chronicles: Volume 1 (graph coll 1992), #2
(graph coll 1992), #3 (graph coll 1992), #4 (graph coll 1993), #5 (graph
coll 1994),#6 (graph coll 1994) and #7 (graph coll 1994).As Editor:
Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (anth 1952).About the author: The
Ray Bradbury Companion: A Life and Career History, Photolog, and
Comprehensive Checklist of Writings (1975) by William F. Nolan,
supplemented by Bradbury Bits & Pieces: The Ray Bradbury Bibliography:
1974-1988 (1991) by Donn Albright; The Bradbury Chronicles (1977 chap) by
George Edgar SLUSSER; Ray Bradbury (anth 1980) ed Martin H. Greenberg and
J.D. OLANDER; Ray Bradbury and the Poetics of Reverie (1984) and Ray
Bradbury (1989), both by William F. Touponce.See also: ALIENS;
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARKHAM HOUSE; ARTS; ASTEROIDS; CHILDREN IN SF;
CLICHES; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; END OF THE
WORLD; ESCHATOLOGY; FANZINE; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GOLDEN AGE OF SF;
INVASION; LIVING WORLDS; LONGEVITY (IN WRITERS AND PUBLICATIONS); The
MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MARS; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MESSIAHS;
MUSIC; MYTHOLOGY; PASTORAL; POETRY; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGY; RADIO; RADIO
(USA); REINCARNATION; RELIGION; ROBOTS; ROCKETS; SEX; SPACE FLIGHT;
SUPERNATURAL CREATURES; TELEVISION; TERRAFORMING; THRILLING WONDER
STORIES; TIME PARADOXES; TIME TRAVEL; TRANSPORTATION; VENUS.

BRADDON, RUSSELL
(1921- ) Australian writer of biographies, many novels and some other
work; he is interested in experiments on ESP. He was imprisoned by the
Japanese in Changi, Singapore, during WWII. His first sf novel, The Year
of the Angry Rabbit (1964), unsurprisingly in view of his nationality, is
sensitive about the threat posed by giant rabbits to civilization as we
know it; by the end of the book, only a few Aborigines remain, and they
start a second Flood. A film, NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972), was made of it.
The Inseparables (1968) and When the Enemy is Tired (1968) are also sf.
[JC]

BRADFIELD, SCOTT (MICHAEL)
(1955- ) US writer and academic who has taught for the University of
Connecticut since 1989. His first sf story, the orthodox "What Makes a
Cage? Jamie Knows", published in Protostars (anth 1971) ed David GERROLD,
significantly fails to prefigure his mature works, the best of which
appear in The Secret Life of Houses (coll 1988 UK; exp vt Dream of the
Wolf 1990 US); further exp vt Greetings From Earth: New and Collected
Stories 1993 UK), where they apply the torque of FABULATION to Southern
Californian venues whose haunted inmates are trapped just this side of the
Pacific Rim. His first novel, The History of Luminous Motion (1989 UK),
trawls in the same waters, though without the use of sf protocols, as does
What's Wrong with America (1994 UK), comically. He wrote the entries on
MAGIC REALISM and OULIPO in this encyclopedia. [JC]See also: INTERZONE.

BRADFORD, J.S.
(? -? ) UK author of Even a Worm (1936), a novel similar in content to
Arthur MACHEN's The Terror: A Fantasy (1917; rev 1927): the animal kingdom
revolts against humanity's rule. What merit it has is diminished by the
concluding rationalization of the story as being just a game-hunter's
nightmare. [JE]

BRADFORD, MATTHEW C.
John W. JENNISON.

BRADLEY, MARION ZIMMER
(1930- ) US writer, initially of action sf with a good deal of
swashbuckling, often nearing SWORD AND SORCERY, though always with a
recognizably sf rationale; and of other routine work. But with the
increasing substance of her Darkover series, which she began in 1958, and
the great success of an Arthurian fantasy in 1983 (see below), she became
a major figure in the genre. She began publishing short stories
professionally in 1953 with"Women Only" and "Keyhole" for Vortex Science
Fiction #2; several are collected in The Dark Intruder and Other Stories
(coll 1964 dos). Her first novel, The Door through Space (1957 Venture as
"Bird of Prey"; exp 1961 dos), is SPACE OPERA, as is Seven From the Stars
(1962 dos), an intriguingly told adventure involving seven interstellar
castaways on Earth.This early work pales beside Darkover, a sequence of
novels (and latterly stories by MZB and others) set on the fringes of an
Earth-dominated GALACTIC EMPIRE and comprising perhaps the most
significant PLANETARY-ROMANCE sequence in modern sf. Darkover's
inhabitants - partially bred from human colonists of a previous age -
successfully resist the Empire's various attempts to integrate them into a
political and economic union. Darkovans have a complex though loosely
described anti-technological culture dominated by sects of telepaths
conjoined in potent "matrices" around which much of the action of the
series is focused. Increasingly, questions of sexual politics began
significantly to shape the sequence, and to cast an ambivalent light upon
the gender distortions forced primarily upon women (and the androgyny
required by all aspirants to a higher state) through the strange
exigencies of the Darkovan culture. It may be that some of these
distortions are embedded in the history of the series itself, which by
1995 had been developing for more than 35 years; certainly several early
volumes are highly discordant, and have been excluded from later versions
of the internal chronology of Darkover. In order to make some sense of a
most complex situation, the individual volumes of the series are here
listed first in order of publication and then according to the "official"
internal chronology established in the 1980s.In publication order (to
date): The Sword of Aldones (1962 dos) and The Planet Savers (1958 AMZ;
1962 dos; with "The Waterfall" added as coll 1976), both assembled as The
Planet Savers; The Sword of Aldones (omni 1980); The Bloody Sun (1964;
rev, with "To Keep the Oath" added, as coll 1979); Star of Danger (1965);
The Winds of Darkover (1970); The World Wreckers (1971); Darkover Landfall
(1972); The Spell Sword (1974); The Heritage of Hastur (1975); The
Shattered Chain (1976); The Forbidden Tower (1977); Stormqueen! (1978);
The Keeper's Price * (anth 1980); Two to Conquer (1980); Sharra's Exile
(fixup 1981), which incorporates, very much modified, The Sword of Aldones
plus other material; Sword of Chaos * (anth 1982); Hawkmistress! (1982);
Thendara House (1983); City of Sorcery (1984); Free Amazons of Darkover *
(anth 1985); The Other Side of the Mirror * (anth 1987); Red Sun of
Darkover * (anth 1987); Four Moons of Darkover * (anth 1988); The Heirs of
Hammerfell (1989), Domains of Darkover * (anth 1990), Renunciates of
Darkover * (anth 1991), Leroni of Darkover (anth 1991),Rediscovery (1993)
with Mercedes LACKEY, Towers of Darkover (anth 1993), Marion Zimmer
Bradley's Darkover (coll 1993) and Snows of Darkover (anth 1994). MZB's
first novel, The Door through Space (1961), and Falcons of Narabedla (1957
Other Worlds; 1964 dos) - a pastiche of The Dark World (1965) by Henry
KUTTNER and C.L. MOORE - are also marginally linked to the series.The
internal sequence is very different, beginning with Darkover Landfall
(1972), which describes the initial landing of Terran colonists. The
sequence then jumps an eon into the feudal turmoil of Stormqueen! (1978)
and Hawkmistress! (1982); balkanization and the growth of order in Two to
Conquer (1980) and The Heirs of Hammerfell (1989) finally evolve - after
The Shattered Chain (1976) and Thendara House (1983), both assembled as
Oath of the Renunciates (omni 1984), and City of Sorcery (1984) set up a
dubiously feminist Amazon sisterhood - into a sophisticated conflict with
the returning Terrans in The Spell Sword (1974), The Forbidden Tower
(1977), The Heritage of Hastur (1975) and Shaara's Exile (1981), the last
two of which are also assembled as Children of Hastur (omni 1982), and
Rediscovery (1993) with Lackey The various group anthologies are deemed to
infill.Shadowy, complex, confused, the world of Darkover is increasingly a
house of many mansions; a few (either writers or readers) seem to feel
unwelcome.Many other singletons and some series surround this central
sequence; but The Mists of Avalon (1983) far outstripped any other title
in its success in the marketplace and significance as a convincing
revision of the Arthurian cycle. In this book the Matter of Britain
revolves around a conflict between the sane but dying paganism of Morgan
le Fay and the patriarchal ascetics of ascendant Christianity, whose
victory in the war ensures eons of repression for women and the vital
principles they espouse. It is a rousing assault, and less governed by
genre demands than Darkover. There is, perhaps, something vulgar in MZB's
edgy progress into an eccentric FEMINISM- a charge not softened by the
insertion of the Great Goddess into first century CE Britain in The Forest
House (1993 UK) - but her work has had an electrifying effect on a very
large readership; and at her best she speaks with the rare transparency of
the true storyteller. [JC]Other works: The Colors of Space (1963; text
restored 1983), a juvenile; The Brass Dragon (1969); the Survivors
sequence comprising Hunters of the Red Moon (1973) and The Survivors
(1979), the latter with Paul Edwin ZIMMER; The Jewel of Arwen (1974 chap)
and its partner, The Parting of Arwen (1974 chap); Endless Voyage (1975;
rev vt Endless Universe 1979); Drums of Darkness: An Astrological Gothic
Novel (1976); The Maenads (1978 chap), a poem on Greek myths; The Ruins of
Isis (1978); The Catch Trap (1979), a circus novel about (male)
homosexuals; The House Between the Worlds (1980; rev 1981); Survey Ship
(1980); the Atlantis Chronicles, comprising Web of Light (1982) and Web of
Darkness (1984), both assembled as Web of Darkness (omni 1985 UK; vt The
Fall of Atlantis 1987 US); The Inheritor (1984) and its sequel, Witch Hill
(1972 as by Valerie Graves; rev 1990); Night's Daughter (1985); Warrior
Woman (1985); The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley (coll 1985; rev 1988); rev
vt Jamie and Other Stories: The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley 1993) ed
Martin H. GREENBERG; Lythande (coll 1986), with 1 story by Vonda N.
MCINTYRE; The Firebrand (1987); Black Trillium (1990) with Julian MAY and
Andre NORTON.Non-genre fiction: Many titles, including I am a Lesbian
(1962) as by Lee Chapman; others as by John Dexter, Miriam Gardner,
Valerie Graves, Morgan Ives; Bluebeard's Daughter (1968).Nonfiction: Men,
Halflings and Hero-Worship (1973); The Necessity for Beauty: Robert W.
Chambers and the Romantic Tradition (1974); Experiment Perilous: Three
Essays on Science Fiction (anth 1976) with Norman SPINRAD nd Alfred
BESTER.As Editor: Greyhaven (anth 1983); the Sword and Sorceress series,
comprising Sword and Sorceress I (anth 1984), II (anth 1985), III (anth
1986), IV (anth 1987), V (anth 1988), VI (anth 1990), VII (anth 1990),
VIII (anth 1991), IX (anth 1992) and XI (anth 1994) Spells of Wonder (anth
1989); The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine (anth
1994).About the author: The Darkover Dilemma: Problems of the Darkover
Series (1976) by S. Wise; The Darkover Concordance: A Reader's Guide
(1979) by Walter Breen, MZB's husband; Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer
Bradley, Anne McCaffrey: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1982) by
Rosemarie Arbur; Marion Zimmer Bradley (1985) by Rosemarie Arbur; Marion
Zimmer Bradley, Mistress of Magic: A Working Bibliography (1991 chap) by
Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: AMAZING STORIES;
ATLANTIS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; DAW BOOKS; ESP; FANTASY; MAGIC;
OPEN UNIVERSE; PLANETARY ROMANCE; SCIENCE FANTASY; SEX; SHARED WORLDS;
WOMEN SF WRITERS.

BRADLEY, WILL
Brad STRICKLAND.

BRADSHAW, WILLIAM R(ICHARD)
(1851-1927) US writer whose The Goddess of Atvatabar: Being the History
of the Discovery of the Interior World and Conquest of Atvatabar (1892) is
set in a Symmesian HOLLOW EARTH with an interior sun. The chthonic culture
includes a love cult whose devotees regard mild sex without orgasm as
leading to perpetual youth. Catastrophic melodrama soon leads to trade
relations with the surface ( ANTHROPOLOGY; LOST WORLDS). The book is
heavily illustrated. [JC]

BRAID or BRAIDED
Term used to designate a SHARED-WORLD anthology or book-length tale whose
individual parts, written by different hands, are edited - generally by
the proprietor/editor of the shared world - so that their beginnings and
ends weave (or braid) into one another, and the whole tells a unified
story. When done properly, braids can generate a chronicle-like sense in
the reader - an effect attained also by successful FIXUPS, which can in
this sense be defined as one-handed braids. It is probable that Robert
Lynn ASPRIN created the first full-scale braid in sf or fantasy with his
Thieves' World sequence from 1979. A further example of a braided
anthology is the Merovingen Nights sequence created and presided over by
C.J. CHERRYH. [JC]

BRAIN, THE
VENGEANCE.

BRAIN DEAD
Film (1989). Concorde/New Horizons. Dir Adam Simon, starring Bill
Pullman, Bill Paxton, Patricia Charbonneau, Bud Cort, George Kennedy,
Nicholas Pryor. Screenplay Charles BEAUMONT. 81 mins. Colour.A
neurosurgeon (Pullman) is asked to examine a genius (Cort) who has gone
mad and killed his family. The surgeon soon finds that his own identity is
being alarmingly eaten away, his friends, colleagues and wife supporting
the process, gradually convincing him that he is the patient who needs
brain surgery; the boundaries between the sane neurosurgeon and insane
mathematician are gradually erased. Written for Roger CORMAN by Beaumont
in 1963, this was filmed 22 years after Beaumont's death. The surprise is
that so much of the writer's distinctive plotting - a mix of panicky
humour and PARANOIA - has survived rewrites which, for example, update him
by tapping into the species of gory medical humour exemplified by
RE-ANIMATOR (1985). Where recent horror films like the Nightmare on Elm
Street sequence domesticate the dream/reality uncertainty for irrelevant
shock scenes, BD allows the ambiguity itself to fragment and take over the
film. [KN]

BRAINSTORM
Film (1983). A JF Production/MGM/UA. Dir Douglas Trumbull, starring
Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher, Cliff Robertson.
Screenplay Robert Stitzel, Philip Frank Messina, based on a story by Bruce
Joel Rubin. 106 mins. Colour.A VIRTUAL-REALITY device is invented which
faithfully records human experiences (including the accompanying emotions)
and allows them to be re-experienced by another person. This promising
notion is frittered away - first because, despite Trumbull's
special-effects expertise, the cinematic equivalent of these experiences
is just like old-fashioned Cinerama and has no emotional content at all
(obviously); second because the device is largely used to reconcile
husband and wife by replaying the one's banal romantic feelings for the
other; third because, after a scientist (played by Louise Fletcher) dies,
thoughtfully recording her death experience en passant, we get to share
her experience. This playback, supposedly almost lethal to the viewer,
shows that the last great journey consists of cute bubbles with pictures
inside them. Natalie Wood, who plays the wife, drowned while filming was
still in progress, which necessitated a few last-minute rewrites that do
not work. Rubin, writer of the original story, was obviously obsessed by
afterlife experiences, and went on to script, among others, Ghost (1990)
and Jacob's Ladder (1991). [PN]

BRAMAH, ERNEST
Working name of UK writer Ernest Bramah Smith (1868-1942) for all his
writing. His series of tales in which the Chinese Kai Lung tells stories
to stave off punishment, like Scheherazade, contains some fantasy
elements. The Kai Lung series includes: The Wallet of Kai Lung (coll
1900), the first story in which was republished as The Transmutation of
Ling (1911 chap); Kai Lung's Golden Hours (coll 1922) with intro by
Hilaire BELLOC; Kai Lung Unrolls his Mat (coll 1928); The Story of Wan and
the Remarkable Shrub and The Story of Ching-Kwei and the Destinies (coll
1927 chap US), offering 2 stories from the previous volume, another story
from which appeared as Kin Weng and the Miraculous Tusk 1941 chap); The
Moon of Much Gladness (1932; vt The Return of Kai Lung 1937 US) and Kai
Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree (coll 1940). The first three titles were
assembled as The Kai Lung Omnibus (omni 1936); The Celestial Omnibus (coll
1963) is a selection; Kai Lung: Six (coll 1974) assembles tales EB did not
himself collect. Of sf interest is What Might Have Been (1907 anon; with
new preface vt The Secret of the League 1909 as by EB), a somewhat tedious
anti-socialist melodrama, involving flight with belted-on mechanical
wings; the sequel, a future- WAR tale called "The War Hawks" (1908),
appeared in The Specimen Case (coll 1924). [JC]Other works: The Mirror of
Kong Ho (1905); the associational Max Carrados books about a blind
detective, comprising Max Carrados (coll 1914), The Eyes of Max Carrados
(coll 1923) and Max Carrados Mysteries (coll 1927); Ernest Bramah (coll
1929).

BRAND, MAX
Best-known pseudonym of US writer Frederick (Schiller) Faust (1892-1944),
who from before 1920 used many names and produced innumerable tales and
filmscripts in many genres, including the Western classic Destry Rides
Again (1930); it was first filmed in 1932, and became famous through the
1939 version, with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. The psychic
contortions that attend the discovery of a Missing Link in Africa ( APES
AND CAVEMEN) impart a lurid glow to "That Receding Brow" (1919 All-Story
Magazine), which may be his first tale of genre interest. MB began
publishing books in volume form with The Untamed (1919), the first volume
of the Dan Barry sequence of Westerns, whose protagonist, a "Pan of the
desert" and werewolf, enjoys a strangely intimate rapport with wild
animals; the series continued with The Night Horseman (1920), The Seventh
Man (1921) and Dan Barry's Daughter (1923). The Garden of Eden (1922) is a
LOST-WORLD tale, and The Smoking Land (1937 Argosy as by George Challis;
1980) stereotypically discloses another lost world, in the Arctic,
complete with futuristic aircraft and rumbustious action. Throughout MB's
work, illuminating the most pulp-like plots, can be discerned the voice of
a slyly civilized writer. [JC]About the author: Max Brand: Western Giant
(anth 1986) ed William F. NOLAN.

BRANDON, FRANK
[s] Kenneth BULMER.

BRAUN, JOHANNA
[r] and GUNTER [r] GERMANY.

BRAUTIGAN, RICHARD (GARY)
(1935-1984) US writer and poet, known primarily for his work outside the
sf field. Most of his whimsically surreal fiction - like A Confederate
General from Big Sur (1964) or Trout Fishing in America (1967) - lies on
the borderline of FANTASY. The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (1974),
which is sf, plays amusingly with the Frankenstein theme. In Watermelon
Sugar (1968), set in an indeterminate hippie-pastoral setting, echoes the
post- HOLOCAUST novels of conventional sf. RB committed suicide.
[PR/JC]See also: UTOPIAS.

BRAX, COLEMAN
[s] M. Coleman EASTON.

BRAY, JOHN FRANCIS
(1809-1897) US writer, mostly of (sometimes radical) economic tracts. He
was in the UK 1822-42 and there produced, among other works, A Voyage from
Utopia (written 1841; 1957 UK), which anticipated William Dean HOWELLS's
technique of presenting the views of a visitor from the UTOPIA. In JFB's
book the visitor's responses to the labour conditions and abiding
hypocrisies characteristic of the UK and USA are republican, satirical (
SATIRE) and outraged. JFB rightly thought the work unpublishable in his
time. [JC]

BRAZIL
LATIN AMERICA.

BRAZIL
Film (1985). Brazil/20th Century-Fox/Universal. Dir Terry Gilliam,
starring Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins,
Peter Vaughan, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Kim Greist. Screenplay Gilliam,
Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown. 142 mins. Colour.The US print of B was
initially cut by Universal because it was too long and depressing, but,
following a highly publicized squabble with Gilliam, Universal backed down
when the film won three LA Film Critics Awards. Universal's commercial
instincts, though condemned as philistine, were correct: the film is
indeed self-indulgently long, and has never won mass acceptance, though
gaining high cult status.This black comedy pits a shy, romantic file clerk
against a faceless, sinister, bureaucratic, all-powerful Ministry of
Information in an imaginary present derived equally from George ORWELL and
Franz KAFKA. Director Gilliam began his career as animation director of
the classic tv series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-71), and B's
great strength is its stunning visual appearance, both in the prolonged
and surreal dream sequences (showing freedom and heroic action) and in the
slightly more realistic city of the main action, where
industrial-Victorian gloom (ducts and pneumatic tubes everywhere)
overshadows the futuristic (paste meals). The performances are unusually
good, especially Palin's yuppie torturer, but Pryce's one-note, hysterical
performance is tiringly unattractive. The satire veers arbitrarily in its
objects between the trivial and the horrible, plastic surgery and
paper-shuffling on the one hand, night raids by secret police and
state-endorsed murder on the other. The bitterness of the film's plea for
(unreachable) freedom is partly lost in the intellectual kitsch of its
designer DYSTOPIA. Gilliam's obsessive relationship to a cruelty he seems
to regard as inescapable has always been ambiguous: he both fears and uses
it, which here produces an involuntary but pervasive subtext of
collaboration with the torturers. [PN]

BREBNER, WINSTON
(1924?- ) US writer whose sf novel Doubting Thomas (1956) depicts a
computer-ruled DYSTOPIA. [JC]

BREDE, ARNOLD
Pseudonym of a UK writer who identity has not been discovered; he wrote 3
crime novels, and the unremarkable Sister Earth (1951), about a counter
Earth on the other side of the sun. [JC]

BREGGIN, PETER (ROGER)
(1936- ) US writer whose sf DYSTOPIA, After the Good War: A Love Story
(1972), excoriates meaningless SEX [JC]

BRENNERT, ALAN (MICHAEL)
(1954- ) US tv producer and scriptwriter, and also author, essentially of
fantasy and horror. His first genre publication was "Nostalgia Tripping"
for Infinity Five (anth 1973) ed Robert HOSKINS. In his first novel, City
of Masques (1978), actors scientifically programmed to become their roles
run amok. Time and Chance (1990) is a kind of sf/horror tale in which two
ALTERNATE WORLDS intersect, allowing two versions of the same person to
switch roles: the consequences of the switch are depicted with acumen and
passion. The title story of Her Pilgrim Soul and Other Stories (coll 1990)
is also sf, and the title story of Ma Qui and Other Phantoms (coll 1991)
won a 1992 NEBULA award for Best Short Story; but much of AB's genre work
lies in media other than the written word.He is very active in tv, his
sf/fantasy scripts including some for BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY
(1979-81) and WONDER WOMAN (1978-9), and more recently 13 scripts for the
second series of The TWILIGHT ZONE (1985-7). He is probably best known to
the world at large as a writer for, and producer of, the top-rating tv
series LA Law.AB has written occasionally for COMICS, mostly Batman,
through the 1980s; his small but impressive body of work in this medium
also makes much use of the PARALLEL-WORLDS concept. Some of these pieces
appear in DC COMICS's The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told (1989).
[JC/PN]Other work: Kindred Spirits (1984), a juvenile.

BRETNOR, (ALFRED) REGINALD
(1911-1992) US writer and anthologist, born Alfred Reginald Kahn - he
changed his name legally to Bretnor after WWII - in Vladivostok, Siberia,
but resident in the USA since 1919; active since WWII in a number of
genres as an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His interest in
military theory, which first generated articles and Decisive Warfare
(1969), later inspired the The Future at War series of anthologies: Thor's
Hammer (anth 1979), The Spear of Mars (anth 1980) and Orion's Sword (anth
1980).RB began publishing sf with "Maybe Just a Little One" for Harper's
Magazine in 1947, and many of his later stories appeared in the slick
magazines. His single most famous story is probably the hilarious "The
Gnurrs Come from the Voodvork Out" (1950), a tale that, on its first
publication in FSF, epitomized for many the wit and literacy of that
magazine's new broom. This was the first of a protracted series of stories
about Papa Schimmelhorn, assembled as The Schimmelhorn File (coll 1979)
and followed by Schimmelhorn's Gold (1986), a comic tale of alchemy which
brews sf and fantasy tropes in a pot of hornswoggling. The three critical
symposia he edited on sf-Modern Science Fiction, Its Meaning and Its
Future (anth 1953; slightly exp 1979), Science Fiction, Today and Tomorrow
(anth 1974) and The Craft of Science Fiction (anth 1976) - have proved
among the most substantial nonfiction contributions to the field. Each
contains articles by well known sf writers: the only critics represented
are those who also write sf. One Man's BEM: Thoughts on Science Fiction
(1992) vividly represents his own views.As Grendel Briarton, RB from 1956
contributed to FSF a series of joke vignettes whose punch-lines are as a
rule distorted or punning catch-phrases. They have become known, from
Ferdinand Feghoot, their continuing protagonist, as Feghoots, and can be
found assembled in Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot (coll
1962chap; exp vt The Compleat Feghoot 1975; further exp vt The (Even) More
Compleat Feghoot 1980; final exp vt The Collected Feghoot 1992). RB was
also a translator and lecturer. [JC]Other works: A Killing in Swords
(1978), associational, featuring RB's detective hero, Alastair Timoroff;
Gilpin's Space (1983 ASF as "Owl's Flight"; exp 1986); Of Force, Violence,
and Other Imponderables: Essays on War, Politics, and Government (coll
1993).About the author: The Work of Reginald Bretnor: An Annotated
Bibliography & Guide (1989) by Scott Alan Burgess.See also: CORPSICLE;
CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; HUMOUR; The
MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; WAR.

BRETT, LEO
R.L. FANTHORPE.

BREUER, MILES J(OHN)
(1889-1947) US writer and physician who began publishing sf with "The Man
with the Strange Head" for AMZ in 1927. He published a number of notable
stories until about 1942. His solo work has not been collected in book
form, which makes it difficult now to find such stories as "The Appendix
and the Spectacles" (1928), "The Gostak and the Doshes" (1930), both in
AMZ and both since anthologized, and "Paradise and Iron" (1930 AMZ
Quarterly), a novel which strikes an early (for US GENRE SF) warning note
about the perils of the UTOPIAN technological fix. His only works to have
reached book form are The Girl from Mars (1929 chap) with Jack WILLIAMSON
and The Birth of a New Republic (1930 AMZ Quarterly; 1981 chap, but at
2000 words per page), also with Williamson, on whom MJB had a formative
influence; the latter tale is a political melodrama in which the working
residents of the Moon rebel against Earth. An intelligent though somewhat
crude writer, MJB was particularly strong in his articulation of fresh
ideas. [JC]See also: AMAZING STORIES; AUTOMATION; COLONIZATION OF OTHER
WORLDS; COMPUTERS; DIMENSIONS; DYSTOPIAS; HISTORY IN SF; LEISURE;
MATHEMATICS; MEDICINE; MOON; POLITICS; WAR.

BRIARTON, GRENDEL
[s] Reginald BRETNOR.

BRICK BRADFORD
US COMIC strip created by author William Ritt and artist Clarence Gray
for King Features Syndicate. BB appeared in 1933 as a Sunday page and
daily strip, with the Sunday strip the more fantastic and futuristic.
Gray's clean, economical style, together with Ritt's imaginative, purple
prose, made BB more than just an imitation of BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH
CENTURY, which probably inspired it. Ritt was fired in 1948 for failing to
keep deadlines, and Gray developed cancer in the 1950s. Artist Paul Norris
took over the daily strip in 1952, and the Sunday page in 1957, writing as
well as illustrating.Bradford was a red-haired hero with a lovely
sidekick, April Southern. The poetic imagery of BB was pure SPACE OPERA
(futuristic cities rise out of lush jungles, flying ships battle with
giant butterflies, etc.), while the scenarios were just as exotic as the
contemporary sf appearing in the magazines: the discovery of lost races, a
descent into the microcosmic universe within a coin, a journey by drilling
vehicle to the Earth's interior world, and travels through time and space
in the Time Top or "Chronosphere".BB appeared as a serial film (Columbia,
1947, 15 episodes, starring Kane Richmond), an sf comic book and a Big
Little Book ( JUVENILE SERIES). [JE/PN]

BRIDE, THE
The BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN .

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE
Film (1935). Universal. Dir James Whale, starring Boris Karloff, Colin
Clive, Elsa Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger. Screenplay John Balderston,
William Hurlbut. 80 mins. B/w.This sequel to the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN, also
dir Whale, is the greatest of the many Frankenstein movies and one of the
greatest sf movies. Some watchers feel that the horror and pathos of the
story are a little overwhelmed by Whale's morbid sense of comedy, seen
here particularly in the bizarre figure of the gin-drinking, vain Dr
Praetorious, creator of homunculi, who blackmails Frankenstein into
constructing an artificial bride for the Monster. We learn immediately
from the prologue - in which Mary SHELLEY ("frightened of thunder, fearful
of the dark"), played by Lanchester, talks to Percy Shelley and Byron -
that the Monster was not killed at the end of the previous film after all;
later we see the Monster floundering through the forest, captured by
villagers, breaking free, and befriended by a blind hermit where, in a
scene of justly celebrated pathos, he is taught to smoke a cigarette. But
nothing prepares one for the extraordinary, protracted finale, the most
stylized scene in a stylized film, choreographed to perfection. Here the
Bride (Lanchester again, thus making a clear and interesting
identification of Mary Shelley with her sad, monstrous creation) comes to
life - as electrical equipment splutters and sparks - lurches not
ungracefully across the room, a white streak in her wild coiffure, screams
at her first sight of the Monster, shrinks from him, and finally hisses
like a maddened cat as the rejected Monster pulls the lever that will
destroy her and all the rest. It is an unforgettable tableau.Whale was too
theatrical for tragedy and perhaps too sceptical for true horror, with as
much of Oscar Wilde as Shakespeare in his sensibility. But nevertheless
his conservatism, his sophisticated, deeply un-American sense of irony,
and his bold sense of symbolism make this one of the strongest cinematic
statements ever made about, paradoxically, both the potency and the
impotence of science.A rather different story, although with deliberate
parallels, is told in the much later The Bride (1985) dir Franc Roddam,
starring Sting, Jennifer Beals, Clancy Brown, David Rappaport, Alexei
Sayle. 118 mins. Colour. Here the Bride (Beals) is initially repelled by
the Monster (Brown), who flees in dismay to wander afar in the company of
a dwarf (Rappaport). Frankenstein (a wooden Sting) becomes obsessed with
the Bride to the point of attempted rape; she is saved by the returned
Monster, whose love she now reciprocates. In one of the deliberately
humorous scenes the fleeing Monster encounters a blind man, who fondly
touches his face and then triumphantly yells "I've found him!" to the
pursuing mob. [PN/JGr]

BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR
RE-ANIMATOR.

BRIDE OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK
The INCREDIBLE HULK .

BRIDGEMAN, RICHARD
[s] L.P. DAVIES.

BRIDGES, T(HOMAS) C(HARLES)
(1868-1944) French-born UK writer, often in Florida. A prolific author of
boys' fiction from about 1902, he wrote some sf tales for the oldest
segment of his audience. Of greatest interest are Martin Crusoe: A Boy's
Adventure on Wizard Island (1920), which takes young Martin Vaile to the
eponymous island, a relic of ATLANTIS, and The Death Star (1940), a rather
grim tale set on a depopulated Earth. [JC]Other works: Men of the Mist
(1923); The Hidden City (1923); The City of No Escape (1925).As
Christopher Beck: The Crimson Airplane (1913); The Brigand of the Air
(1920); The People of the Chasm (1923).

BRIGGS, RAYMOND (REDVERS)
(1934- ) UK illustrator and writer, active in both capacities from about
1958, and best known for several tales told in COMIC-book format,
including Fungus the Bogeyman (graph 1977) and Fungus the Bogeyman Plop-Up
Book (graph 1982), both borderline sf, in which the meticulously
worked-out topsy-turvy world of the underground Bogeys, opposite to humans
in every way, serves to illuminate life on the surface, and The Snowman
(graph 1978), a fantasy. When the Wind Blows (graph 1982) is a singularly
unrelenting SATIRE on the true worth of civil defence in any genuine
nuclear HOLOCAUST. The two protagonists, naive and trusting "ordinary"
people, follow the instructions to the letter, as though it were the
Battle of Britain once again, and die slowly in horror and bewilderment.
[JC]

BRIN, (GLEN) DAVID
(1950- ) US writer with a BS in astronomy and an MS in applied physics,
who began publishing sf with his first novel, Sundiver (1980), which is
also the first volume in the ongoing Uplift sequence, for which he remains
best known: it continued with STARTIDE RISING (1983; rev 1985) and THE
UPLIFT WAR (1987), the two being assembled as Earthclan (omni 1987);
further volumes are projected. STARTIDE RISING won both the HUGO and the
NEBULA awards for best novel; THE UPLIFT WAR won a Hugo. As a whole, the
series established DB as the most popular and - with the exception of Greg
BEAR - the most important author of HARD SF to appear in the
1980s.However, despite their both being fairly characterized as hard-sf
writers, DB and Bear demonstrate through their fundamental differences of
approach something of the range of work which can be subsumed under that
rubric. Some exponents of hard sf speak as though it were a kind of
writing which adhered to rigorous models of scientific explanation and
extrapolation, eschewing both the doubletalk of SPACE OPERA "science" and
the psychobabble of "soft" disciplines like sociology; and it might be
argued that Bear attempts to convey in his work a sense that he is
carrying that form of discipline to its uttermost, and beyond. Not so with
DB. Despite his professional competence as a physicist - a level of
scientific qualification not shared by Bear - he writes tales in which the
physical constraints governing the knowable Universe are flouted with
high-handed panache, with the effect that - for instance - the Uplift
books are as compulsive reading as anything ever published in the genre.
The basic premise of the sequence is simple enough, though its
workings-out are increasingly complicated. All thinking life in the
Universe-or at least throughout the Five Galaxies encompassed in the three
books so far - takes part in a vast hierarchical drama of evolutionary
uplift, at the pinnacle of which are the Progenitors who - eons before
humanity's entry into the scene - established laws to govern the creation
and interaction of species. The Progenitors are now long gone - the
intergalactic search for relics of their presence shapes much of the
sequence - but before their departure they established five Patron Lines,
races which govern individual galaxies. On achieving Contact with the
local Patron Line, Homo sapiens (which uniquely among known races does not
belong to the family tree that descends from the Progenitors) then
replicates in small - by uplifting dolphins and chimpanzees to full
sentience and partnership - a central imperative of the galactic
ancestors. But problems arise.The secondary premise of the sequence - one
that breeds true from the GOLDEN-AGE assumptions that have tended to
govern space opera on this scale-generates most of the action. The human
race, according to this premise, is a kind of sport, more ambitious and
energetic and fast-moving than other galactic peoples. The local Patron
Line has become corrupt, and its rulers hope to batten on human vitality;
moreover, the Galactic Library Institute, supposedly autonomous, has
itself been corrupted, and the human race has begun to learn caution about
the technological data and other lessons supposedly passed down from the
Progenitors via this source. Sundiver plunges into the heart of all this.
A human expedition penetrates the Sun, where lifeforms are found which
impart secrets about the Universe and the Library. In STARTIDE RISING, one
of the most rousing space operas yet written, a starship crewed by
uplifted dolphins and a GENETICALLY ENGINEERED human find an ancient fleet
and an ancient cadaver, and must contrive somehow to escape an assortment
of Patron-led foes and get their prize of knowledge and power back to
Earth. THE UPLIFT WAR, seemingly an interlude, transfers the action to a
planet occupied by Earth humans and neo-chimps who may have some clue as
to the location of the Progenitors. The sequence is clearly intended to
extend into further volumes.Insofar as DB's singletons stay closer to
home, they are less successful. The Practice Effect (1984) reworks in
fantasy terms the oddly Lamarckian principles ( EVOLUTION) espoused in the
space operas. The Postman (1985), set in a worryingly PASTORAL
postHOLOCAUST USA, eulogizes Yankee decencies without much analysing the
hugely complex cultural matrix that shaped them. Heart of the Comet (1986)
with Gregory BENFORD is an uneasy marriage of two very different hard-sf
writers, Benford caught as usual in the coils of Stapledonian Sehnsucht (
Olaf STAPLEDON) and DB resolutely uplifting. In Earth (1990), a novel of
very considerable ambition about the NEAR-FUTURE death of the planet for
all the usual (and quite possibly valid) reasons, Gaia is rescued at the
last moment from a gnawing BLACK HOLE and other threats by an infusion of
PULP-MAGAZINE plotting that consorts ill with the pressing seriousness of
the issues raised. This is not to say that DB fails to raise those issues:
more than any of his earlier novels, Earth demonstrates his very
considerable cognitive grasp of issues, his omnivorousness as a
researcher, and the reasoning that lies behind his stubborn optimism. He
is, in other words, a taker of cognitive risks, and Glory Season (1993) -
which seems to require a sequel - demonstrates this attractive
characteristic in its compendious attempt to present a matriarchal culture
with virtues, warts, centres of inherent strength, and fault lines too.
The story takes place on a planet long isolated from "normal"
male-dominated human hegemony; its climax portends an ultimate clash
between the two ways of life. Like E.E. "Doc" SMITH before him, DB gives
joy and imparts a SENSE OF WONDER; but he also thinks about the near
world. It is to be hoped that he continues to do both. [JC]Other works:
The River of Time (coll 1986), which contains the Hugo-winning "The
Crystal Spheres" (1984); Dr Pak's Preschool (1988 chap); Project Solar
Sail (anth 1990) with Arthur C. CLARKE; Piecework (1991 chap);Otherness
(coll 1994 UK).See also: ALIENS; APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD);
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; BIOLOGY; DISASTER; ECOLOGY; GAMES AND TOYS;
JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD; LINGUISTICS; LIVING WORLDS; MERCURY;
MONSTERS; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; POLLUTION; SCIENTISTS; SOCIAL DARWINISM;
SUN; UNDER THE SEA.

BRINGSVAERD, TOR AGE
[r] SCANDINAVIA.

BRINTON, HENRY
(1901-1977) UK writer, variously engaged in social and political work,
whose sf novel Purple-6 (1962) describes a world at the verge of atomic
HOLOCAUST. [JC]

BRITAIN, DAN
Don PENDLETON.

BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY
The BFS was formed in 1971 (as the British Weird Fantasy Society) for
"all devotees of fantasy, horror, and the supernatural". Catering now in
the main for horror fans, this active society - which sponsors an annual
CONVENTION, Fantasycon (1975-current) - has no direct relevance to sf
other than a substantial crossover of membership with sf groups. However,
an earlier British Fantasy Society (1942-6) was sf-based ( BRITISH SCIENCE
FICTION ASSOCIATION for further details). [PR]

BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION (BSFA)
Despite their names, the British Science Literary Association (1931),
organized by Walter GILLINGS, and the first British Science Fiction
Association (1933-5), organized by the Hayes SF Club, failed to become
much more than local groups. The UK's first truly national organizations -
the Science Fiction Association (1937-9), the first BRITISH FANTASY
SOCIETY (1942-6) and the Science Fantasy Society (1948-51) - were
short-lived. The BSFA was established at Easter 1958 in order to
counteract a decline in UK FANDOM by providing a central organization of
interest to casual sf readers. The association's principal attraction was
(and is) its journal, VECTOR, published intermittently since 1958. The
BSFA library has since the mid-1970s been held on indefinite loan as part
of the SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION's collection. The BSFA sponsored the
annual UK Easter sf CONVENTIONS 1959-67 and also initiated the British
Fantasy Award (first presented 1966; changed 1970 to the BRITISH SCIENCE
FICTION AWARD). Brian W. ALDISS was the BSFA's first president 1960-64,
being followed by Edmund CRISPIN, who retained the position until the BSFA
became a limited company in 1967.Other periodicals published by the BSFA
are Matrix (sf/fan news), Paperback Inferno (before 1980 titled Paperback
Parlour; paperback book reviews) and Focus (articles on writing and
selling sf). Paperback Inferno was merged into Vector in late 1992 (from
Vector # 169). Membership has been substantial for the past decade.
Despite occasional administrative slumps and only lukewarm support from
established fandom, the BSFA has a useful function in introducing new fans
to sf discussions and controversies, and in pointing them towards specific
local fan organizations. [RH/PR/PN]

BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD
This award developed from the British Fantasy Award, which was sponsored
by the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION and made to a writer: John
BRUNNER won the first in 1966. It became the British Science Fiction Award
in 1970, and thereafter was for a book. From 1979 the number of categories
was increased, and decreased again in 1993. The eligibility rules have
occasionally changed; most early versions required UK authorship, but
later only UK publication was required. The Best Artist award was normally
given for a specific cover rather than for a body of work, and became
officially Best Artwork in 1992. Special awards have been made only three
times, in 1974, 1977 and 1994. In recent years the BSFA Awards, as they
are often known, have been voted on by BSFA members and members of the UK
national Easter CONVENTION, Eastercon, although often not by very many of
them; in some early years the adjudication was done by a small judging
panel. They are normally announced at Eastercon. Because the award has not
been well publicized and has a narrow voting base, it has never had the
hoped-for effect of acting as a counterweight to the US-dominated HUGOS
and NEBULAS. Although usually named for the year in which works became
eligible, the awards are listed below according to the year in which they
were actually made (i.e., the following year):1970: STAND ON ZANZIBAR by
John Brunner1971: The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner1972: The Moment of
Eclipse by Brian W. ALDISS1973: No award (insufficient votes)1974:
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur C. CLARKE; special award to Brian W. Aldiss
for Billion Year Spree1975: INVERTED WORLD by Christopher PRIEST1976:
Orbitsville by Bob SHAW1977: Brontomek! by Michael G. CONEY; special award
to David A. KYLE for A Pictorial History of Science Fiction1978: The Jonah
Kit by Ian WATSON1979: novel A SCANNER DARKLY by Philip K. DICK;
collection Deathbird Stories by Harlan ELLISON; media The HITCH HIKER'S
GUIDE TO THE GALAXY 1980: novel The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G.
BALLARD; short fiction "Palely Loitering" by Christopher Priest; media The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy record; artist Jim BURNS1981: novel
TIMESCAPE by Gregory BENFORD; short fiction "The Brave Little Toaster" by
Thomas M. DISCH; media The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2nd series;
artist Peter Jones1982: novel THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER by Gene WOLFE;
short fiction "Mythago Wood" by Robert P. HOLDSTOCK; media Time Bandits;
artist Bruce PENNINGTON1983: novel HELLICONIA SPRING by Brian W. Aldiss;
short fiction "Kitemaster" by Keith ROBERTS; media BLADE RUNNER; artist
Tim WHITE1984: novel Tik-Tok by John T. SLADEK; short fiction "After
Images" by Malcolm EDWARDS; media ANDROID; artist Bruce Pennington1985:
novel Mythago Wood by Robert P. Holdstock; short fiction "The Unconquered
Country" by Geoff RYMAN; media The Company of Wolves; artist Jim
Burns1986: novel Helliconia Winter by Brian W. Aldiss; short fiction "Cube
Root" by David LANGFORD; media BRAZIL; artist Jim Burns1987: novel THE
RAGGED ASTRONAUTS by Bob Shaw; short fiction "Kaeti and the Hangman" by
Keith Roberts; media ALIENS; artist Keith Roberts1988: novel Grainne by
Keith Roberts; short fiction "Love Sickness" by Geoff Ryman; media STAR
COPS; artist Jim Burns1989: novel Lavondyss by Robert P. Holdstock; short
fiction "Dark Night in Toyland" by Bob Shaw; media Who Framed Roger
Rabbit; artist Alan Lee1990: novel Pyramids by Terry PRATCHETT; short
fiction "In Translation" by Lisa TUTTLE; media RED DWARF; artist Jim
Burns1991: novel TAKE BACK PLENTY by Colin GREENLAND; short fiction "The
Original Doctor Shade" by Kim NEWMAN; media Twin Peaks; artist Ian
MILLER1992: novel The Fall of Hyperion by Dan SIMMONS; short fiction "Bad
Timing" by Molly Brown; media TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY; best artwork
Mark Harrison1993: novel, RED MARS by Kim Stanley ROBINSON; short fiction
"The Innocents" by Ian MCDONALD; artwork Jim Burns, cover for Hearts,
Hands and Voices by Ian McDonald.1994: novel Aztec Century by Christopher
EVANS; short fiction "The Ragthorn" by Robert Holdstock and Garry
KILWORTH; artwork Jim Burns, cover for Red Dust (Gollancz) byPaul J.
McAuley; special award The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ed John CLUTE
and Peter NICHOLLS. [PN]

BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE
VARGO STATTEN SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE.

BRITISH SPACE FICTION MAGAZINE
VARGO STATTEN SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE.

BRITTON, DAVID
(1945- ) UK publisher and writer, founder with Michael BUTTERWORTH of
Savoy Books, whose list included works by Michael MOORCOCK, Charles PLATT
and Jack Trevor STORY. With Butterworth, he edited The Savoy Book (anth
1978) and Savoy Dreams (anth 1984), which attempted with some success to
demonstrate the anti-establishment ethos of the house, an ethos that
brought both DB and Butterworth into conflict with the UK obscenity laws,
as applied by the local police. Copies of DB's first novel, Lord Horror
(1989), a scatological examination of Nazism and the UK traitor Lord
Haw-Haw which made use of pornographic imagery upsetting to the Manchester
police, were seized. A GRAPHIC NOVEL version of some of the same material,
Lord Horror (graph in 5 parts 1990-91), was also produced. The novel -
which depicts the survival in Burma of Hitler and Lord Haw-Haw - was
clearly, if very offensively, a SATIRE; and the destruction order on
remaining copies of the text was duly and properly lifted by a UK court in
July 1992 - although the graphic novel remained banned. [JC]

BRITTON, LIONEL (ERSKINE NIMMO)
(1887-1971) UK writer who gained some prominence between the two world
wars for works of speculative political philosophy, the premises of which
were transformed into Brain: A Play of the Whole Earth (1930), a drama in
which a giant AI is set up in the Sahara to run human affairs, which it
does until nearly the end of time, when a wandering star collides with the
planet. Spacetime Inn (1932), also a play, expounds a vision of things
derived in part from the theories of J.W. DUNNE. [JC]

BROCKLEY, FENTON
Donald Sydney ROWLAND.

BROCKWAY, (ARCHIBALD) FENNER
(1888-1988) UK writer long active in socialist politics - he was made a
life peer in 1964 - and long respected for his humane views. His sf novel
Purple Plague: A Tale of Love and Revolution (1935) uses a liner stranded
at sea by a mysterious plague as a venue for egalitarian reversals of the
status quo. [JC]

BRODERICK, DAMIEN (FRANCIS)
(1944- ) Australian writer, editor and critic; he has a PhD in the
semiotics of fiction, science and sf with special reference to the work of
Samuel R. DELANY. He has edited three anthologies of Australian sf: The
Zeitgeist Machine (anth 1976), Strange Attractors (anth 1985) and Matilda
at the Speed of Light (anth 1988).DB's first professionally published sf,
"The Sea's Furthest End" in New Writings in SF 1 (anth 1964) ed John
CARNELL, much later formed the basis for his novel The Sea's Furthest End
(1993). He has written short stories intermittently ever since, some to be
found in A Man Returned (coll 1965) and The Dark Between the Stars (coll
1991). His first novel was Sorcerer's World (1970 US); however, he hit his
stride only with his second, The Dreaming Dragons: A Time Opera (1980),
followed by The Judas Mandala (1982 US; rev 1990 Australia). Both books
are crammed with ideas, and like The Black Grail (1986 US) - a far more
complex and sophisticated rewrite of Sorcerer's World - depend upon
elaborate plotting involving alternative timelines and temporal paradoxes.
His work is indebted to structural LINGUISTICS, and Noam Chomsky -
apparently venerated by DB as a political radical and a universal
grammarian - is offered explicit homage when DB names a future language in
The Judas Mandala and a planet in Valencies (1983, with Rory Barnes) after
him. The Judas Mandala is more explicitly influenced by French
structuralism. DB has since shown a cautious interest in literary
deconstruction, most obviously in his criticism and in his one mainstream
novel, Transmitters (1984), a formidable but surprisingly funny book about
sf fans ( RECURSIVE SF). Striped Holes (1988) reads like a comic version
of The Dreaming Dragons or The Judas Mandala, with familiar temporal
paradoxes and embedded plotting, but the style is classic sf comedy in the
vein of Robert SHECKLEY or, perhaps, Kurt VONNEGUT Jr in a good mood. His
1993 novel The Sea's Furthest End completed his Faustus Hexagram sequence,
comprising also The Dreaming Dragons, The Judas Mandala, Transmitters, The
Black Grail and Striped Holes. [RuB]See also: COMPUTERS; GENERATION
STARSHIPS; INTELLIGENCE; VIRTUAL REALITY.

BRONX WARRIORS
1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX.

BRONX WARRIORS 2
1990: I GUERRIERI DEL BRONX.

BROOD, THE
Film (1979). Mutual Productions/Elgin International. Written and dir
David CRONENBERG, starring Oliver Reed, Samantha Eggar, Art Hindle, Cindy
Hinds. 91 mins. Colour.In this Canadian film, the Somafree Institute of
Psychoplasmics's pop psychologist Raglan (Reed), author of The Shape of
Rage, is regarded with suspicion by Carveth (Hindle), whose wife Nola
(Eggar) is a patient there. Gathering evidence against Raglan, Carveth
finds dreadful physical changes taking place in Raglan's ex-patients.
Meanwhile, Nola's parents are murdered by monsters shaped like deformed
children; these later kidnap Carveth's young daughter (Hinds). Confronting
Raglan, Carveth learns that, through bodily metamorphosis, monsters of the
mind are given literal shape as Raglan's therapy takes effect on his
patients. In the final sequence Carveth witnesses yet another of his
wife's "brood", the creatures of her rage, being born from a yolk sac
extruded close to her vagina. It takes an extraordinarily confident
film-maker to direct a farrago like this without faltering, but
Cronenberg's use of the body as metaphor - psychobabble made flesh - is
carried off with conviction and wit, and even, where lesser directors
would be content with evoking disgust, a compassion for the monstrous as
being, after all, only human. There is a subtext about children as
victims, suffering a pain transmitted through generations. All the events
are viewed with the unblinking, innocent gaze - itself childlike - that
characterizes Cronenberg's surreal style. [PN]See also: CINEMA; MONSTER
MOVIES; SEX.

BROOKE, (BERNARD) JOCELYN
(1908-1966) UK writer, most noted for psychological fantasias like The
Scapegoat (1949) and The Goose Cathedral (1950). The Image of a Drawn
Sword (1950) uses borderline sf devices to convey the dreamlike horror of
its protagonist's recruitment into a merciless army. The Crisis in
Bulgaria, or Ibsen to the Rescue! (1956), with the author's own collage
illustrations, combines Victorian fantasy and parody. [JC]

BROOKE, KEITH
(1966- ) UK writer who began publishing sf with "Adrenotropic Man" for
Interzone in 1989, and whose first novel, Keepers of the Peace (1990),
depicts in singularly gloomy terms the slow evisceration of a group of
soldiers sent down from near space to police a fragmented USA. The
Expatria sequence - Expatria (1991) and Expatria Incorporated (1992) - has
elements of the PLANETARY ROMANCE in that its story takes place upon,
although it does not materially affect, the eponymous colony planet; in
the first volume, the young protagonist must both defend himself against
the charge that he has murdered his father and attempt to prevent his
fellow colonists from descending into barbarism, while at the same time
awaiting a rescue ship (upon whose approach turns the plot of the second
volume). KB has already demonstrated ample talent and energy, but has yet
to focus them. [JC]

BROOKE-ROSE, CHRISTINE
(1923- ) UK novelist and academic, born in Switzerland, resident in the
UK in the 1950s and 1960s, thereafter lecturer and then professor of
American literature at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes) from 1969
until her retirement in 1988. She was married 1968-75 to Jerzy
PETERKIEWICZ. CB-R is widely known for critical works like A Grammar of
Metaphor (1958) and A Rhetoric of the Unreal (1981), which formally
assimilates the narrative strategies of sf and fantasy into those of
metafiction ( FABULATION) in terms compatible with Tzvetan TODOROV's
theory of the fantastic. As a novelist, she is perhaps best known for
early works outside the field like The Dear Deceit (1958), but has
increasingly produced texts whose displacements are more than
linguistic.The Middlemen: A Satire (1961) is a fantasticated NEAR-FUTURE
assault on the worlds of public relations. Out (1964), an sf novel, is set
in a post- HOLOCAUST Afro-Eurasia in which the colour barrier has been
reversed, ostensibly for medical reasons, as the "Colourless" seem to be
fatally ill. Such (1966) reanimates the dead astronomer Lazarus, who tells
of his experiences during death, interrogating the nature of language as
he does so. Out and Such were assembled with two non-genre novels, Between
(1968) and Thru (1975), as The Christine Brooke-Rose Omnibus (omni 1986).
Some fantasies, including the title story, were assembled in Go when You
See the Green Man Walking (coll 1969). Amalgamemnon (1984) addresses the
future through words which cannot be believed, as they come from Cassandra
(who also speaks as a woman). Xorandor (1986) and its sequel Verbivore
(1990), which make up a series designed ostensibly for older children,
feature a sentient rock, with a computer-like mentality, awakened by the
information-noise of humans; in the second volume Xorandor's children -
chips off the old block - shut down human communications systems to keep
sane. And Textermination (1991) is a discourse on textuality, in which a
large number of characters from famous novels come together in a campaign
to transcend their "texts" and become "real". CB-R, with dry cunning,
writes sf nouveaux romans, and challenges the genre to talk back. [JC]See
also: WOMEN SF WRITERS.

BROOKS, SAMUEL I.
George S. SCHUYLER.

BROSNAN, JOHN
(1947- ) Australian writer and journalist, resident for many years in the
UK, a one-time prominent member of RATFANDOM. He was known for his writing
on genre films some time before he began publishing sf in any quantity.
His five books on CINEMA are James Bond in the Cinema (1972), Movie Magic:
The Story of Special Effects in the Cinema (1974), The Horror People
(1976), Future Tense: The Cinema of Science Fiction (1978) and The Primal
Screen: A History of Science Fiction Film (1991); the first three relate
peripherally to sf, and the fifth is in effect a light-hearted update and
rewrite of the fourth. JB wrote most of the film entries in the first
edition of this volume; he has also contributed film columns to SCIENCE
FICTION MONTHLY and STARBURST and was for some time the lead book reviewer
for the UK horror magazine The Dark Side.JB's first sf was "Conversation
on a Starship in Warp-Drive" in Antigrav (anth 1975) ed Philip STRICK. His
books under his own name begin with the adventure novels Skyship (1981)
and The Midas Deep (1983). He then went on to publish the first of his
pseudonymous novels, most written in partnership with Leroy Kettle (1949-
); these written equivalents of exploitation movies are slightly
self-mocking but quite exciting as sf horror; all are variants on the
humans-being-destroyed-by-monstrous-things theme. Those as by Harry Adam
Knight include Slimer (1983), Carnosaur (1984) by JB alone, The Fungus
(1985; vt Death Spore US) and Bedlam (1992); those as by Simon Ian Childer
are Tendrils (1986) and, by JB alone, Worm (1987; 1988 US as by Harry Adam
Knight). The initials of the pseudonyms were no accident. Torched (1986)
with John BAXTER, both writing as James Blackstone, is about spontaneous
combustion.JB reserved his own name for a more ambitious work, the Sky
Lords trilogy: The Sky Lords (1988), War of the Sky Lords (1989) and The
Fall of the Sky Lords (1991). These consist of fast-moving adventure in a
post- HOLOCAUST society (after the Gene Wars), remorselessly evoking
another sf trope every time the action flags - everything from mile-long
dirigibles to computer guardians of ancient civilizations. The Opoponax
Invasion (1993) makes similar use of GENETIC ENGINEERING and
NANOTECHNOLOGY.[PN]See also: DISASTER.

BROSTER, D(OROTHY) K(ATHLEEN)
(1877-1950) UK writer of historical and weird fiction, noted within the
fantasy genre for Couching at the Door (coll 1942) and for "Clairvoyance"
in A Fire of Driftwood (coll 1932). Her evocatively titled World under
Snow (1935) with G. Forester is not sf, although sometimes listed as such,
but a murder mystery with a winter setting. [JE]

BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, THE
Film (1984). A-Train Films. Dir John SAYLES, starring Joe Morton, Tom
Wright, Caroline Aaron, Dee Dee Bridgewater. Screenplay Sayles. 108 mins.
Colour.Where Sayles's exploitation-movie scripts are cynical and
hard-edged, the films he directs himself are gentler and also more overtly
political. TBFAP is the only sf film he has written and directed, and to a
degree it gets the best of both worlds, though it has a sentimental
streak. The Brother is an ALIEN, indistinguishable in appearance from a
Black American - apart from his clawed, three-toed feet and a detachable
eye - who arrives at deserted Ellis Island, traditional gateway for
immigrants to the USA, and goes to Harlem. There he is the clever innocent
abroad, unable to speak but understanding a lot, sharply observing social
attitudes of both Blacks and Whites, fixing machines (he is a healer),
getting tough with a drug trafficker, and being pursued by alien
bounty-hunters (one played by Sayles). Like a surprising amount of sf,
this is a "to see ourselves as others see us" social comedy. Morton is
excellent as an alien among the alienated; the meandering, episodic plot
of this low-budget movie is fun. [PN]

BROTHER THEODORE
[s] Marvin KAYE.

BROWN, ALEC (JOHN CHARLES)
(1900-1962) UK writer in whose sf novel, Angelo's Moon (1955), set in an
underground city in Africa called Hypolitania, a White scientist offers
some hope of countering the degeneration of our species. [JC]

BROWN, CARTER
Alan YATES.

BROWN, CHARLES N(IKKI)
(1937- ) US publisher and editor, an sf fan who began his involvement in
the field in the 1950s and who remains best known for founding the sf news
magazine LOCUS in 1968, and bringing it to pre-eminence: dispensing news,
reviews, bibliographical updates, interviews, obituaries, convention data
and reports, and some gossip, Locus is the central information forum of
the sf world, and has won 16 HUGO awards in its category. In 1995, with
the journal well past its 400th issue, CNB remains both editor and
publisher. In collaboration with William G. CONTENTO he began in the
mid-1980s to compile yearly bibliographical volumes which covered the
field with some thoroughness, through coverage year 1991, when the series
terminated, though their dependence on the monthly Books Received columns
in Locus - initially compiled from books received for review - somewhat
constricted their coverage ( Hyperlink to: BIBLIOGRAPHIES). But the
editing of the sequence grew in sophistication from year to year - Hal W.
HALL's ongoing Research Index from the 1988 volume onwards was a
significant addition-and later volumes were very nearly comprehensive. In
chronological order, the sequence comprises Science Fiction, Fantasy, &
Horror: 1984 (1990), Science Fiction in Print: 1985 (1986), Science
Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1986 (1987), Science Fiction, Fantasy, &
Horror: 1987 (1988), Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1988 (1989),
Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1989 (1990), Science Fiction, Fantasy,
& Horror: 1990 (1991) and Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror: 1991 (1992).

BROWN, CHESTER
(?1960- ) Canadian creator of Yummy Fur, a fantasy comic whose stories
lurch from one comics TABOO to another: religion, homosexuality, vampires,
zombies, masturbation and a full spectrum of bodily excretions. Yummy Fur
began life as a series of tiny (A6) self-published pamphlets in the early
1980s. CB was eventually approached by Vortex Comics in 1986 to produce a
regular Yummy Fur. The first 3 issues of this reprinted all the
mini-comics and included characters and stories that were to feature in
the 15 issues that followed, notably "Adventures in Science" (1985), "The
Man who Couldn't Stop" (1985) and "Ed the Happy Clown" (1986); this last
story involved ghosts, pygmy cannibalism, a frightening religious
interpretation of vampirism, a gateway from another DIMENSION, and Ronald
Reagan's head on the end of a clown's penis. Inevitably the comic suffered
censorship, and distributors and retailers refused to stock it. The first
9 chapters plus relevant mini-comics stories were published as Ed the
Happy Clown (graph 1989). Issues of Yummy Fur (currently published by
Drawn & Quarterly) since #18 lack sf references. [SW/RT]See also: GRAPHIC
NOVEL.

BROWN, ERIC
(1960- ) UK writer who began publishing sf - after a children's play,
Noel's Ark (1982 chap) - with "Krash-Bangg Joe and the Pineal-Zen
Equation" for Interzone in 1987; like several further tales assembled in
The Time-Lapsed Man and Other Stories (coll 1990), it is set in a future
world dominated by the effects of bio-engineering and dense with
information. This marriage of Cordwainer SMITH to CYBERPUNK, though not in
itself original, has considerable potential as a focus for a complex
vision of things to come, as demonstrated by his second novel, Engineman
(1994), which is also set in what might be called the Nada Continuum
sequence, and which sustains a note of Smith-like elegy in its depiction
of an obsolescent form of space travel, that guided by "enginemen", one of
whom becomes involved in a complicated plot. EB's first novel, Meridan
Days (1992), set on a planet dominated by artists, is also - though
loosely - connected to the Nada Continuum universe.. [JC]See also: ARTS;
INTERZONE; PERCEPTION; TIME TRAVEL.

BROWN, FREDRIC (WILLIAM)
(1906-1972) US writer of detective novels and much sf, and for many years
active in journalism. He is perhaps best known for such detective novels
as The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), but is also highly regarded for his sf,
which is noted for its elegance and HUMOUR, and for a polished slickness
not generally found in the field in 1941, the year he published his first
sf story, "Not Yet the End" for Captain Future. Many of his shorter works
are vignettes and extended jokes: of the 47 pieces collected in Nightmares
and Geezenstacks (coll 1961), 38 are vignettes of the sort he specialized
in (they feature sudden joke climaxes whose ironies are often cruel); this
collection was assembled with another, Honeymoon in Hell (coll 1958), as
And the Gods Laughed (omni 1987). Typical of somewhat longer works
utilizing the same professional economies of effect are "Placet is a Crazy
Place" (1946), "Etaoin Shrdlu" (1942) and "Arena" (1944). The latter was
among the sf stories selected by the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA
for inclusion in SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME (anth 1970) ed Robert
SILVERBERG. It tells of the settling of an interstellar WAR through single
combat between a human and an ALIEN. FB is possibly at his best in these
shorter forms, where his elegant and seemingly comfortable wit, its
iconoclasm carefully directed at targets whose defacing sf readers would
appreciate, had greatest scope.FB's sf novels are by no means without
merit, however. His first and most famous, WHAT MAD UNIVERSE (1948
Startling Stories; 1949), is a cleverly complex ALTERNATE-WORLDS story in
which various sf conventions turn out, absurdly, to be true history. The
Lights in the Sky are Stars (1953; vt Project Jupiter 1954 UK) depicts
mankind at the turn of the 21st century and on the verge of star travel;
the true subject of the tale might, movingly, be thought to be the SENSE
OF WONDER itself. Martians, Go Home (1955) describes the infestation of
Earth by little green men who drive everyone nearly crazy, until the sf
writer who has perhaps imagined them into existence imagines them gone
again; however, he is himself a figment of a larger imagination, so that
in the end it is reality itself that dissolves. In The Mind Thing (1961) a
stranded alien attempts to get back home using its ability to ride human
minds piggyback, even though the experience is fatal for those
possessed.None of these novels is negligible, but it is perhaps the case,
at least in his sf writing, that his short stories, with their natty
momentum and the sudden flushes of humane emotion that transfigure so many
of them, have proved more successful in the long run. The recent
publication of a very large number of previously uncollected stories (see
below) may intensify this sense of FB's central accomplishment. [JC]Other
works: Space on my Hands (coll 1951); Angels and Spaceships (coll 1954; vt
Star Shine 1956); Rogue in Space (1949 Super Science Stories; 1950 AMZ;
fixup 1957); Daymares (coll 1968); Mitkey Astromouse (1971), a juvenile;
Paradox Lost (coll 1973); The Best of Fredric Brown (coll 1977); The Best
Short Stories of Fredric Brown (coll 1982 UK); the Detective Pulps series
of collections, most of which contain some sf and fantasy, comprehensively
surveying FB's career and comprising Homicide Sanitarium (coll 1984),
Before She Kills (coll 1984), Madman's Holiday (coll 1984), The Case of
the Dancing Sandwiches (coll 1985), The Freak Show Murders (coll 1985),
Thirty Corpses Every Thursday (coll 1986), Pardon my Ghoulish Laughter
(coll 1986), Red is the Hue of Hell (coll 1986), Brother Monster (coll
1987), Sex Life on the Planet Mars (coll 1986), Nightmare in Darkness
(coll 1987), Who Was that Blonde I Saw You Kill Last Night? (coll 1988),
Three-Corpse Parlay (coll 1988), Selling Death Short (coll 1988),
Whispering Death (coll 1989), Happy Ending (coll 1990), The Water-Walker
(coll 1990), The Gibbering Night (coll 1991) and The Pickled Punks (coll
1991), which closed the series.As Editor: Science Fiction Carnival (anth
1953) with Mack REYNOLDS.About the author: A Key to Fredric Brown's
Wonderland: A Study and an Annotated Bibliographical Checklist (1981 chap)
by N.D. Baird; Martians and Misplaced Clues: The Life and Work of Fredric
Brown (1994) by Jack Seabrook.See also: COMPUTERS; EC COMICS; FASTER THAN
LIGHT; GAMES AND SPORTS; HIVE-MINDS; INVASION; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; NUCLEAR
POWER; PARANOIA; PASTORAL; PHYSICS; RECURSIVE SF; RELIGION; SPACE FLIGHT;
STARS.

BROWN, HARRISON (SCOTT)
(1917-1986) US scientist and writer whose nonfiction The Challenge of
Man's Future (1954) combines demographical, ecological and energy concerns
in a pioneering work of great admonitory influence. His sf novel, The
Cassiopeia Affair (1968) with Chloe ZERWICK, treats fictionally the same
problems through a story about a possibly bogus message from the stars
that may keep mankind from destroying itself in a terminal
conflagration.Other nonfiction:The Next Hundred Years (1957) with James
Bonner and John Weir.

BROWN, HOWARD V(ACHEL)
(1878-1945) US illustrator. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, HVB studied at
the Chicago Art Institute and became based in New York. He was cover
artist for Scientific American c1913-31, typically showing human figures
dwarfed by gigantic technological projects. His first cover for an SF
MAGAZINE proper was for ASF Oct 1933, although he had earlier (1919 on)
painted almost 50 covers for SCIENCE AND INVENTION. One of the Big Four sf
illustrators in the 1930s (with Leo MOREY, Frank R. PAUL and H.W. WESSO),
he helped soften the colours that appeared on magazine covers. Starting
with a simple, almost primitive style, HB rapidly developed into one of
the most dramatic cover illustrators of that era. Most closely associated
with ASF, he also appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling
Stories, for which he did his best work. He specialized in BEMs, which he
depicted with exciting vigour. He painted 90 sf covers in all to 1940,
even though he was in his late 50s before he started. [JG/PN]See also:
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

BROWN, JAMES COOKE
(1921-1987) US writer in whose sf novel, The Troika Incident: A
Tetralogue in Two Parts (1970), astronauts from the USA, France and the
USSR are shot forward by a century. There they discover a UTOPIA - built
on lines hinted at by Edward BELLAMY - before returning to a disbelieving
present day. [JC]

BROWN, JERRY EARL
(1940- ) US writer in whose first sf novel, Under the City of Angels
(1981), a sunken California is delved by the haunted protagonist, who
finds powerful corporations and ALIENS at the root of things. Darkhold
(1985) depicts the consequences of cloning one's own lovers ( CLONES).
Earthfall (1990) unremarkably shows an Earth overrun by MUTANTS hungry for
flesh. [JC]

BROWN, JOHN MacMILLAN
[r] Godfrey SWEVEN.

BROWN, JOHN YOUNG
[r] SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS.

BROWN, PETER C(URRELL)
(1940?- ) UK writer whose first novel, Smallcreep's Day (1965), set in an
indeterminate future, is an extremely effective ABSURDIST quest into the
heart of a vast, palpably allegorical factory. The result of the quest for
meaning is another assembly line. [JC]

BROWN, RICH
[r] David F. BISCHOFF.

BROWN, ROSEL GEORGE
(1926-1967) US writer with an advanced degree in ancient Greek; for three
years she was a welfare visitor in Louisiana. She began publishing stories
in 1958 with "From an Unseen Censor" for Gal; some of her stories were
interplanetary, some more typical of "women's" fiction. A Handful of Time
(coll 1963) assembles much of her early work. Her Sibyl Sue Blue series -
Sibyl Sue Blue (1966; vt Galactic Sibyl Sue Blue 1968) and The Waters of
Centaurus (1970) - features a tough female cop who, with a teenage
daughter, engages in various interstellar adventures; she is more than
once required to defend herself (which she does more than adequately)
against aggressive males. With Keith LAUMER, RGB wrote an expansive SPACE
OPERA, Earthblood (1966), in which a lost Terran boy (rather like the
protagonist of Robert A. HEINLEIN's CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY [1957]) searches
through the stars for his heritage; the Earth he finds is a dire
disappointment, and he sets out, successfully, to upset the applecart.
RGB's career was taking off when she died at the early age of 41. [JC]See
also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; ECONOMICS.

BROWN, WENZEL
(1911-1981) US writer, mostly of mysteries, who published some sf in
magazines, most notably "Murderer's Chain" for Fantastic Universe in 1960.
His one sf novel, Possess & Conquer (1975), is a modestly competent
adventure. [JC]

BROWNE, GEORGE SHELDON
Dennis HUGHES.

BROWNE, HOWARD
(1908- ) US author and editor who worked 1942-7 for ZIFF-DAVIS where,
among other responsibilities, he was managing editor of AMAZING STORIES
and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, then under Raymond A. PALMER's editorship. He
contributed stories to the magazines, two serials about the prehistoric
adventurer Tharn being published also in book form as Warrior of the Dawn
(1943) and The Return of Tharn (1948 AMZ; 1956). His work appeared under a
variety of pseudonyms and Ziff-Davis house names including Alexander
BLADE, Lawrence Chandler, Ivar JORGENSEN (stories only) and Lee Francis.
After a period in Hollywood, HB became in 1950 editor of AMZ - where he
rejected a mass of material by Richard S. SHAVER - and Fantastic
Adventures. He presided over AMZ's change from PULP to DIGEST format, and
over the demise of Fantastic Adventures in favour of the digest-sized
FANTASTIC. He returned to Hollywood in 1956. Primarily a mystery writer -
his work in that field being signed John Evans - HB is reported to have
detested sf. [MJE]See also: POLITICS.

BROWNING, CRAIG
[s] Rog PHILLIPS.

BROWNING, JOHN S.
[s] Robert Moore WILLIAMS.

BROWNJOHN, ALAN (CHARLES)
(1931- ) UK poet and anthologist, active from the early 1950s. In The Way
You Tell Them: A Yarn of the Nineties (1990), his first novel, the UK of
1999 is rendered as a Tory-dominated DYSTOPIA whose rulers have learned
well how to subvert and co-opt those who still retain their integrity,
political or artistic. [JC]

BROXON, MILDRED DOWNEY
[r] Poul ANDERSON.

BRUCKNER, KARL
(1906- ) German writer whose Nur zwei Roboter? (1963; trans anon as The
Hour of the Robots 1964 UK) depicts the pacifying effects of robot-love on
a quarrelling humanity. [JC]

BRUCKNER, WINFRIED
[r] AUSTRIA.

BRUMMELS, J.V.
(? - ) US writer, Poet-in-Residence at Wayne State College, and author of
Deus ex Machina (1989), a complexly literate rendering in
CYBERPUNK-influenced terms of an urban USA facing the death of the Sun.
There is a choice, for some, of escaping into space; but it is an option
JVB offers without any exuberance. [JC]

BRUNDAGE, MARGARET (JOHNSON)
(1900-1976) US illustrator, resident in Chicago. Best-known for her
erotic pastel covers for WEIRD TALES, MB was, as far as is known, the
first woman artist to work in the sf/ FANTASY field, and the first of
either sex whose covers featured nudes; they were generally of the
damsel-in-distress variety. Her first cover was for Weird Tales editor
Farnsworth WRIGHT's other magazine, Oriental Stories. The positive
response was immediate, proving once again that sex sells; MB was main
cover artist for Weird Tales from late 1932 to 1938, doing occasional
further covers to 1945. MB's soft colours were attractive, but her drawing
of faces and bodies only so-so. [JG/PN]

BRUNNER, JOHN (KILIAN HOUSTON)
(1934- ) UK writer, mostly of sf, though he has published several
thrillers, contemporary novels and volumes of poetry (see listing below).
He began very early to submit sf stories to periodicals, and when he was
17 published his first novel, Galactic Storm (1951) under the house name
Gill HUNT. Even in a field noted for its early starters, his precocity was
remarkable. His first US sale, "Thou Good and Faithful" as by John
Loxmith, was featured in ASF in early 1953, and in the same year he
published in a US magazine the first novel he would later choose to
acknowledge; it was eventually to appear in book form as The Space-Time
Juggler (1953 Two Complete Science-Adventure Books as "The Wanton of
Argus" as by Kilian Houston Brunner; 1963 chap dos US) which, with its
sequel, The Altar on Asconel (1965 dos US), plus an article on SPACE OPERA
and "The Man from the Big Dark" (1958), was much later assembled as
Interstellar Empire (omni 1976 US). This Interstellar Empire sequence
takes place in the twilight of a Galactic Empire - a time rather favoured
by JB in his space operas - when barbarism is general, though the
Rimworlds ( GALACTIC LENS) hold some hope for adventurers and mutants, who
may eventually rebuild civilization. But the series terminates abruptly,
before its various protagonists are able to begin their renaissance,
almost certainly reflecting JB's ultimate lack of interest in such
stories, which he has since registered in print - though certainly he
subsequently revised many of them, not necessarily to their betterment as
"naive" adventures.In any case, this lessening of interest evinced itself
only after very extensive publication of stories and novels describable as
literate space opera. From 1953 to about 1957 JB's activity was
intermittent, mainly through difficulty in making a living from full-time
writing, a problem about which he has always been bitterly articulate. In
the mid-1950s he was working full-time with a publishing house and
elsewhere, writing only occasionally. In 1955 he published one story under
the pseudonym Trevor Staines. A little later he sold two novels, again
first to magazines: Threshold of Eternity (1959 dos US) and The Hundredth
Millennium (1959 dos US; rev vt Catch a Falling Star 1968 US); they are
two of the first novels he placed with ACE BOOKS. With the signing of the
contract for the first, JB took up full-time freelancing once again.Over
the next six years he published under his own name and as Keith Woodcott a
total of 27 novels with Ace Books, in addition to work with other
publishers. For some readers, this spate of HARD-SF adventure stories
still represents JB's most relaxed and fluent work as a writer. Two from
1960 are typical of the storytelling enjoyment he was able to create by
applying to "modest" goals the formidable craft he had developed. The
Atlantic Abomination (1960 dos US) is a genuinely terrifying story about a
monstrous ALIEN, long buried beneath the Atlantic, who survives by
mentally enslaving "inferior" species, rather like the thrint in Larry
NIVEN's World of Ptavvs (1966). Sanctuary in the Sky (1960 dos US) is a
short and simple SENSE-OF-WONDER tale, set in the FAR FUTURE in a star
cluster very distant from Earth. Various conflicting planetary cultures
(all human) can meet in peace only on the mysterious Waystation, which is
a synthetic world. A ship full of squabbling passengers docks; with them
is a mild-mannered stranger who immediately disappears. Soon it turns out
that he's an Earthman, that Waystation is a colony ship owned by Earth,
and that he's come to retrieve it. Mankind needs the ship: though this
Galaxy is full, "there are other galaxies". Decades later, JB would rework
the thematic concerns of this short novel at much greater length in A Maze
of Stars (1991 US).The mass of Ace novels contains a second series, also
truncated, though its structure is more open-ended than that of the
earlier one. The Zarathustra Refugee Planets sequence, made up of
Castaways' World (1963 dos US; rev vt Polymath 1974 US), Secret Agent of
Terra (1962 dos US; rev vt The Avengers of Carrig 1969 US) and The
Repairmen of Cyclops (1965 dos US; rev 1981 US), all later assembled as
Victims of the Nova (omni 1989), deals over a long timescale with the
survivors of human-colonized Zarathustra; when the planet's sun goes nova,
3000 spaceships carry a few million survivors into exile on a variety of
uninhabited worlds. 700 years later, the Corps Galactic has the job of
maintaining the isolation of these various cultures, so that, having
reverted to barbarism, they can develop naturally; their separate
histories constitute an experiment in cultural evolution. Despite these
two series, and in contrast to some of his older peers, JB has only rarely
attempted to link individual items into series or fixups. Both his space
operas and his later, more ambitious works are generally initially
conceived in the versions which the reader sees on book publication.
Further Ace titles of interest include The Rites of Ohe (1963 dos US), To
Conquer Chaos (1964 US; rev 1981 US) and Day of the Star Cities (1965 US;
rev vt Age of Miracles 1973 US).As the 1960s progressed, more space operas
appeared as well as several story collections, including Out of My Mind
(coll 1967 US; the UK coll with the same name is a different selection,
1968) and Not Before Time (coll 1968), which include outstanding items
like "The Last Lonely Man" (1964) and "The Totally Rich" (1963). JB's
stories are generally free in form, sometimes experimental. By 1965, with
the publication of THE WHOLE MAN (1958-9 Science Fantasy; fixup 1964 US;
vt Telepathist 1965 UK) and The Squares of the City (1965 US), it was
evident that JB would not be content to go on indefinitely writing the sf
entertainments of which he had become master, and that he was determined
to transform his sf habitat. THE WHOLE MAN, comprising fundamentally
rewritten magazine stories and much new material, and generally considered
to be one of JB's most successful novels, is an attempt to draw a
psychological portrait of a deformed human with telepathic powers ( ESP)
who gradually learns how to use these powers in psychiatrically curative
ways (for to communicate is to be human). The Squares of the City is a
respectable try at a chess novel in which a chosen venue (in this case a
city) serves as the board and characters as the various players. The
stiffness of the resulting story may have been inevitable.JB's magnum
opus, STAND ON ZANZIBAR (1968 US), perhaps the longest GENRE-SF novel to
that date, came as the climax of the decade. The dystopian vision of this
complex novel rests on the assumption that Earth's population will
continue to expand uncontrollably; the intersecting stories of Norman
House, a Black executive on a mission to the Third World to facilitate
further economic penetration, and of Donald Hogan, a White "synthesist"
and government agent, whose mission involves gaining control of a eugenics
discovery, provide dominant strands in an assemblage of narrative
techniques whose function of providing a social and cultural context
points up their resemblance to the similar techniques used by John Dos
Passos in USA (1930-36), but which (as John P. Brennan has noted) fail to
conceal the underlying storytelling orthodoxy of the tale. It is perhaps
for this reason that the resulting vision has a cumulative, sometimes
overpowering effect, while at the same time the triumphalist logic of its
pulp plotting (which descends from HOMER) urgently conveys a sense that
answers will be forthcoming, and that the protagonists will win through.
Through its density of reference, and through JB's admirable (though
sometimes insecure) grasp of US idiom, the book's anti-Americanism has a
satisfyingly US ring to it, so that its tirades do not seem smug; it won
the 1968 HUGO and the 1970 BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD, and its French
translation won the Prix Apollo ( AWARDS) in 1973.Three further novels,
all with some of the the same pace and intensity, make together a kind of
thematic series of DYSTOPIAS. The Jagged Orbit (1969 US) conflates medical
and military industrial complexes with the Mafia in a rather too tightly
plotted, though occasionally powerful, narrative. The Sheep Look Up (1972
US), perhaps the most unrelenting and convincing dystopia of the four, and
depressingly well documented, deals scarifyingly with POLLUTION in a plot
whose relative looseness allows for an almost essayist exposition of the
horrors in store for us. THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER (1975 US) employs similar
reportage techniques in a story about a world enmeshed in a COMMUNICATIONS
explosion. Unsurprisingly (with hindsight), though these novels received
considerable critical attention, they in no way made JB's fortune. He has
always been extremely open about his finances and his hopes for the
future, and has made no secret of the let-down he felt on discovering
himself, after these culminating efforts, still in the position of being
forced to produce commercially to survive.In his decreasingly frequent
publications since 1972, JB has tended to return to a somewhat more
flamboyant version of the space-opera idiom he had used earlier. For some
years his health remained uncertain, with a consequent severe slowing down
of his once formidable writing speed. The relative lack of fluency and
enthusiasm of novels like Total Eclipse (1974 US), The Infinitive of Go
(1980 US) and Children of the Thunder (1989) cannot easily be denied.
There is a sense in these novels that skill wars with convictions, and
that, as a consequence, JB cannot any longer allow himself the orthodox
delights of pure storytelling. Even The Great Steamboat Race (1983), an
associational novel, set on the Mississippi River, which he devoted years
to writing, shows some signs of a nagging dis-ease. But JB has undeniably
made significant contributions to the sf space-opera redoubt, and has
written several intellectually formidable tract-novels about the state of
the world. The opinions extractable from these works are closer to
left-wing than usual with US sf writers of his generation (these opinions,
which he has articulated publicly many times, may be in part responsible
for his failure to acquire a secure US marketing niche, as well as
contributing to his loss of belief in the naive victories endemic to
generic fiction), and in the end he may claim to have constituted a
significant dissenting voice in the West's increasingly urgent debate
about humanity's condition as the 20th century draws to a close. [JC]Other
works: The Brink (1959); Echo in the Skull (1959 chap dos US; rev vt Give
Warning to the World 1974 US); The World Swappers (1959); The Skynappers
(1960 dos US); Slavers of Space (1960 dos US; rev vt Into the Slave Nebula
1968 US); Meeting at Infinity (1961 dos US); The Super Barbarians (1962
US); Times without Number (fixup 1962 dos US; rev 1969 US); No Future in
It (coll 1962); The Astronauts Must Not Land (1963 dos US; rev vt More
Things in Heaven 1973 US); The Dreaming Earth (1963 US); Listen! The
Stars! (1963 chap dos US; rev vt The Stardroppers 1972 US); Endless Shadow
(1964 chap dos US; rev vt Manshape 1982 US); Enigma from Tantalus (1965
dos US); The Long Result (1965); Now Then (coll 1965); A Planet of Your
Own (1966 chap dos US); No Other Gods but Me (coll 1966); Born under Mars
(1967 US); The Productions of Time (1967 US; text restored 1977 US);
Quicksand (1967 US); Bedlam Planet (1968 US); Father of Lies (1962 Science
Fantasy; 1968 chap dos US); Not Before Time (coll 1968); Double, Double
(1969 US); Timescoop (1969 US); The Evil that Men Do (1966 NW; 1969 chap
dos US); The Gaudy Shadows (1960 Science Fantasy; exp 1970), a
technofantasy about psychotropic drugs; The Dramaturges of Yan (1972 US);
The Wrong End of Time (1971 US); The Traveler in Black (coll of linked
stories 1971 US; with 1 story added vt The Compleat Traveler in Black 1986
US), his best fantasy; Entry to Elsewhen (coll 1972 US); From this Day
Forward (coll 1972); Time-Jump (coll 1973 US); The Stone that Never Came
Down (1973 US); Web of Everywhere (1974 US); The Book of John Brunner
(coll 1976 US); Foreign Constellations (coll 1980 US); Players at the Game
of People (1980 US); While There's Hope (1982 chap); a series comprising
The Crucible of Time (fixup 1983 US) and The Tides of Time (1984 US); The
Shift Key (1987); The Best of John Brunner (coll 1988 US); A Case of
Painter's Ear (1987 in Tales from the Forbidden Planet anth ed Roz
KAVENEY; 1991 chap US); Muddle Earth (1993 US). As Keith Woodcott:I Speak
for Earth (1961 dos US); The Ladder in the Sky (1962 dos US); The Psionic
Menace (1963 dos US); The Martian Sphinx (1965 dos US).Non-genre novels:
Of most interest are perhaps The Crutch of Memory (1964), A Plague on Both
your Causes (1969; vt Blacklash 1969 US), Black is the Color (1956 as
"This Rough Magic"; rev 1969 US), which is a thriller involving black
MAGIC, The Devil's Work (1970), and Honky in the Woodpile (1971).Poetry:
Trip: A Cycle of Poems (coll 1966 chap; rev 1971 chap); Life in an
Explosive Forming Press (coll 1970 chap); A Hastily Thrown-together Bit of
Zork (coll 1974 chap); Tomorrow May be Even Worse (coll 1978 chap US), an
"alphabet" of sf CLICHES; A New Settlement of Old Scores (coll 1983 chap
US).About the author: The Happening Worlds of John Brunner (critical anth
1975) ed Joseph W. de Bolt; John Brunner, Shockwave Writer: A Working
Bibliography (latest edn 1989 chap) Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil
STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS; ANDROIDS; ARTS; COLONIZATION
OF OTHER WORLDS; COMPUTERS; CYBERPUNK; DISASTER; FUTUROLOGY; GALACTIC
EMPIRES; GAMES AND SPORTS; GENERATION STARSHIPS; INVASION; MATTER
TRANSMISSION; MONEY; NEW WAVE; NEW WORLDS; OVERPOPULATION; POLITICS;
PSEUDO-SCIENCE; PSI POWERS; PSYCHOLOGY; SUPERMAN; TIME PARADOXES;
TRANSPORTATION.

BRUNNGRABER, RUDOLF
(1901-1960) German writer, active for many years. His sf novel Radium
(1936; trans Eden and Cedar Paul 1937) features a near-contemporary corner
on the radium market which causes troubles in a hospital using it to cure
cancer. [JC]Other works:Die Engel in Atlantis ["The Angel in Atlantis"]
(1938); Karl und das 20 Jahrhundert (1933; trans anon as Karl and the
Twentieth Century 1933).

BRUNT, SAMUEL
[r] MONEY; MOON.

BRUSSOLO, SERGE
[r] FRANCE.

BRUST, STEVEN (KARL ZOLTAN)
(1955- ) US writer, almost exclusively of fantasy, mentioned here for
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille (1990), an intermittently comic spoof
about a saloon which dodges atomic HOLOCAUSTS by leaping through time and
space to other planets, where a mysterious enemy awaits. Some of SB's
novels, like The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars (1987), are more FABULATION
than fantasy. [JC]Other works: The Vlad Taltos fantasy series, comprising
Jhereg (1983), Yendi (1984) and Teckla (1986) - all three assembled as
Taltos the Assassin (omni 1991 UK) - Taltos (1988; vt Taltos and the Paths
of the Dead 1991 UK), Phoenix (1990and Athyra (1993)), plus The Phoenix
Guards (1991), set earlier in the Vlad Taltos universe, and Five Hundred
Years After (1994) To Reign in Hell (1984); Brokedown Palace (1986); Gypsy
(1992) with Megan Lindholm (1952- ); Agyar (1993).

BRYANT, ADRIAN
Adrian COLE.

BRYANT, EDWARD (WINSLOW Jr)
(1945- ) US writer, almost exclusively of short stories, beginning with
"They Come Only in Dreams" for Adam in 1970, since when he has made his
living as a freelance writer. EB was raised in Wyoming (and graduated with
an MA in English from the University of Wyoming in 1968), a circumstance
to which he pays his respects in Wyoming Sun (coll 1980), which assembles
fictions affected by that visually superb region. His early career was
assisted by Harlan ELLISON, whom he met at the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION
WRITERS' WORKSHOP in 1968 and 1969. His first book, Among the Dead and
Other Events Leading up to the Apocalypse (coll 1973; rev 1974), made a
considerable stir for the wide variety of stories included and the
technical facility they display. His conversational, apparently casual
style sometimes conceals the tight construction and density of his best
work, like "Shark" (1973), a complexly told love story whose darker
implications are brought to focus in the girl's decision to have her brain
transplanted into a shark's body, ostensibly as part of a research
project; in the story, symbol and surface reality mesh impeccably. The
setting for many of the stories in this collection is a California
transmuted by sf devices and milieux into an image, sometimes scarifying,
sometimes joyful, of the culmination of the American Dream, an image
further developed and intensified in Cinnabar (coll of linked stories
1976), whose eponymous city of the FAR FUTURE is a dreamlike re-enactment
of an essentialized DYING-EARTH California. The earlier stories of the
sequence intricately develop a strangely moving vision of the rococo,
many-shaped life by which mankind is ultimately destined to explicate
itself (see also LEISURE), though the end of the book presents stories
with a somewhat reductive plottiness. Later stories - collected in
Particle Theory (coll 1981), Trilobyte (coll 1987 chap) and Neon Twilight
(coll 1990) - continue slyly to urge sf into fable, horror and myth. EB
suggests that the face the genre should expect to see in the mirror is the
Minotaur's.With Ellison, EB began a GENERATION-STARSHIP series with
Phoenix without Ashes (1975), which works into novel form the pilot for
the abortive Ellison tv series The Starlost; the book is short and
perfunctory. Future volumes, long projected, have not appeared. EB has
also published stories as Lawrence Talbot. He is the editor of an
anthology of original stories and some poems, 2076: The American
Tricentennial (anth 1977; rev 1977). [JC]Other works: The Man of the
Future (1990 chap); The Cutter (1988 Silver Scream; 1991 chap); Fetish
(1991), horror; The Thermals of August (1981 FSF; 1992 chap); Darker
Passions (coll 1993 chap).See also: The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE
FICTION ; MESSIAHS; NEBULA; PERCEPTION; WILD CARDS.

BRYANT, PETER
Peter GEORGE.

BSFA
BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION.

BSFA AWARD
BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD.

BUCHAN, JOHN
J. W. DUNNE.

BUCHANAN, ROBERT WILLIAMS
(1848-1901) UK man of letters whose sf novel, The Rev. Annabel Lee: A
Tale of To-Morrow (1898), posits a 21st-century society whose rationalist
ideals leave a void in the bosom of the Christian Rev. Lee, who violates
eugenic taboos and by so doing manages to create in her banned choice of
husband a martyr to the new supernaturalism. [JC]

BUCKLEY, KATHLEEN
[r] Sharon JARVIS.

BUCKNER, BRADNOR
[s] Ed Earl REPP.

BUCK ROGERS
BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY.

BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY
1. US COMIC strip conceived by John Flint Dille for the National
Newspaper Syndicate Inc., written by Philip Francis NOWLAN, based on his
novel Armageddon 2419 AD (1928-29 AMZ: fixup 1962). BR appeared first in
1929 in daily newspapers, illustrated by Dick CALKINS, and in March 1930
the Sunday version began, signed by Calkins although the actual
illustrator was Russell Keaton (to 1933) and then Rick Yager (who also
took over the daily strip in 1951). Calkins - whose illustration was
embarrassingly inferior to that of his colleagues - was removed from the
strip in 1947; Murphy Anderson drew the daily strip 1947-9, followed by
Leonard Dworkins 1949-59, Yager 1951-8, and George Tuska, who took over
both strips in 1958 when Yager resigned. After Nowlan's death in 1940
various writers worked on continuity, including Calkins, Bob Barton and
Yager, with contributions after 1958 by Fritz LEIBER and Judith MERRIL.
The Sunday strip ended in June 1965, the daily in June 1967.BR was the
first US sf comic strip with a moderately adult and sophisticated
storyline, though both dialogue and artwork were crude and naive by
comparison with such imitators as BRICK BRADFORD and FLASH GORDON.
Nonetheless, it remained extremely popular for many years. Its scenario is
archetypal SPACE OPERA. Buck, a lieutenant in the USAF, is inadvertently
transported 500 years into the future, where he finds the USA overrun by
hordes of "Red Mongols". Accompanied by his perennial girl-friend, Wilma
Deering, Buck is constantly engaged in battle, on land and sea and in
space, with his mortal enemy Killer Kane. (The Sunday version, which was
much better drawn, also featured Wilma's younger brother Buddy and
Princess Alura of Mars.) All the standard accoutrements of space opera are
used: ANTIGRAVITY belts, DEATH RAYS, DISINTEGRATORS, domed cities and
space rockets. The strip became more sophisticated after 1958, with some
real sf writers brought in to spice things up.Although BR contributed
little to the artistic evolution of the comic strip, its storyline was
very influential. It was successfully translated into other media: in
addition to those discussed below, it appeared as a popular RADIO serial,
beginning 1932, and as a Big Little Book ( JUVENILE SERIES). Some of Buck
Rogers's adventures have been reissued in book form, including The
Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1969; rev 1977) ed
Robert C. Dille, which is in fact only a selection. [PN/JE]2. Serial film
(1939), titled simply Buck Rogers. Universal. Dir Ford Beebe, Saul A
Goodkind, starring Larry ("Buster") Crabbe, Constance Moore, C. Montague
Shaw, Jack Moran, Anthony Warde. Screenplay Norman S. Hall, Ray Trampe,
based on the comic strip. 12 episodes. B/w.After their success with FLASH
GORDON, also played by Crabbe, in two serials (1936 and 1938), Universal
cast him as Buck Rogers, the other famous SPACE-OPERA hero of the
newspaper comic strips. This serial, not as lavish or baroque as the first
Flash Gordon serial, concerns Buck's waking after a 500-year sleep (in the
Arctic) to discover that the Zuggs from Saturn have invaded Earth aided by
the villainous Killer Kane (Warde). He teams up with Wilma (Moore) and Dr
Huer (Shaw). The remaining episodes deal with their travels to Saturn to
face the Zuggs on their home ground, and their efforts to avoid the usual
hazards of crashing spaceships, ray-guns, robots and mind-control devices.
Edited episodes were later cobbled together as a feature film, Planet
Outlaws (1953), re-edited as Destination Saturn (1965). [JB/PN]3. US tv
serial (1950-51), titled simply Buck Rogers. ABC TV. Prod and dir Babette
Henry, starring Ken Dibbs (replaced after several months by Robert
Pastene) as Buck, Lou Prentis as Wilma, Harry Sothern as Dr Huer. Written
by Gene Wyckoff, based on the comic strip. One season. 25 mins per
episode. B/w.BR was one of the earliest of many space-opera juvenile tv
serials in the early 1950s. Its style was that of the Saturday matinee
cinema serials, but restrictions imposed by tv production necessitated its
being shot live on a cramped interior set, with the result that the cinema
serials seemed visually extravagant by comparison. Buck and his pals fight
against evil and tyranny from a base hidden behind Niagara Falls. [JB]4.
US tv series (1979-81). Glen A. Larson/Universal/NBC. Developed for tv by
Glen A. LARSON and Leslie Stevens. Prod Larson (season 1), John MANTLEY
(season 2). Dirs included Daniel Haller, Sig Neufeld, Larry Stewart, Jack
ARNOLD, Vincent McEveety. Writers included Alan BRENNERT, Anne Collins.
Starring Gil Gerard as Buck, Erin Gray as Wilma, Tim O'Connor as Dr Huer,
Felix Silla as Twiki, Thom Christopher as Hawk, Wilfred Hyde-White as Dr
Goodfellow. Two seasons. 100min pilot, 1 100min episode, 33 50min
episodes. Colour.In the year of his 50th anniversary a second Buck Rogers
tv series began, the brainchild of Glen A. Larson, whose BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA had aired the previous year. Buck is now a US astronaut who has
been frozen in a space-probe for 500 years. After the success of Batman
(1966-8), film and tv producers persisted for many years in believing,
against all evidence, that sf and fantastic genre material did best when
spoofed. BR was played rather too much for laughs, and the irritating STAR
WARS-derived robot Twiki was no help. The stories were very weak and
nobody much cared for Buck as a cocky, wise-cracking lout. The show
improved in the second season, with better scripts and a new alien
character called Hawk, but it was too late.5. Film (1979). Dir Daniel
Haller, screenplay Glen A. Larson, Leslie Stevens. Other credits as for tv
series above, plus Pamela Hensley. 89 mins. Colour.This is simply the
pilot episode of the tv series, edited down and given theatrical release.
It is not too bad in a frothy way. Buck returns to a post- HOLOCAUST Earth
where a semi-military sanctuary, once Chicago, exists in the
MUTANT-haunted wreckage of his old homeland. He is wooed by wicked
princess Ardala (pretty dresses; Pamela Hensley) and by Wilma (white
jumpsuit and lipgloss; Erin Gray), and is suspected of being a spy. Many
conventions of the genre are parodied. [PN]See also: AUSTRIA; CINEMA;
GAMES AND TOYS.

BUDRYS, ALGIS
Working name of writer and editor Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931- ). He was
born in East Prussia, but has been in the USA since 1936. He early worked
as an assistant to his father, who was Consul General of Lithuania in New
York until his death in 1964; this experience has arguably shaped some of
AB's fiction. He began publishing sf in 1952 with "The High Purpose" for
ASF, and very rapidly gained a reputation as a leader of the 1950s sf
generation, along with Philip K. DICK, Robert SHECKLEY and others, all of
whom brought new literacy, mordancy and grace to the field; since 1965 he
has written regular, incisive book reviews for Gal and latterly for FSF,
but relatively little fiction.During his first decade as a writer AB used
a number of pseudonyms on magazine stories: David C. Hodgkins, Ivan
Janvier, Paul Janvier, Robert Marner, William Scarff, John A. Sentry,
Albert Stroud and (in collaboration with Jerome BIXBY) Alger ROME. He
wrote few series, though "The High Purpose" had two sequels: "A.I.D."
(1954) and "The War is Over" (1957), both in ASF. The Gus stories, as by
Paul Janvier, include "Nobody Bothers Gus" (1955) and "And Then She Found
Him" (1957).AB's first novel has a complex history. As False Night (1954)
it was published in a form abridged from the manuscript version; this
manuscript served as the basis for a reinstated text which, with
additional new material, was published as Some Will Not Die (1961; rev
1978). In both versions a post- HOLOCAUST story is set in a
plague-decimated USA and, through the lives of a series of protagonists, a
half century or so of upheaval and recovery is described. Some Will Not
Die is a much more coherent (and rather grimmer) novel than its
predecessor.His second novel, WHO? (1958), filmed as WHO? (1974), not
quite successfully grafts an abstract vision of the existential extremity
of mankind's condition onto an ostensibly orthodox sf plot, in which it
must be determined whether or not a prosthetically rebuilt and
impenetrably masked man ( CYBORGS) is in fact the scientist, vital to the
US defence effort, whom he claims to be. As AB is in part trying to write
an existential thriller about identity (rather similar to the later work
of Kobo ABE), not an sf novel about the perils of prosthesis, some of the
subsequent detective work seems a little misplaced; however, the
seriousness of purpose is never in doubt. Similarly, The Falling Torch
(1957-9 various mags; fixup 1959; text restored vt Falling Torch 1991)
presents a story which on the surface is straight sf, describing an Earth,
several centuries hence, dominated by an ALIEN oppressor; the son of an
exiled president returns to his own planet to liaise with the underground.
But the novel can also be read as an allegory of the Cold War in its
effects upon Eastern Europe (less awkward but more discursive in the
restored text), and therefore, like WHO?, asks of its generic structure
rather more significance than generic structures of this kind have perhaps
been designed to bear.Much more thoroughly successful is AB's next novel,
ROGUE MOON (1960), now something of an sf classic. A good deal has been
written about the highly integrated symbolic structure of this story,
whose perfectly competent surface narration deals with a HARD-SF solution
to the problem of an alien labyrinth, discovered on the MOON, which kills
anyone who tries to pass through it. At one level, the novel's description
of attempts to thread the labyrinth from Earth via MATTER TRANSMISSION
makes for excellent traditional sf; at another, it is a sustained rite de
passage, a doppelg-nger conundrum about the mind-body split, a
death-paean. There is no doubt that AB intends that both levels of reading
register, however any interpretation might run; in this novel the two
levels interact fruitfully. After some years away from fiction, AB
returned in the late 1970s with his most humanly complex and fully
realized novel to date. Michaelmas (1977) describes in considerable detail
a NEAR-FUTURE world whose information media have become even more
sophisticated and creative of news than at present - as depicted in Sidney
Lumet's film Network (1976) and as represented by such figures as CBS
broadcaster Walter Cronkite. Like Cronkite, though to a much greater
extent, the Michaelmas of the title is a moulder of news. Unusually,
however, the book does not attack this condition. Michaelmas is a highly
adult, responsible, complex individual, who with some cause feels himself
to be the world's Chief Executive; beyond his own talents, he is aided in
this task by an immensely sophisticated COMPUTER program named Domino,
with which he is in constant contact, and which itself (as in books like
Alfred BESTER's The Computer Connection [1975; vt Extro UK]) accesses all
the computers in the world-net. Although the plot - Michaelmas must
confront and defeat mysterious aliens who are manipulating mankind from
behind the scenes - is straight out of PULP-MAGAZINE fiction, Michaelmas
is a sustained, involving and peculiarly realistic novel.AB is that
rarity, an intellectual genre writer, as is also demonstrated by his three
collections of short stories, The Unexpected Dimension (coll 1960),
Budrys's Inferno (coll 1963; vt The Furious Future 1964 UK) and Blood and
Burning (coll 1978). From his genre origins stem both his strengths -
incisiveness, exemplary concision of effect - and his weaknesses - mainly
the habit, which he may have mastered, of overloading genre material with
mainstream resonances. His sf criticism, especially that from before the
mid-1980s, is almost unfailingly perceptive, and promulgates with a
convert's grim elan a view of the essential nature of the genre that
ferociously privileged the US magazine tradition. Non-Literary Influences
on Science Fiction (An Essay) (1983 chap) eloquently represents this view,
as do, more relaxedly, the reviews collected in Benchmarks: Galaxy
Bookshelf (coll 1985).In the 1980s, AB controversially associated himself
with a programme for new writers initiated (or at least inspired) by L.
Ron HUBBARD, arousing fears that Hubbard's Church of SCIENTOLOGY might
itself be the source for the apparent affluence of L. RON HUBBARD'S
WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. It was, nevertheless, evident by their
participation that many sf writers felt these worries to be trivial, and
the programme can claim to have introduced several authors of note (like
Karen Joy FOWLER and David ZINDELL) to the field. In pieces like Writing
Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990 chap), composed originally for the
enterprise, AB projected a detailedsense of what it meant to be a
professional. The Hubbard school absorbed most of his energies for the
remainder of the decade, although in 1991 he announced his semi-retirement
from Writers of the Future, and soon published, in Hard Landing (1993) -
his first novel since Michaelmas- a condensed, intricative, virtuoso
narrative following the lives - as resident aliens - of four crashed
extraterrestrials in America from the 1940s through the 1970s. [JC]Other
works: Man of Earth (1955 Satellite; rev 1958); The Amsirs and the Iron
Thorn (1967; vt The Iron Thorn 1968 UK); Cerberus (1967 FSF; 1989 chap).As
Editor: The L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future series: L. Ron
Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1985; vt without title
reference to Hubbard 1986 UK); Vol II (anth 1986); Vol III (anth 1987);
Vol IV (anth 1988); Vol V (anth 1989); Vol VI (anth 1990); Vol VII (anth
1991); Vol VIII (anth 1992) with Dave WOLVERTON.About the author:More
Issues at Hand (coll 1970) by William Atheling Jr (James BLISH), Chapter
V; "Rite de Passage: A Reading of ROGUE MOON" by David KETTERER in
FOUNDATION 5, 1974; Visions of Tomorrow: Six Journeys from Outer to Inner
Space (1975) by David N. SAMUELSON; An Algis Budrys Checklist (1983 chap)
by Chris DRUMM; Conspiracy Theories (anth 1987 chap) ed Christopher EVANS,
providing a range of views on the Writers of the Future/Scientology
dispute and on AJB's role.See also: CHILDREN IN SF; COMMUNICATIONS;
CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DISASTER;
GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GOTHIC SF; INVASION; INVISIBILITY; The MAGAZINE OF
FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MARS; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; METAPHYSICS; NEW
WAVE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; OUTER PLANETS; PANTROPY; PARANOIA; PHILIP K.
DICK AWARD; PSYCHOLOGY; REINCARNATION; ROBOTS; SCIENTISTS; WRITERS OF THE
FUTURE CONTEST.

BUFFALO BOOK CO.
HADLEY PUBLISHING COMPANY.

BUFFERY, JUDITH
(1943- ) UK writer known exclusively for her SPACE-OPERA Star Lord Saga:
The Sheeg (1979), Saffron (1979), The Iron Clog (dated 1979 but 1980) and
Gringol Weed (1980). [JC]

BUG
Film (1975). Paramount. Dir Jeannot Szwarc, starring Bradford Dillman,
Joanna Miles, Richard Gilliland. Screenplay William Castle (also prod),
Thomas PAGE, based on The Hephaestus Plague (1973) by Page. 100 mins.
Colour.After an earthquake near a small US town, strange insects appear
out of a fissure. Capable of producing fire by rubbing their rear
appendages together, they ignite countryside, cars, people and a cat. A
scientist whose wife has fallen victim to their incendiary activities
becomes bug-obsessed. Mating them with roaches, he produces a new
carnivorous species which can communicate, spelling out words by grouping
themselves in patterns. Finally, in the traditional Faustian manner, he
falls in flames into the fissure which conveniently closes behind him and
the bugs. B, like its source novel, appears unclear about what it is
trying to be - a straight MONSTER MOVIE or some kind of allegorical
revenge-of-Nature warning to mankind. The insect photography, by Ken
Middleham, is good. [JB]See also: PHASE IV.

BUG-EYED MONSTERS
Often known by their acronym, BEMs. BEM; MONSTERS.

BUJOLD, LOIS McMASTER
(1949- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Barter" for Twilight
Zone in 1985. Almost all her published work is part of a loose series of
humorous adventures set in a future of feuding galactic colonies connected
by FASTER-THAN-LIGHT "wormhole jumps". Most of these stories feature
members of the Vorkosigan family, part of an elite military caste from the
planet Barrayar, recently rediscovered by galactic civilization after
regressing into semifeudalism. Shards of Honor (1986) and its immediate
sequel BARRAYAR (1991) which won a 1992 HUGO, deal with the romance
between Lord Aral Vorkosigan and a sophisticated off-worlder; the child of
their marriage is Miles Vorkosigan, born with severe physical handicaps
due to a politically inspired attempt to poison his father. Miles grows up
to become a supremely charismatic, witty, compulsively driven military
genius who triumphantly transcends the difficulties caused by his brittle
bones and 4ft 9in (1.45m) stature. His complicated double life in the
Barrayaran Navy (as an ensign) and the Dendarii Mercenaries (of which he
accidentally becomes the founder and admiral) is followed, in order of
internal chronology, in The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)-assembled with
Shards of Honor as Test of Honor (omni 1987) - THE VOR GAME (1990), which
won a 1991 Hugo, Brothers in Arms (1989) and the ambitious Mirror Dance
(1994) The short stories in The Borders of Infinity (coll 1989) -
assembled with THE VOR GAME as Vorkosigan's Game (omni 1990) - including
the Hugo- and NEBULA-winning "The Mountains of Mourning" (1989), feature
Miles at various points in his career. Ethan of Athos (1986), set after
THE VOR GAME, focuses on Elli Quinn, who eventually becomes Miles's lover.
FALLING FREE (1988), LMMB's best known single novel and winner of the 1988
Nebula, is set 200 years before the start of the Vorkosigan tales and
tells the story of a rebellion-by humans genetically engineered to live in
zero GRAVITY - against the company which has created them and plans, once
their commercial value has expired, to dump them on a planetary
surface.LMMB is a writer whose books are both funny and humane. Her
characters have strong feeling for each other and, when compared to
similar military figures in the work of such male writers as Jerry
POURNELLE, are often remarkably (and perhaps unrealistically) gentle.
Though the ideas content in her work is generally low, her novels and
stories succeed on their own terms. [NT]Other Works:The Spirit Ring
(1992), a fantasy.See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; COLONIZATION OF
OTHER WORLDS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; SPACE OPERA; WAR.

BULGAKOV, MIKHAIL
(1891-1940) Soviet playwright and novelist whose fame in the West has
come only with the posthumous publication in translation of most of his
fiction, including Belaya gvardiya (1925; trans Michael Glenny as The
White Guard 1971 UK) and Cherny sneg (written late 1930s; trans Michael
Glenny as Black Snow 1967 UK), neither of which are sf/fantasy. A
collection of short stories, Dyaboliada (coll 1925; trans Carl R. Proffer
as Diaboliad and Other Stories 1972 US), includes "The Crimson Island: A
Novel by Comrade Jules Verne Translated from the French into the Aesopian"
(1924 Germany), a Jules VERNE-like fable made into a play (performed 1928)
with the same title, and "The Fatal Eggs" (1924), whose indictment of the
mechanizing hubris of science reflects the influence of H.G. WELLS's The
Food of the Gods (1904). A similar analysis shapes Sobacheye Serdste
(written 1925; trans Michael Glenny from the manuscript as Heart of a Dog
1968 UK and by Mirra GINSBURG 1968 US), a short sf novel in which a
scientist transforms a dog into a sort-of-man who proves incapable of the
fundamental transformation to civilized behaviour; eventually, the
scientist is forced to change him back into a dog (or allegorical peasant)
again. The tale reappeared in The Heart of a Dog and Other Stories (coll
trans Kathleen Cook-Horujy and Avril Pyman 1990 Russia), along with other
stories. Master i Margarita (written 1938; 1966-7 US; complete text trans
Michael Glenny as The Master and Margarita 1967 UK; cut text trans Mirra
Ginsburg 1967 US) is a fantasy in which the Devil appears in modern
Moscow, and Christ's crucifixion is re-enacted. It was filmed in 1972 and
adapted as a serial on BBC radio in 1992; the play within the novel was
made into a Polish film (English title Pilate and the Others) in 1971. In
"The Crimson Island" (written 1927), which appears in The Early Plays
(coll trans Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea Proffer 1972 US), and in "Adam
and Eve" (written 1931), "Bliss" (written 1934) and "Ivan Vasilievich"
(written 1935), MB mounted a series of profound assaults upon the
reality-distortions of ideology. MB was a powerful, often extremely funny,
ultimately very serious writer whose use of sf and fantasy forms was
tightly linked to the messages he laboured to produce about the state of
the SOVIET UNION, whose apparatchiks criticized him severely during his
life. [JC]See also: RUSSIA; THEATRE.

BULGARIA
The roots of Bulgarian sf can be found in the 1920s, when Svetoslav
MINKOV published three unusual collections of short stories: Siniata
Hrizantema ["The Blue Chrysanthemum"] (coll 1921), Tshasovnik ["Clock"]
(coll 1924) and Ognena Ptitza ["The Fire Bird"] (coll 1927). Minkov's work
noticeably resembles that of Edgar Allan POE, H.P. LOVECRAFT and the
German decadents of his period, and may be closer to the "diabolic"
fantasy of the German Romantics than to the main current of sf. A
collection in English of Minkov's work is The Lady with the X-Ray Eyes
(coll trans 1965 Bulgaria). Perhaps Georgi Iliev, author of the novels
O-Korse (1930) and Teut se Bountuva ["Teut Rebels"] (1933), should be
regarded as the real founding father of Bulgarian sf. These two books,
intended as serious works for serious readers, deal with cosmic DISASTERS
on the grand scale: the dying of the Sun; the cessation of our planet's
rotation.The promise of these early years was not followed up. No further
sf or fantasy works were published until about 10 years after WWII, when
Bulgarian sf's second period began. To understand the many paradoxes of
Bulgarian socialist publishing 1946-89 one should remember that all
publishing houses and printers were state property and poorly organized;
that there was a chronic shortage of paper and printing presses; and that
the whole publishing system was under strong ideological control. The soil
for raising Bulgarian sf was, therefore, less than fertile - certainly in
the 1950s - and much sf of the period was limited to tedious imitations of
the Soviet model, dealing with a bright, happy communist future and the
imminent destruction of all that capitalism stood for. Books of this
period are Zemiata Pred Gibel ["Earth on the Verge of Destruction"] (1957)
by Tsvetan Angelov, Raketata ne Otgovaria ["No Reply from the Rocketship"]
(1958) by Dimitar Peev, Gushterat ot Ledovete ["The Lizard from the Land
of Ice"] (1958) by Petar Bobev and Atomniat Tshovek ["The Atomic Man"]
(1958) by Ljuben Dilov.In the 1960s, when the winds of change were
detectable, a third and more interesting period began. The breakthrough
was made by Georgi Markov ( David ST GEORGE) - later assassinated in
London - with his important novel Pobeditelite na Aiax ["The Conquerors of
Ajax"] (1960), a space story about the meeting of three races who are at
different stages of cultural development. In 1962 the first Bulgarian sf
club, "Friends of the Future", was founded in Sofia. The most active sf
writer has been Ljuben Dilov (1927- ), whose Atomniat Tshovek is mentioned
above. His later works - often satirical-include Mnogoto Imena na Straha
["The Many Names of Fear"] (1967), Tejesta na Skafandara ["The Burden of
the Spacesuit"] (1969), about ALIENS, Moiat Stranen Priatel - Astronomat
["My Strange Friend the Astronomer"] (coll 1971), Patiat na Ikar ["The Way
of Icarus"] (1974), about a GENERATION STARSHIP, Da Nahranish Orela ["To
Feed the Eagle"] (coll 1977), and Jestokiat Eksperiment ["Cruel
Experiment"] (1985) about SEX. Other authors include Haim Oliver with
Heliopolis (1968), Emil Manov with Galacticheska Balada ["Galactic
Ballad"] (1971) and Patuvane do Uibrobia ["Journey to Wibrobia"] (1976) -
the latter a continuation of Jonathan SWIFT's Gulliver's Travels (1726;
rev 1735) - Svetoslav Slavshtev, Ljubomir Peevsky, and Pavel Vejinov with
Sinite Peperudi ["Blue Butterflies"] (coll 1968), Beliat Gushter ["The
White Lizard"] (coll 1977) and Barierata ["Barrier"] (coll 1977); Dimitar
Peev and Petar Bobev continue to publish.In the 1980s many more new sf
authors appeared, writing on the same - not outstanding - level. But
things began to look promising in the late 1980s. In 1988 the first
specialist sf magazine, F.E.P., was launched; the title has since been
changed to Fantastika. The great hope for Bulgarian sf came in 1989 with
the removal of the ban on privately owned publishing companies. A new sf
publishing house is Gemini, whose fortnightly sf magazine, Drugi Svetove
["Other Worlds"], began publication in 1991. The most active sf/fantasy
publishing house is Orphia. Other publishers, too, are intending to
publish sf, whose future in Bulgaria looks brighter. [AP]

BULL, EMMA
(1954- ) US writer who began as an author of fantasies, her first being
"Rending Dark" in Sword and Sorceress (anth 1984) ed Marion Zimmer
BRADLEY, and her best known being her first novel, War for the Oaks
(1987). Her second novel, Falcon (1989), is a remarkably well constructed
sf tale whose protagonist moves from the PLANETARY-ROMANCE setting of the
first half of the book into the hi-tech SPACE-OPERA environment that
dominates the second, where he has become an ace starship pilot;
eventually everything fits together in an extremely well ordered climax.
The subtitle of her third novel, BONE DANCE: A FANTASY FOR TECHNOPHILES
(1991), neatly demonstrates the difficulty - it is not uncommon for
writers of the 1980s to pose the problem - of generic placement, though
this particular book, which depicts a post- HOLOCAUST search for an
ancient weapon, is sufficiently sf-like not to distress taxonomists.
Finder: A Novel of the Borderlands * (1994) is, however, a fantasy novel
tied to the Borderlands world, and The Princess and the Lord of Night
(1994) is a pictorial fantasy for children. With her husband, the fantasy
writer Will Shetterly (1955- ), EB has published a collection of stories
(one collaborative), Double Feature(coll 1994), and edited the Liavek
sequence of SHARED-WORLD fantasy anthologies: Liavek * (anth 1985), The
Players of Luck * (anth 1986), Wizard's Row * (anth 1987), Spells of
Binding * (anth 1988) and Grand Festival * (anth 1990). [JC]See also:
FASTER THAN LIGHT; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD.

BULMER, H.K.
[r] Kenneth BULMER.

BULMER, KENNETH
(1921- ) UK writer, who also signs himself H.K. Bulmer, as well as using
a number of pseudonyms for his books, including Alan Burt Akers, Ken Blake
(not sf), Ernest Corley (not sf), Arthur Frazier (not sf), Adam Hardy (for
his successful Hornblower-like novels of the sea) Philip Kent, Bruno
Krauss (not sf), Neil Langholm (not sf), Manning Norvil, Charles R. Pike
(not sf), Dray Prescot, Andrew Quiller, Richard Silver (not sf), Tully
Zetford, the collaborative pseudonym Kenneth JOHNS (with John Newman) and
the house name Karl Maras, under which he wrote two novels; there have
also been several names restricted to magazine stories. After a career as
an active fan dating from before WWII (editing various fanzines from
1941), KB began publishing sf with Space Treason (1952) and Cybernetic
Controller (1952), both with A(ubrey) V(incent) Clarke (1922), and
Encounter in Space (1952), and was soon involved in producing material for
NW, Authentic and Nebula, the three major magazines among those
proliferating in the volatile UK sf scene of the first post-WWII decade,
though he sold few stories to US magazines. His first solo novels, like
Space Treason (1952) and Zhorani (Master of the Universe) (1953 as by Karl
Maras), and much of his ensuing work were either SPACE OPERAS or adventure
plots laid on simplified versions of future Earths. Notable among these
were several novels published in the USA from 1957, including City Under
the Sea (1957 dos US), The Secret of ZI (1958 dos US; vt The Patient Dark
1969 UK), The Earth Gods are Coming (1960 dos US; vt with one story added
as coll Of Earth Foretold 1961 UK), The Wizard of Starship Poseidon (1963
dos US), Demons' World (1964 dos US; vt The Demons 1965 UK), Worlds for
the Taking (1966 US), possibly the best of them, a relatively sustained
and dark-toned portrait of the costs of being a "competent man" in an
environment of interstellar corporate intrigue, and The Doomsday Men (1965
If; exp 1968 US).In the period of his most interesting work, approximately
1955-68, KB was notable for the adept use he made of a wide range of sf
themes, from underwater CITIES ( UNDER THE SEA) to giant ALIEN invaders (
GREAT AND SMALL) to TIME TRAVEL and MONSTERS - in Cycle of Nemesis (1967
US) - to PARALLEL WORLDS. The latter theme is the sustaining conceit of
the Keys to the Dimensions series: Land Beyond the Map (1961 Science
Fantasy as "The Map Country"; 1965); "The Seventh Stair" (1961 Science
Fantasy) and "Perilous Portal" (1962 Science Fantasy), both as by Frank
Brandon; The Key to Irunium (1967 US); The Key to Venudine (1968 US); The
Wizards of Senchuria (1969 US); The Ships of Durostorum (1970 US); The
Hunters of Jundagai (1971 US), The Chariots of Ra (1972 US) and The
Diamond Contessa (1983 US). Much of KB's later fiction under his own name
has seemed to flounder somewhat in attempts to handle a more
"contemporary" style and subject matter, as in The Ulcer Culture (1969; vt
Stained-Glass World 1976), On the Symb-Socket Circuit (1972) and Roller
Coaster World (1972 US). As the Dray Prescot series would show, KB's forte
lies in the transparency of the pulp tale truly told.It was with the Dray
Prescot sequence of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS pastiches - set in a
SCIENCE-FANTASY interstellar venue and written either as by Alan Burt
Akers or as told to Akers by Dray Prescot - that KB reached his largest
and most faithful audience. To date the series comprises: Transit to
Scorpio (1972 US), The Suns of Scorpio (1973 US), Warrior of Scorpio (1973
US), Swordships of Scorpio (1973 US), Prince of Scorpio (1974 US),
Manhounds of Antares (1974 US), Arena of Antares (1974 US), Fliers of
Antares (1975 US), Bladesman of Antares (1975 US), Avenger of Antares
(1975 US), Armada of Antares (1975 US), The Tides of Kregen (1976 US),
Renegades of Kregen (1976 US), Krozair of Kregen (1977 US), Secret Scorpio
(1977 US), Savage Scorpio (1977 US), Captive Scorpio (1977 US), Golden
Scorpio (1978 US), A Life for Kregen (1979 US), A Fortune for Kregen (1979
US), A Victory for Kregen (1979 US), Beasts of Antares (1980 US), Rebel of
Antares (1980 US), Legions of Antares (1981 US), Allies of Antares (1981
US), Mazes of Scorpio (1981 US), Delia of Vallia (1982 US), Fires of
Scorpio (1983 US), Talons of Scorpio (1983 US), Masks of Scorpio (1984
US), Seg the Bowman (1984 US), Werewolves of Kregen (1985 US), Witches of
Kregen (1985 US), Storm over Vallia (1985 US), Omens of Kregen (1985 US)
and Warlord of Antares (1988 US). The books are unfailing in their
delivery. With John CARNELL's death in 1972, KB took over the long-running
anthology series NEW WRITINGS IN SF from #22 (anth 1973), producing in
short order #23 (anth 1973), #24 (anth 1974), #25 (anth 1975), #26 (anth
1975), #27 (anth 1975), #28 (anth 1976) and #29 (anth 1976) before the
series was terminated, and maintaining the generally traditionalist
content of the books; some of the volumes under his editorship were later
assembled as New Writings in SF Special (1) (omni 1975), which included
#21 (ed Carnell), #22 and #23, New Writings in SF Special (2) (omni 1978),
which included #26 and #29, and New Writings in SF (3) (omni 1978), which
included #27 and #28. As fan, writer and editor, KB has been one of the
mainstays of UK sf for more than four decades; he served as a council
member of the SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION from its inception to 1988.
Though much of his work is routine, especially that written under
pseudonyms, he has consistently shown himself to be one of the most
competent, though not perhaps the most original, workers in the field.
[JC]Other works: Empire of Chaos (1953); Galactic Intrigue (1953); Space
Salvage (1953); The Stars are Ours (1953); Challenge (1954); World Aflame
(1954); The Changeling Worlds (1959 dos US); Beyond the Silver Sky (1961
dos US); No Man's World (1961 dos US; vt with 1 story added as coll
Earth's Long Shadow 1962 UK); The Fatal Fire (1962); The Wind of Liberty
(coll 1962); Defiance (coll of linked stories 1963); The Million Year Hunt
(fixup 1964 dos US); Behold the Stars (1965 dos US); To Outrun Doomsday
(1967 US); Kandar (1969 US); The Star Venturers (1969 dos US); Quench the
Burning Stars (1970; exp vt Blazon 1970 US); Star Trove (1970); Sword of
the Barbarians (1970); The Electric Sword-Swallowers (1971 dos US); The
Insane City (1971 US).As Philip Kent: Mission to the Stars (1953 chap);
Vassals of Venus (1953 chap); Home is the Martian (1954 chap); Slaves of
the Spectrum (1954 chap).As Karl Maras: Peril from Space (1954).As Manning
Norvil: A series starring Odan the Half-God and comprising Dream Chariots
(1977 US), Whetted Bronze (1978 US) and Crown of the Sword God (1980).As
Tully Zetford: The Hook sequence comprising Whirlpool of Stars (1974), The
Boosted Man (1974), Star City (1975) and The Virility Gene (1975).About
the author: The Writings of Henry Kenneth Bulmer (2nd edn 1984 chap) by
Roger ROBINSON.See also: ANTHOLOGIES; COMICS; DAW BOOKS; FASTER THAN
LIGHT; GALACTIC EMPIRES; NEW WORLDS.

BULWER, EDWARD
[r] First Baron LYTTON.

BULWER-LYTTON, Sir EDWARD
[r] First Baron LYTTON.

BULYCHEV, KIR(ILL)
Pseudonym of Russian historian and writer Igor (Vsevolodovich) Mozheiko
(1934- ), known also for books of popular science. He first gained
popularity through his light and intelligent stories, assembled in volumes
like Tchudesa v Gusliaro (coll 1972; trans Roger DeGaris, with differing
contents, as Gusliar Wonders 1983 US), Liudi Kak Liudi ["Men Who Are Like
Men"] (coll 1975), Letneie Utro ["A Summer Morning"] (coll 1979) and
Pereval ["The Pass"] (coll 1983). Some of these stories were assembled as
Half a Life (coll trans Helen Saltz Jacobson 1977 US). In the humorous
Gusliar cycle, the eponymous old Russian town is a place where miracles
occur on a routine basis - ALIENS land, for example, and fairy-tale Golden
Fishes, which grant wishes, are a sell-out in the local pet-store. KB's
only adult novel of note, Posledniaia Voina ["The Final War"] (1970),
depicts a long-dead post- HOLOCAUST planet which is visited by Earthmen
who have the technical means to resurrect it. A prolific writer of
CHILDREN'S SF, KB may become best known as the author of a very long
sequence of Alice tales about a futuristic young heroine, beginning with
Devotchka S Zemli ["Girl From Earth"] (1974). Juvenile singletons include
Sto Let Tomu Vpered ["One Hundred Years Ahead"] (1978), Million
Prikliuchenii ["A Million Adventures"] (1982) and Neposeda ["Fidget"]
(1985), which was successfully adapted for the screen. [VG]

BUNCH, CHRIS
[r] Allan COLE.

BUNCH, DAVID R(OOSEVELT)
(? - ) US writer of poetry and sf. He graduated as Bachelor of Science at
Central Missouri State College and as MA in English at Washington
University, worked as a civilian cartographer for the US Air Force
1954-73, and began publishing sf with "Routine Emergency" for If in 1957;
before that he had published about 200 non-sf stories. Much of his sf work
was assembled as Moderan (coll of linked stories 1971), a series of short,
narratively deranged, fable-like tales which describe in satirical terms (
SATIRE) a radically technologized future world where, after a nuclear
HOLOCAUST, humans have been transformed into CYBORGS, the surface of the
world is plastic, and thought and action are both solipsistic and deeply
melancholy. The book's portrait of a manufactured humanity works as an
arraignment of the late-20th-century slide into speed-lined rootlessness,
and demonstrate his heterodoxy in the world of sf. Some of his poetry was
assembled as We Have a Nervous Job (coll 1983 chap). Of the many
non-Moderan stories, "That High-Up Blue Day that Saw the Black Sky-Train
Come Spinning" (1968) has been described as an outstanding conflation of
moral seriousness and Grand Guignol. The relentlessness of his vision and
the "zany" extremity of his rendering of it ensure DRB's market
inconspicuousness, but suggest that, for his readers, he will remain a
vivid influence; and it may well be that, with the release of Bunch! (coll
1993), his considerable stature will be more widely understood. [JC]See
also: ABSURDIST SF; AMAZING STORIES; CYBERNETICS.

BUPP, WALTER
[s] John BERRYMAN.

BURDEKIN, KATHERINE P(ENELOPE)
(1896-1963) UK writer, who signed some of her work Kay Burdekin; in the
1930s she wrote as Murray Constantine. Her early work in particular took
the guise of FANTASY to express increasingly explicit FEMINIST interests.
The Burning Ring (1927) is a TIME-TRAVEL fantasy in which a self-centred
young man, having been given magic powers, visits various epochs in
various disguises, learning more about real life than he at first wished.
The 12th-century protagonist of The Rebel Passion (1929) is transported in
a vision from his monastery to a 21st-century UK where women are equal,
eugenic sterilization of the unfit is normal, and the Western world -
after a futuristic war with Asia - gradually turns to a William
MORRIS-style medievalism. Proud Man (1934), as Murray Constantine,
subjects a sample of contemporary humanity to the searching interrogation
of a visitor from the future whose hermaphroditism stands as a reproach to
our local muddle. The Devil, Poor Devil! (1934), as Constantine, confronts
the Devil with a killing spirit of secular sanity, against which He is
helpless. KB's last published novels were the most explicitly didactic.
Swastika Night (1937 as Constantine; 1985 as KB), her best known novel,
examines a Nazi-dominated Europe 500 years hence through the eyes of the
young German protagonist, who begins to understand that something is
perhaps awry in a world where women are breeding-animals and Hitler is
deified ( HITLER WINS). The posthumous publication of KB's feminist
UTOPIA, The End of This Day's Business (1990), apparently written before
Swastika Night, further helped to disinter from pseudonymous obscurity a
writer of considerable interest. Her work is at times surreptitiously
couched, and her message is too often found embedded in romance-fiction
plotting, but KB can now be seen as a figure of contemporary interest.
[JC]See also: DYSTOPIAS; GENRE SF; POLITICS.

BURDICK, EUGENE L(EONARD)
(1918-1965) US writer of several extremely popular novels, both alone and
in collaboration. His sf novel, Fail-Safe (1962) with Harvey WHEELER,
presents a NEAR-FUTURE US attack in error on the USSR, and the horrifying
tit-for-tat (the destruction of New York City) which the US President is
forced to offer. The book was filmed as FAIL SAFE (1964). [JC]

BURGEON, G.A.L.
Arthur Owen BARFIELD.

BURGER, DIONYS
The Anglicized form of the name of Dutch physicist lecturer and author
Dionijs Burger (1923- ). His Bolland: Een roman van gekromde ruimten en
uitdijend heelal (1957; trans Cornelia J. Rheinboldt as Sphereland: A
Fantasy about Curved Spaces and an Expanded Universe 1965 US) is a
MATHEMATICAL fable written as a sequel to Flatland (1884) by Edwin A.
ABBOTT. [PN]See also: BENELUX.

BURGESS, ANTHONY
Working name of UK writer and composer John Anthony Burgess Wilson
(1917-1993), known primarily for his work outside the sf field; as a
composer he has worked under his full name. Trained in English literature
and phonetics, AB taught at home and in Malaysia 1946-60, then returned to
the UK (though he has since moved to Monaco) and became a full-time
Protean man of letters, novelist, musician, composer and specialist in
Shakespeare and James Joyce. Devil of a State (1961), set in an imaginary
caliphate, skirts sf displacement, and several subsequent novels engage in
linguistic flirtations with modes of FABULATION, but AB remains best known
in the sf field for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962; with final chapter cut 1963
US), which was filmed by Stanley KUBRICK as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971). A
compelling and often comic vision of the way violence comes to dominate
the mind, the novel is set in a future London and is told in a curious but
readable Russified argot by a juvenile delinquent whose brainwashing by
the authorities has destroyed not only his murderous aggression but also a
deeper-seated sense of humanity (typified by his compulsive love for the
music of Beethoven). It is an ironic novel in the tradition of Yevgeny
ZAMIATIN's and George ORWELL's anti- UTOPIAS; much later, AB adapted the
book as a play to be accompanied by his own music, publishing the result
as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1987 chap). His other early sf novel is The Wanting
Seed (1962), a DYSTOPIAN investigation of the dilemmas facing men who wish
to curb the population explosion by every means possible (
OVERPOPULATION).The Eve of Saint Venus (1964), perhaps inspired by F.
ANSTEY's The Tinted Venus (1885), sympathetically brings the eponymous
goddess back to life. "The Muse" (1968), a story of altered PERCEPTION and
TIME TRAVEL, offers an alarming explanation for Shakespeare's never having
blotted a line. Beard's Roman Women (1976 US), a fantasy, is the
melancholy tale of a widowed writer haunted in Rome by the supernatural
presence (and insistent telephone calls) of his deceased wife. Two genuine
sf novels followed: 1985 (1978), which is divided into a competent essay
on Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) and a blustering sf tale set in a
1985 dominated by Arabs and left-wing unions; and The End of the World
News (1983), again a book divided but this time in three, with a short
life of Sigmund Freud jostling a Broadway musical (without the music)
about Leon Trotsky, both tales being filmed and viewed long afterwards
aboard a spaceship which - in the third segment of the main narrative -
has escaped the END OF THE WORLD just before a wandering planet strikes
the rest of us dead. These novels both give off a sense of underlying
sarcasm which has, perhaps, as much to do with AB's disdain for sf as with
the tales' ostensible targets. Any Old Iron (1989), a treatment of
Arthurian material in a contemporary context, was similarly distempered.
AB has written little short fiction; some of the stories in his first
collection, The Devil's Work (coll 1989), are of genre interest.
[MJ/JC]Other works: A Long Trip to Teatime (1976).About the author: The
Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess (1978 chap) by Richard Mathews;
Anthony Burgess: An Enumerative Bibliography (1980) by Jeutonne Brewer;
Anthony Burgess (1981) by Samuel Coale.See also: LINGUISTICS; MUSIC;
PSYCHOLOGY; QUEST FOR FIRE.

BURGESS, ERIC (ALEXANDER)
(1912- ) UK author, in collaboration with A(rthur Henry) Friggens (1920-
), of several sf novels for ROBERT HALE LIMITED. Though none are
remarkable in content, the Mortorio sequence - Mortorio (1973) and
Mortorio Two (1975)-stand out from the crowd. [JC]Other works: Anti-Zota
(1973); Mants of Myrmedon (1977); Hounds of Heaven (1979).

BURGESS, MARY WICKIZER
[r] Daryl F. MALLETT; Robert REGINALD.

BURGESS, MICHAEL
[r] Robert REGINALD.

BURKE, JONATHAN
Working name of UK writer and editor John Frederick Burke (1922- ) - who
had been active in FANDOM in the 1930s (The FUTURIAN ) - for much of the
sf he published in UK magazines in the mid-1950s, beginning with
"Chessboard" for NW in 1953, and for his earlier sf novels, which are all
routine; he also wrote several thrillers as JB. His first novel, Swift
Summer (1949) as by J.F. Burke, is a marginal fantasy of some slight
interest, as is The Outward Walls (1951). His sf deals with a variety of
themes, from PARALLEL WORLDS in The Echoing Worlds (1954) to EVOLUTION in
Twilight of Reason (1954), though without excessive energy; Deep Freeze
(1955) faces an all-female world with the return of the male. He has also
written as Robert Miall (see listing below). In more recent years, almost
always as John Burke, he has edited horror anthologies and novelized film
and tv productions. [JC]Other works: The Dark Gateway (1953); Hotel Cosmos
(1954); Pattern of Shadows (1954); Alien Landscapes (coll 1955), much of
whose contents, under different titles, were also assembled as Exodus from
Elysium (coll 1965 Australia); Revolt of the Humans (1955); Pursuit
through Time (1956); Dr Terror's House of Horrors * (1965) as John Burke,
novelizing the film; The Hammer Horror Omnibus * (coll 1966) and The
Second Hammer Horror Film Omnibus * (coll 1967), both as John Burke,
stories from films; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang * (1968) as John Burke,
novelizing the film of Ian FLEMING's tale; Moon Zero Two * (1969) as John
Burke, novelizing the film MOON ZERO TWO (1969); Expo 80 (1972) as John
Burke; the Dr Caspian, psychic investigator series comprising The Devil's
Footsteps (1976), The Black Charade (1977) and Ladygrove (1978); Privilege
* (1967), novelizing PRIVILEGE.As Robert Miall: UFO * (1970; vt UFO-1:
Flesh Hunters 1973 US) and UFO 2 * (1971; vt UFO-2: Sporting Blood 1973
US), novelizations of the tv series UFO.As Editor: Tales of Unease (anth
1966), More Tales of Unease (anth 1969) and New Tales of Unease (anth
1976), all as John Burke.

BURKE, RALPH
Pseudonym used primarily by Robert SILVERBERG alone, but three times in
collaboration with Randall GARRETT, in 1956-7. [JC]

BURKETT, WILLIAM R(AY) Jr
(1943- ) US author and journalist. His only published sf work, Sleeping
Planet (1964 ASF; 1965), very competently tells a hard-edged tale of
conflict between the small Terran Federation and the huge Llralan Empire.
The Llralans, having undeserved access to a toxic dust, spray the Earth,
putting all but a few humans to sleep ( INVASION); in the best ASF manner
- the book's resemblance to the work of Eric Frank RUSSELL is striking -
they are ultimately sent packing. [JC]

BURKHOLZ, HERBERT
[r] ESP.

BURKS, ARTHUR J.
(1898-1974) US military man and writer who, after some years in the US
Army, began publishing fantasy with "Thus Spake the Prophetess" for Weird
Tales in 1924 and sf with "Monsters of Moyen" for ASF in 1930. After two
decades of high productivity, he remained intermittently active into the
1960s, with time out for further service in WWII. Only one of his sf
novels, The Great Mirror (1942 Science Fiction Quarterly; 1952), has been
reprinted in book form. The others included "Earth, the Marauder" (1930
ASF), "The Mind Master" (1932 ASF), "Jason Sows Again" (1938 ASF),
"Survival" and its sequel "Exodus" (both 1938 Marvel Science Stories) and
"The Far Detour" (1942 Science Fiction Quarterly). Much of his best work
was fantasy, including The Great Amen (1938), Look Behind You! (coll 1954
chap), Black Medicine (coll 1966) and The Casket (1973). AJB was one of
the most prolific of all PULP-MAGAZINE writers: his sf and fantasy
constitute only a small fraction of his prodigious output. [JC/MJE]

BURLAND, HARRIS
J.B. HARRIS-BURLAND.

BURNS, ALAN
(1929- ) UK writer and academic long resident in the USA. Some of his
FABULATIONS, like Europe After the Rain (1965), Babel (1969) and
Dreamerika! (1972), utilize sf instruments to grapple with a surreal
vision of a modern world toppling jaggedly into chaos. His techniques on
occasion resemble those adopted by J.G. BALLARD during the 1960s. [JC]

BURNS, CHARLES
(1955- ) US COMIC-strip artist and writer, born in Washington DC and now
based in Philadelphia. The drawing of his FABULATIONS displays a strange,
heavily stylized vision; his work has been widely published in Italy
(notably in Vanity), Spain (El Vibora) and France ( METAL HURLANT) as well
as in his native USA (Heavy Metal, Village Voice, National Lampoon, Face
and Death Rattle). His famous El Borbah strips, collected as El Borbah
(graph coll 1985) and as Hard-Boiled Defective Stories (graph coll 1988),
feature an eponymous private eye who is not so much hard-boiled as
rock-hard-boiled. El Borbah has a black metal head with only rudimentary
features, and wears only a black shiny leotard and black boots; his
surreal adventures often contain sf elements. The series shows the
influence of Chester Gould (of Dick Tracy fame) in its heavy-line style
and its bizarre characters. Here, as in his serial Big Baby (collected as
Big Baby: Curse of the Molemen graph coll 1986) and his continuing
self-syndicated strip distributed to freesheets and street-level papers
throughout the USA, CB creates a world peopled by the inhabitants and
served by the machinery of US 1950s B-movies. [RT/SW]Other work: Teen
Plague (graph 1989), epic horror story; Skin Deep (graph 1992).

BURNS, JIM
(1948- ) Welsh illustrator, primarily of sf, born in Cardiff, with a
diploma from St Martin's School of Art, London. During 1973-9 his work was
exclusively for UK publishers, notably Sphere Books, and he was not really
known in the USA until publication of his illustrated book Planet Story
(1979), with story by Harry HARRISON. Since 1980 much of his book-cover
work has been for US publishers, including BANTAM BOOKS, ACE BOOKS,
Berkley and Byron PREISS, including the interior black-and-white
illustrations for the latter's Eye (coll 1985) by Frank HERBERT. JB's work
(in many media, but mostly acrylics) is realistic, subtly textured, well
known for its attractive women (sometimes attacked as sexist) and
constantly inventive, and gives ample evidence in its detail that JB -
somewhat unusually in this field - actually reads the books that he
illustrates. His work is spectacularly commercial (but not merely so) and,
along with that of Don MAITZ and Michael WHELAN, perhaps the most
proficient currently (1992) being produced in the field. More than 100 of
his covers may be seen in Lightship (coll 1985), with text by Christopher
EVANS. In 1987 JB became the first and so far only non-US winner of a HUGO
for Best Professional Artist. [PN]See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD;
ILLUSTRATION; TECHNOLOGY.

BURROUGHS, EDGAR RICE
(1875-1950) US writer. Educated at Michigan Military Academy, ERB served
briefly in the US Cavalry. His early life was marked by numerous false
starts and failures - at the time he started writing, aged 36, he was a
pencil-sharpener salesman - but it would seem that the impulse to create
psychically charged SCIENCE-FANTASY environments was deep-set and
powerful, for he began with a great rush of energy, and within two years
had initiated three of his four most important series.A PRINCESS OF MARS
(1912 All-Story Magazine as "Under the Moons of Mars" as by Norman Bean;
1917), a fantastic solution to mid-life frustrations, opens the long
Barsoom sequence of novels set on MARS (Barsoom), which established that
planet as a venue for dream-like and interminable sagas in which sf and
fantasy protocols mix indiscriminately as a sort of enabling gear. The
Gods of Mars (1913 All-Story; 1918) and The Warlord of Mars (1913-14
All-Story; 1919) further recount the exploits of John Carter as he battles
with various green, yellow and black men and wins the hand of the
red-skinned (and oviparous) princess Dejah Thoris. Starring different
central characters, the series continued in Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1916
All-Story Weekly; 1920), The Chessmen of Mars (1922), The Master Mind of
Mars (1928), A Fighting Man of Mars (1931), Swords of Mars (1936),
Synthetic Men of Mars (1940), Llana of Gathol (1941 AMZ; fixup 1948) and
John Carter of Mars (1941-3 AMZ; coll 1964). "John Carter and the Giant of
Mars", in the last volume, was originally written as a juvenile tale with
ERB's son, John Coleman BURROUGHS, and was later expanded by ERB. The
standard of storytelling and invention is high in the Barsoom books,
Chessmen and Swords being particularly fine; but critics tend not to
accept the series as good sf. Although Carter's adventures take place on
another planet, he travels there by magical means, and Barsoom itself is
inconsistent and scientifically implausible. It is clear, however, that
ERB's immense popularity has nothing to do with conventional sf virtues,
for it depends on storylines and venues as malleable as dreams, exotic and
dangerous and unending.The Tarzan saga is just as much sf (or non-sf) as
the Barsoom series. Much influenced by H. Rider HAGGARD, ERB did not
imitate one of that writer's prime virtues: his sense of reality. Tarzan's
Africa is far removed from Allan Quatermain's, and has to be accepted as
sheer fantasy, no more governed by the reality principle than Barsoom.
Tarzan of the Apes (1912 All-Story; 1914), the story of an English
aristocrat's son raised in the jungle by "great apes" (of a nonexistent
species), was immensely popular from the beginning, and ERB continued
producing sequels to the end of his career. In most of them Tarzan has
unashamedly fantastic adventures-discovering lost cities and live
dinosaurs, being reduced to 18in (46cm) in height, visiting the Earth's
core, etc. The early The Return of Tarzan (1913 New Story; 1915), The
Beasts of Tarzan (1914 All-Story Cavalier; 1916), The Son of Tarzan (1915
All-Story Cavalier; 1917) and Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar (1916
All-Story Cavalier; 1918) are not among the best in the series, although
Jungle Tales of Tarzan (coll 1919; vt Tarzan's Jungle Tales 1961 UK) is
cleverly reminiscent of Rudyard KIPLING's two Jungle Books (1894, 1895).
The best Tarzan novels came in the middle period: Tarzan the Untamed (coll
of linked stories 1920), Tarzan the Terrible (1921), Tarzan and the Golden
Lion (1923), Tarzan and the Ant Men (1924; rev 1924), Tarzan, Lord of the
Jungle (1928), Tarzan and the Lost Empire (1929) and Tarzan at the Earth's
Core (1930). Later the series deteriorated, becoming ever more repetitive:
Tarzan the Invincible (1931), Tarzan Triumphant (1932), Tarzan and the
City of Gold (1931 Argosy; 1933; cut 1952), Tarzan and the Lion Man
(1934), Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935), Tarzan's Quest (1936), Tarzan
and the Forbidden City (1938; cut vt Tarzan in the Forbidden City 1940),
Tarzan the Magnificent (fixup 1939) and Tarzan and the Foreign Legion
(1947). Two posthumous books are Tarzan and the Madman (1964) and Tarzan
and the Castaways (1939-41 various mags; coll 1965), neither of much
merit. Two mildly interesting offshoots of the main series were The Tarzan
Twins (1927; cut 1935; rev by other hands vt Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins
in the Jungle 1938) and its sequel, Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins with
Jad-Bal-Ja, the Golden Lion (1936), both being assembled as Tarzan and the
Tarzan Twins (omni 1963). Despite ERB's overproduction, Tarzan is a
remarkable creation, and possibly the best-known fictional character of
the century. Part of Tarzan's fame is due to the many film adaptations,
particularly those of the 1930s starring Johnny Weissmuller; none of these
are very faithful to the books.ERB's third major series, the Pellucidar
novels based on the HOLLOW-EARTH theory of John Cleves SYMMES, began with
At the Earth's Core (1914 All-Story Weekly; 1922) and continued in
Pellucidar (1915 All-Story; 1923), Tanar of Pellucidar (1930), Tarzan at
the Earth's Core (a notable "overlap" volume), Back to the Stone Age
(1937), Land of Terror (1944) and Savage Pellucidar (1942 AMZ; fixup,
incorporating 1 previously unpublished story, 1963). Pellucidar is perhaps
the best of ERB's locales - a world without time where dinosaurs and
beast-men roam circularly forever - and is a perfect setting for
bloodthirsty romantic adventure. The first of the series was filmed
disappointingly as AT THE EARTH'S CORE (1976).A fourth series, the Venus
sequence - created much later in ERB's career - concerns the exploits of
spaceman Carson Napier on VENUS, and consists of Pirates of Venus (1932
Argosy; 1934), Lost on Venus (1935), Carson of Venus (1939) and Escape on
Venus (1941-2 Fantastic Adventures; fixup 1946). These books are not as
stirring and vivid as the Barsoom series. A posthumous story, "The Wizard
of Venus", was published in Tales of Three Planets (coll 1964) and
subsequently as the title story of a separate paperback, The Wizard of
Venus (coll 1970; vt The Wizard of Venus and Pirate Blood 1984). Two of
the stories from Tales of Three Planets, "Beyond the Farthest Star" (1942)
and the posthumous "Tangor Returns", form the opening of a fifth series
which ERB abandoned. They are of interest because they are his only tales
with an interstellar setting. The two stories were subsequently
republished as a paperback entitled Beyond the Farthest Star (coll
1965).Of ERB's non-series tales, perhaps the finest is The Land that Time
Forgot (1918 Blue Book in 3 parts; fixup 1924; vt in 3 vols under original
part-titles: The Land that Time Forgot 1982, The People that Time Forgot
1982 and Out of Time's Abyss 1982), set in the lost world of Caspak near
the South Pole, and cunningly presenting in literal form - for animals
here metamorphose through evolutionary stages - the dictum that ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny. The book was loosely adapted into two films, The
LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975) and The PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977). Also
of interest is The Moon Maid (1923-25 Argosy All-Story Weekly as "The Moon
Maid", "The Moon Men" and "The Red Hawk"; cut fixup 1926; vt The Moon Men
1962; vt in 2 vols and with text restored as The Moon Maid 1962 and The
Moon Men 1962), which describes a civilization in the hollow interior of
the MOON and a future INVASION of the Earth.Among ERB's other books, those
which can be claimed as sf are: The Eternal Lover (1914-15 All-Story
Weekly; fixup 1925; vt The Eternal Savage 1963), a prehistoric adventure
involving TIME TRAVEL and featuring a character, Barney Custer, who
reappears in the RURITANIAN The Mad King (1914-15 All-Story Weekly; fixup
1926); The Monster Men (1913 All-Story as "A Man without a Soul"; 1929), a
reworking of the FRANKENSTEIN theme which should not be confused with The
Man without a Soul (1916 All-Story Weekly as "The Return of the Mucker";
1922 UK; vt The Return of the Mucker 1974 US), which is not fantasy or sf;
Jungle Girl (1932; vt Land of Hidden Men 1963), about a lost civilization
in Cambodia; The Cave Girl (1913-17 All-Story Weekly; fixup 1925), another
prehistoric romance; and Beyond Thirty (1916 All Around Magazine;
circa1955chap; vt The Lost Continent 1963), a story set in the 22nd
century after the collapse of European civilization; along with The
Man-Eater (circa 1955 chap), it was reprinted as Beyond Thirty and the
Man-Eater (omni 1957).It has often been said that ERB's works have small
literary or intellectual merit. Nevertheless, because their lack of
realistic referents frees them from time, because their efficient
narrative style helps to compensate for their prudery and racism, and
because ERB had a genius for the literalization of the dream, they have
endured. His "rediscovery" during the 1960s was an astonishing publishing
phenomenon, with the majority of his books being reprinted regularly. ERB
has probably had more imitators than any other sf writer, ranging from
Otis Adlebert KLINE in the 1930s to Kenneth BULMER (writing as Alan Burt
Akers) in the 1970s, with even a much later writer like Terry BISSON
homaging him in Voyage to the Red Planet (1990). There have been no
"official" continuations of his series, however, with the exception of
Tarzan and the Valley of Gold * (1966) by Fritz LEIBER and Tarzan, King of
the Apes * (1983) by Joan D. VINGE, the latter being more accurately
described as a rewriting. When some UK paperback firms, like CURTIS WARREN
with Azan the Apeman ( Marco GARRON), attempted to capitalize on Tarzan,
the ERB estate obtained injunctions halting publication. Later US attempts
at similar series, like the New Tarzan books (1964-5) by Barton WERPER and
Tarzan at Mars' Core (1977) by Edward Hirschman (1950- ), were similarly
dealt with. Serious sf writers who owe a debt to ERB include Leigh
BRACKETT, Ray BRADBURY, Michael MOORCOCK (as Edward P. Bradbury) and,
above all, Philip Jose FARMER, whose Lord Grandrith and Ancient Opar
novels are among the most enjoyable latter-day Burroughsiana. [DP/JC]About
the author: Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1962;
rev 1964) by H.H. Heins; Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965;
rev 1968) by Richard A. LUPOFF; The Big Swingers (1967) by Robert W.
Fenton; "The Undisciplined Imagination: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lowellian
Mars" by R.D. MULLEN in SF: The Other Side of Realism (1971) ed Thomas D.
CLARESON; Tarzan Alive (1972) by Philip Jose Farmer; Edgar Rice Burroughs:
The Man who Created Tarzan (1975) by Irwin Porges; A Guide to Barsoom
(1976) by J.F. Roy; Tarzan and Tradition: Classical Myth in Popular
Literature (1981) by E.B. Holtsmark.See also: ALIENS; AMAZING STORIES;
ANDROIDS; ANTHROPOLOGY; APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); BOYS'
PAPERS; COLLECTIONS; COMICS; CRYONICS; DIME-NOVEL SF; ECOLOGY; EVOLUTION;
FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FANTASY; GAMES AND SPORTS; GAMES AND TOYS; HEROES;
HISTORY OF SF; ISLANDS; JUPITER; LOST WORLDS; MUSIC; ORIGIN OF MAN;
PARALLEL WORLDS; PASTORAL; PLANETARY ROMANCE; PULP MAGAZINES; RECURSIVE
SF; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; SENSE OF WONDER; SERIES; SEX; SPACESHIPS; SUSPENDED
ANIMATION; SWORD AND SORCERY; TERRAFORMING; TRANSPORTATION; WAR; WEAPONS.

BURROUGHS, JOHN COLEMAN
(1913-1979) US illustrator and writer, the younger son of Edgar Rice
BURROUGHS and actively involved in his father's productions. He
illustrated 13 of ERB's titles, and drew the weekly comic strip John
Carter of Mars from Dec 1941 to its termination in 1943. This strip has
been reproduced as John Carter of Mars (graph coll 1970). JCB's sf novel,
Treasure of the Black Falcon (1967), features undersea adventures and
ALIEN contact. [JC]

BURROUGHS, WILLIAM S(EWARD)
(1914- ) US writer. Born into a successful business family, WSB was a
Harvard graduate in English literature in 1936. A drop-out thereafter, he
lived in Mexico, North Africa and the UK, and for many years was a heroin
addict. He began writing in the late 1930s, but had no success until the
early 1950s when he wrote two confessional books: Junky (1953 as by
William Lee; rev vt as by WSB Junkie 1977) and Queer (written 1950s;
1985), which were respectively about drug-addiction and homosexuality,
themes that have continued to dominate WSB's work. Although largely
unpublished, WSB was immensely influential among the Beat writers of the
1950s - notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg - and already had an
underground reputation before the appearance of his first important book,
The Naked Lunch (1959 France; vt Naked Lunch 1962 US). This nightmarish
SATIRE, first published by the daring and influential Olympia Press in
Paris, contains large elements of sf - e.g., the DYSTOPIAS of "Freeland"
and "Interzone", and some outre biological fantasy. Brilliantly written,
funny and scatological, it is accepted as a modern classic; an inventive
adaptation was filmed as Naked Lunch (1992) by David CRONENBERG. WSB's
writings since are a bibliographer's despair, and no attempt can be made
here to list all the pamphlets issued by various underground publishers.
His major novels of this period, however, are The Soft Machine (1961
France; rev 1966 US), The Ticket that Exploded (1962 France; rev 1967 US),
Nova Express (1964), The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971; rev 1979 UK)
and Exterminator! (1973). In these works, WSB experimented with "cut-up"
techniques, the importance of which has been overemphasized. More
significant is the vividness of the imagery and the urgency of the subject
matter. Much concerned with the abuses of power, WSB uses addiction as an
all-embracing metaphor for the ways in which our lives are controlled. He
has also brought into luridly exemplary perspective many sf metaphors;
e.g., the "Nova Mob", galactic gangsters who are taking over our planet.
Images of space travel and "biomorphic horror" (J.G. Ballard's phrase)
abound.Later work has retained the corrosiveness of the worldview, but in
narrations that verge, with some irony, towards the conventional. Port of
Saints (1973 Switzerland; rev 1980 US), Cities of the Red Night (1981) and
The Place of Dead Roads (1984) can together be thought of as a kind of
trilogy in which the genres of the West miscegenate, breed, and descry the
road ahead. Interzone (coll 1989) contains some surreal matter.WSB has
borrowed ideas from all areas of popular culture - films, COMICS,
Westerns, sf - and the resulting powerful melange has analogies with Pop
Art. His influence can be detected in the sf of J.G. BALLARD, Michael
MOORCOCK, John T. SLADEK, Norman SPINRAD and others. Overt pastiches of
his work by sf writers include Barrington J. BAYLEY's "The Four-Colour
Problem" (1971) and Philip Jose FARMER's "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod"
(1968), the latter a Tarzan story in the manner of WSB rather than Edgar
Rice BURROUGHS. [DP/JC]Other works: Dead Fingers Talk (1963 UK), a kind of
alternative version of The Naked Lunch; The Last Words of Dutch Schultz
(1970 UK), a play; Bladerunner: A Movie (chap 1979), nothing to do with
the 1982 film BLADE RUNNER; The Cat Inside (1986 chap); The Letters of
William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959 (coll 1993).About the author: "Myth-Maker
of the 20th Century" by J.G. Ballard in NW 142, 1964; "The Paris Review
Interview" in Writers at Work (1968) ed George Plimpton; The Job:
Interview with William Burroughs (1969) by Daniel Odier (trans 1970); "Rub
Out the Word" in City of Words (1971) by Tony Tanner; Descriptive
Catalogue of the WSB Archive (1973) compiled by Miles Associates; William
Burroughs: The Algebra of Need (1977) by Eric Mottram; Literary Outlaw:
The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs (1989) by Ted Morgan.See also:
CYBERPUNK; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MUSIC.

BURY, STEPHEN
Neal STEPHENSON.

BUSBY, F(RANCIS) M(ARION)
(1921- ) US writer and long-time sf fan, co-editor with his wife Elinor
Busby of the HUGO-winning FANZINECry, producing some of his early work as
by Renfrew Pemberton. He began publishing sf stories with "A Gun for
Grandfather" for Future Science Fiction in 1957, which appears in Getting
Home (coll 1987). He did not write any novels until much later, after
attending the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP in 1972, at which
point he went freelance as a writer. His books began with the SPACE-OPERA
Demu series about a hijacked human, Barton, and his war against the ALIEN
Demu: Cage a Man (1974) and The Proud Enemy (1975), both assembled with
the book-length "End of the Line" plus "The Learning of Eeshta" (1973) as
The Demu Trilogy (omni 1980). The first, superior, instalment is
particularly effective in its depiction of Barton's imprisonment and
eventual escape. FMB's second sequence, which has shifted tone and
protagonists over the years, began with Rissa Kerguelen (1976) and The
Long View (1976), which two were actually a single extremely long novel
and were republished as such, reset and with minor revisions, as Rissa
Kerguelen (1977; vt in 3 vols as Young Rissa [1984], Rissa and Tregare
[1984] and the original second volume, The Long View [1984]). Ambitious,
and featuring a rather diffuse character portrait of its female
protagonist to justify its length, the Rissa Kerguelen story is, in
essence, a stylistically awkward tale of bureaucratic oppression on Earth,
flight to the stars, interstellar conflict and eventual revenge. The
rhythm picks up somewhat but the portents of significance tend to fade in
later volumes, which sooner or later connect with the earlier tale: Zelde
M'Tana (1980), which is something of an offshoot, and the Bran Tregare
novels, about Rissa's eventual husband: The Star Rebel (1984) and Rebel's
Quest (1985), both assembled as The Rebel Dynasty, Volume I (omni 1987),
and Alien Debt (1985) and Rebel's Seed (1986), both assembled as The Rebel
Dynasty, Volume II (omni 1988). [JC]Other works: All These Earths (fixup
1978); The Breeds of Man (1988), about AIDS; Slow Freight (1991); If This
is Winnetka, You Must be Judy (1974 in Universe 5 ed Terry CARR; 1992
chap); The Singularity Project (1993); Islands of Tomorrow (1994).See
also: MEDICINE.

BUTLER, DAVID
(1941- ) UK writer whose first novel, The Man who Mastered Time (1986),
rather ponderously confronts its protagonist, via TIME TRAVEL, with some
revelations about the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. [JC]

BUTLER, JACK
(1944- ) US writer and college administrator. Most of JB's fiction - like
his first novel, Jujitsu for Christ (1986) - has dealt with his native US
South, but his second, Nightshade (1989), is a bravura and literate sf
novel combining an effective presentation of human settlements on MARS
with a scientific rationale for vampires - plus an examination of AI.
Although the book shows a sophisticated knowledge of contemporary sf, JB's
publishers marketed it for a non-genre audience; nor were they likely to
be mistaken in also addressing the vast Living in Little Rock With Miss
Little Rock (1993), which is narrated by the Holy Ghost, to the same
readership. [GF]

BUTLER, JOAN
Robert W. ALEXANDER.

BUTLER, NATHAN
Jerry SOHL.

BUTLER, OCTAVIA E(STELLE)
(1947- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Crossover" in Clarion
(anth 1971) ed Robin Scott WILSON, but who made no impact on the sf field
until the first appearance of tales in the Patternist series:
Patternmaster (1976), Mind of my Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), WILD SEED
(1980) and Clay's Ark (1984). The order of publication has little to do
with internal chronology; indeed, the first volume published stands last
in a sequence that runs from the late 17th century into the FAR FUTURE.
WILD SEED, which begins in 1690, demonstrates the very considerable
strength of OEB's imagination in being a prequel manifestly more
interesting than much of the material it adumbrates. The setting is
Africa. A 4000-year-old body-changer, Doro, who has been long engaged on a
breeding programme designed to produce a race of superior humans with whom
he can feel at home, selects for this purpose the "wild seed"
shape-changer Anwanyu; their graphically ambivalent relationship is
described in terms which potently evoke reflections on everything from
family romance and SEX and FEMINISM to slavery itself (OEB is herself
Black, and several of her novels directly and tellingly conflate this
range of issues). Doro and his son both breed with Anwanyu, and found with
her a sanctuary in New England and later in Louisiana where her MUTANT
children can grow to adulthood. Mind of my Mind, set in contemporary
California, focuses on the formal founding of the Patternist gestalt
community, which begins to articulate itself into the hierarchical social
organism of the final (though first-written) tale. Survivor takes place in
a moderately distant future when Earth has become dominated by
Patternists, whose hierarchies conflate family ties and a range of PSI
POWERS into a complex whole. The novel depicts a conflict between
star-travelling "mutes" - normal humans - and the ALIEN inhabitants of the
planet to which, in a kind of missionary endeavour, they have been sent.
Clay's Ark, set on Earth, depicts a conflict between those humans who have
been transfigured by an extraterrestrial virus into intensely aggressive
monsters and those, Patternist and mute, who have not been infected; an
odour of plague invests the extraordinarily savage telling of this tale.
In Patternmaster, Clayarks and Patternists continue what has become an
age-long conflict, now brought to a head by a family dispute as to the
proper inheritor of the role of Patternmaster: the one who wins will
exercise paranormal control over the entire scene, making a Heaven or a
Hell with his or her one voice. The strength of the Patternist books lies
not in the sometimes routine premises laid down in the first published
volume but in OEB's capacity to inhabit her venues with characters whose
often anguished lives strike the reader as anything but frivolous.One
singleton appeared while the larger series was being published, and did
not fail to be similarly harrowing. In KINDRED (1979) a contemporary Black
woman suffers a transition, by TIME TRAVEL, to the 19th-century South,
where she becomes a slave: the nightmarishness of the concept alone is
intensely educative in effect; the telling of the tale is just as
effective. OEB has written few shorter stories, but those she has
published are impressive. They include "Speech Sounds" (1983), which won a
HUGO, "Bloodchild" (1984), which won both Hugo and NEBULA, and The Evening
and the Morning and the Night (1987 Omni; 1991 chap).Her main work of the
1980s was contained in a second sequence, the Xenogenesis books: Dawn
(1987), Adulthood Rites (1987) and Imago (1989), all three being assembled
as Xenogenesis (omni 1989). Thematic likenesses with the previous series -
once again the human race is subjected to an intense breeding programme -
are evident, but prove of little importance, for the Xenogenesis books are
very differently told. The human race has managed to almost entirely
destroy itself and its planet, and only a few relics have survived in
SUSPENDED ANIMATION aboard the great interstellar ship of the visiting
three-sexed, exogamous, gene-trading Oankali, who reawake selected humans
in order to breed with them. Much of the plot takes place on a
rehabilitated segment of Earth, but the action there is arguably
peripheral to the exposition of the central concept: the presentation of a
convincingly alien species, and the marriage of that species to those
humans who can abandon the territoriality/aggression knot which has proven
to be a fatal evolutionary dead-end.OEB then wrote her second singleton,
Parable of the Sower (1993), which is set in the early 21st century, at a
period of systems collapse; the empath narrator escapes the collapsing
enclave where she was raised, while simultaneously creating a humanist
religion designed to focus humanity's attention on the stars. At times OEB
tends to succumb to the exigencies of GENRE-SF plotting, but again and
again, in both her main series and in her shorter work, clarity burns
through. [JC]See also: IMMORTALITY; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION
MAGAZINE; MEDICINE; PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS.

BUTLER, SAMUEL
(1835-1902) UK writer, educated at Cambridge, never married, emigrated to
live in New Zealand 1859-64, best known for his posthumously published
autobiographical novel, The Way of all Flesh (1903), which describes the
conflict between SB and his minister father, the conflict that also
provided much of the force of the SATIRE on RELIGION in his two UTOPIAS,
Erewhon, or Over the Range (1872; rev 1872; rev 1901) and Erewhon
Revisited (1901), in which the Musical Banks closely resemble the
19th-century Established Church. Erewhon and its sequel are set in a New
Zealand utopia where MACHINES have been banned for many years, because (in
a harsh parody of Darwin's theory of EVOLUTION, which SB disliked) of
human fears that machines, in their rapid evolutionary progress, would
soon supplant Man. The visitor to this utopia - which mixes DYSTOPIAN
elements freely with its more attractive aspects - is named Higgs, and his
eventual escape from Erewhon in a balloon triggers a new religion in that
country, Sunchildism. The sequel is devoted mainly to this faith and
Higgs's effect upon it on his return, in an analogical satire on
Christianity's origins and growth and the legend of the Second Coming. SB
was a compulsive speculator in and chivvier at ideas, and his two utopias
are densely packed with parodic commentary on all aspects of 19th-century
civilization. The calibre of his mind is indicated by his suggested
modification to Darwin's theory - that more than chance was required to
explain the variations that make for survival. In this he prefigured some
of Darwin's own later thought, though generally his anti-Darwinian
propaganda displayed a cavalier attitude to scientific evidence.
[JC/DIM]See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; AUTOMATION; HISTORY OF SF; HUMOUR;
MUSIC; NEW ZEALAND; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; TECHNOLOGY.

BUTLER, WILLIAM
(1929- ) US author best known for non-genre novels. The Butterfly
Revolution (1962), which is sf, depicts a 1960s-based nightmare of what
happens to the world in the absence of adults. [JC]Other works: The House
at Akiya (1963), a ghost story; Mr Three (1964).

BUTOR, MICHEL
(1926- ) French critic and novelist, principally known as a leading
exponent of the nouveau roman. MB was one of the first mainstream and
academic critics to consider sf seriously according to the same standards
as general literature. He published an invigorating analysis of Jules
VERNE as early as 1949, and examined the dilemmas and future potential of
the field in his penetrating study, "La crise de croissance de la SF"
(1953); this was first trans by Richard Howard as "SF: The Crisis of its
Growth" for Partisan Review in 1967, and, as "The Crisis in the Growth of
Science Fiction", appeared along with "The Golden Age in Jules Verne"
(trans by Patricia Dreyfus for Repertoire [coll 1960]) in Inventory (coll
trans 1968 US). MB has served on the jury panel of the Prix Apollo (
AWARDS). [MJ]See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF.

BUTTERWORTH, MICHAEL
(1947- ) UK writer, editor - in the latter capacity initially of the
semiprofessional underground magazine Corridors, later called Wordworks -
and cofounder and codirector with David BRITTON of Savoy Books. He began
publishing sf with "Girl" for NW in 1966, and contributed regularly to the
magazine for the rest of its existence. He began publishing novels with
the first of the Hawklords sequence, The Time of the Hawklords (1976),
with Michael MOORCOCK credited on the title-page and cover as co-author,
though the "List of Credits" at the end of the volume lists Moorcock as
Producer/Director and MB as Writer; MB was fundamentally responsible for
the book, as well as for its sequel, Queens of Deliria (1977), with
Moorcock also credited (this time unwillingly). The sequence, based on the
real-life rock group Hawkwind, focuses on an electronic instrument that
allays all pain and tension. With Britton, MB co-edited two defiant
anthologies drawn from the world of Savoy Books, a firm which more than
once suffered in the Manchester police force's battle against "obscenity":
The Savoy Book (anth 1978) and Savoy Dreams (anth 1984). [JC]Other works:
A sequence tied to the second season of SPACE 1999, comprising: Planets of
Peril * (1977), Mind-Breaks of Space * (1977) with Jeff Jones, The
Space-Jackers * (1977), The Psychomorph * (1977), The Time Fighters *
(1977) and The Edge of the Infinite * (1977).

BUZZATI, DINO
(1906-1972) Italian writer and journalist. From his first unsettling
children's stories in the 1930s he was noted for the KAFKA-like anxiety
riddling his apparently simple plots. Catastrophe (original stories
1949-58; coll trans Judith Landry and Cynthia Jolly 1965 UK) is perhaps
the most fully successful volume issued during his life; many of its
stories are surrealist fables, always with a parable-like moral edge.
Later selections, which intensify a sense of the claustrophobia of worlds
about to collapse like eggshells into chaos, are Restless Nights: Selected
Stories (coll trans Lawrence Venuti 1983 US) and The Siren: A Selection
(coll trans Lawrence Venuti 1984 US). In Il Grande Ritratto (1960; trans
Henry Reed as Larger than Life 1962 UK), a full-length novel and rather
less successful, a not very convincingly described COMPUTER complex is
programmed with the personality of a woman. [JC]Other works: Il Deserto
dei Tartari (1940; trans S.C. Hood as The Tartar Steppe 1952 UK).See also:
ITALY.

BYRNE, STUART J(AMES)
(1913- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Music of the Spheres"
for AMZ in 1935. He was intermittently active after WWII in the magazines,
sometimes writing as John Bloodstone, a name he used also for some routine
sf adventures, including The Golden Gods (1957), Children of the
Chronotron (1966), Godman! (1970) and Thundar, Man of Two Worlds (1971).
As SJB he wrote The Metamorphs (1959), Starman (1969), The Alpha Trap
(1976) and Star Man: The Universe Builder (coll of linked stories 1980).
[JC]

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BYWATER, HECTOR CHARLES
(1884-1940) US writer of works on the nature and history of sea-power,
and of a future- WAR novel on the same theme, The Great Pacific War: A
History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-1933 (1925), which quite
remarkably underestimates the Japanese. In his Bywater: The Man who
Invented the Pacific War (1990), William H. Honan suggests that Admiral
Yamamoto read The Great Pacific War in the 1920s and used it as a
blueprint for his eventual attack on Pearl Harbor. [JC]