SF&F encyclopedia (K-K)KADREY, RICHARD (1957- ) US writer, rock musician and illustrator; he did the cover for INTERZONE #9 and the vigorous though somewhat derivative collage illustrations for Dream Protocols (coll 1992 chap) by sf poet Lee Ballentine (1954- ); he has also contributed articles to SCIENCE FICTION EYE and Whole Earth Review. His first published sf was "The Fire Catcher" (Interzone 1985; Omni 1986). Not wholly assimilated influences like CYBERPUNK and J.G. BALLARD give an element of pastiche to his early work, including his novel Metrophage (1988), but the latter transcends it in a vigorous and inventive tale of a mean-streetwise drug pusher's problems in a NEAR-FUTURE Los Angeles that is being eaten alive by urban decay, police corruption and corporate cynicism. It reads like a supercharged arcade game that appals even its creator.Covert Culture Sourcebook: A Guide to Fringe Culture (1993) surveys similar territory from a non-fiction point of view. [PN] KAEMPFERT, WADE House pseudonym (pronounced Kemfer) used by the editors of ROCKET STORIES: Lester DEL REY on the first 2 issues and Harry HARRISON on the #3. [PN] KAFKA, FRANZ (1883-1924) Czech novelist, not usually or profitably considered a writer of fantasy or sf, though some of his stories - such as In der Strafkolonie (1919 chap; trans 1933; trans Willa and Edwin Muir as title story in The Penal Colony coll 1948 US; vt In the Penal Settlement 1949 UK) and Die Verwandlung (1915; trans A.L. Lloyd as The Metamorphosis 1937 chap UK) - present through a prose of hallucinated transparency a world radically displaced from normal reality ( FABULATION). The former tells of an execution machine which incises moral slogans on the victim's body; the latter is a horrifying allegory of alienation in which a young man is transformed overnight into a huge beetle. Other fables are included in The Great Wall of China (coll trans Willa and Edwin Muir 1933 UK) and The Transformation and Other Stories: Works Published during Kafka's Lifetime (coll trans Malcolm Pasley 1992 UK), which presents a new version of Die Verwandlung plus other material whose release FK sanctioned. His most famous works - none finished and all published posthumously (and despite his apparent wishes that they be destroyed on his death) - are his three novels: Amerika (written 1911-14; 1927; trans Willa and Edwin Muir 1938 UK), Der Prozess (written 1914-15; 1925; trans Willa and Edwin Muir as The Trial 1937 UK) and Das Schloss (written 1921-22; 1926; trans Willa and Edwin Muir as The Castle 1930 UK). Though all share a vision of the menacing absurdity of the world ( ABSURDIST SF), when read in chronological order of writing they present an illuminating sequence from the persecuted innocence of Amerika's protagonist (literally displaced into a surrealistic New World) to the confidence-man ingenuities of K., the protagonist of The Castle, who seems almost capable of forcing the 20th-century world to give him meaning and a room. FK's work is Modernist, its fable-like quality indefinably dreamlike; his influence, which has been enormous, permeates much of modern sf's attempts to get at the quality of life in dislocated, totalitarian, surrealistic or merely inscrutable venues. [JC]About the author: The literature on FK is enormous. A recent study of interest is Franz Kafka (1990) by Pietro Citati.See also: AUSTRIA; FANTASY; MONSTERS; PARANOIA. KAGAN, JANET (1946- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Faith-of-the Month" for ASF in 1982, and who won a 1993 HUGO Best Novelette Award for"The Nutcracker Coup" (1992). Her first sf book was a STAR TREK tie, Uhura's Song * (1985), reckoned to be one of the better novels attached to that enterprise. Her second novel, Hellspark (1988), carries some of the same digestible competence into an sf adventure whose heroine (attended by a sentient AI) must defend the inhabitants of a valuable planet from a predatory corporation, helped in her task by her very considerable competence in kinesics and LINGUISTICS. More interesting is Mirabile (coll of linked stories 1991), a loosely linked portrait of the eponymous planet, colonized by humans who import flora and fauna whose DNA has been genetically engineered to provide the new colony with all sorts of lifeforms. However, the records (of what will sprout from what) have been lost, and the heroine must cope with a variety of comic crises. [JC] KAGAN, NORMAN (? - ) US writer whose occasional sf stories, from "The Mathenauts" for If in 1964, have sometimes dealt vigorously and amusingly with MATHEMATICS as a subject, and tend to feature extroverted mathematicians as protagonists. NK also wrote The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick (1972; exp 1989). [JC]See also: DIMENSIONS; FANTASTIC VOYAGES. KAGARLITSKI, JULIUS (IOSIFOVICH) (1926- ) Russian critic and professor of European drama at the State Theatrical Institute in Moscow. JK, one of the leading Russian critics to have a strong interest in sf, published the first and most comprehensive study in the then USSR of an individual sf author: Herbert Wells (1963; trans as The Life and Thought of H.G. Wells 1966 UK; considerably rev and exp vt Vggiadyvaias v Griadusheie ["Staring into the Future"] 1989). He later edited a 15-vol set of Wells's collected works (1965). Tchto Takoie Fantastika? ["What is the Fantastic?"] (1974) is a popular history of the genre, and has been translated into several languages (not English). JK won, unusually, the Chief Award of the Polish Ministry of Culture, and, again unusually, in 1972 the PILGRIM AWARD for services to sf studies. [PN/VG]See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; RUSSIA. KAHN, JAMES (1947- ) US physician and writer who began publishing sf with "Mobius Trip" in 1971, but who has been most active as a novelist, usually of film adaptations. His New World trilogy - World Enough, and Time (1980), Time's Dark Laughter (1982) and Timefall (1987) - initially depicts a fantasy-like FAR-FUTURE Earth in which GENETIC ENGINEERING on the part of the self-destructing human race has generated vampires, centaurs, semi-sentient cats, ANDROIDS and other creatures, all of which roam through a transfigured California. The first volume floridly introduces the cast, with some Grand Guignol episodes. The second, perhaps the most interestingly baroque, carries its human protagonist through a love affair, the begetting of a goddesslike child who wantonly transfigures the world in her death-throes, and his return (with the child's mother) through time to Eden. The third volume, set in Colombia, fails to bring the complex structure of the sequence into clear focus, though the power of the JK's imagery remains vivid in the reader's mind. The Echo Vector (1988) is a medical thriller that verges on sf. JK's novelizations are competent. [JC]Film novelizations: Poltergeist * (1982) and its sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side * (1986); Star Wars: Return of the Jedi * (1983), novelizing RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983); Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom * (1984); The Goonies * (1985).See also: MESSIAHS. KAIJU DAISENSO GOJIRA; RADON. KAIJU SOSHINGEKI GOJIRA; RADON. KAINS, JOSEPHINE Ron GOULART. KAMBAYASHI, CHOHEI [r] JAPAN. KAMIKAZE 1. Variant title of the film KAMIKAZE 1989 (1982).2. Film (1986). Les Films du Loup/ARP/Gaumont. Dir Didier Grousset, starring Richard Bohringer, Michel Galabru, Dominique Lavanant, Riton Liebman, Kim Massee, Harry Cleven. Screenplay Luc Besson, Grousset. 89 mins. Colour.An amusingly black film with a serious point, K tells of a brilliant unemployed scientist, obsessed with tv, who invents a ray-gun which, when pointed at the screen, can kill anyone appearing live on it. When slimy presenters on French afternoon tv start getting blasted mid-announcement, a rumpled flic (Bohringer), with the help of a roomful of boffins, sets out to hunt the killer. This French film is something of a throwback to the international 1970s cycle of sf-tinged PARANOIA movies. Like The Parallax View (1974) and Winter Kills (1979), or the home-grown Ecoute Voir (1979), K mixes bizarre assassination hardware and computerized complications with the traditional down-at-heel strengths of the policier as it follows its two central characters down their own labyrinths. Galabru is outstanding as the murderer, starting out as a sympathetic loser but becoming a psychopath who whites his face and dresses up as a Mishima-style samurai. [KN] KAMIKAZE 1989 (vt Kamikaze; vt Kamikaze '89) Film (1982). Regina Ziegler/Trio/Oase/ZDF. Dir Wolf Gremm, starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Boy Gobert, Gunther Kaufmann, Nicole Heesters, Franco Nero. Screenplay Robert Katz, Gremm, based on Mord pa 31 (1965; trans as Murder on the 31st Floor 1966) by Per WAHLOO. 106 mins. Colour.In the Germany of 1989 people have no problems. They are entertained around the clock by a gigantic multimedia corporation, operating from a 30-floor building. Police Lieutenant Jansen (Fassbinder), investigating a bomb threat against the corporation, discovers the existence of a 31st floor where idealistic journalists are developing plans to make people more intellectual. Their plans are never realized: the corporation keeps an eye on all free-thinkers. Fassbinder's very physical performance, his last (he died in 1982), is all that makes this worth seeing more than once. The rest of this playful West German adaptation of Wahlooo's DYSTOPIAN novel mixes sf and mystery elements with no great individuality. Fassbinder had earlier directed an sf film, the made-for-tv WELT AM DRAHT (1973). [JK] KAMIN, NICK Pseudonym of US writer Robert J. Antonick (1939- ), whose sf novels Earthrim (1969 dos), a heavily plotted melodrama set on a tyrannized Earth, and The HEROD Men (1971), both feature adventure plots somewhat awkwardly presented. [JC] KANDEL, MICHAEL (1941- ) US writer, translator and book editor, best known until the late 1980s for his brilliant translations from the Polish of works by Stanislaw LEM, among them a pyrotechnic rendering of the novella "Kongres Futurologiczny" (1971 Poland) as The Futurological Congress (1974 US), many of whose wordplays are of necessity MK's. The Cosmic Carnival of Stanislaw Lem (coll 1981), which MK assembled, contains excerpts from previously translated novels plus some stories. MK's own novels reflect, perhaps, his immersion in the Eastern European tradition. STRANGE INVASION (1989) describes, with dissecting humour, an alien tourist invasion of Earth. In Between Dragons (1990) subjects a fantasy-game-like universe to an equally wry analysis. Captain Jack Zodiac (1991), in a fashion reminiscent of the way post- HOLOCAUST traumas were surreally ignored in The BED-SITTING ROOM , exposes its zany cast to a USA gone terminally insane after the Bomb has been dropped. [JC] KANE, PABLO Zack HUGHES. KANE, WILSON House name used by ZIFF-DAVIS on 4 stories 1958-9 in AMZ and Fantastic; at least 1, unidentified, was by Robert BLOCH. [PN] KANER, H(YMAN) (1896-1973) Romanian-born UK writer and civil servant who published his own books from Llandudno in Wales. Of them, two full-length novels stand out: People of the Twilight (1946), a PARALLEL-WORLDS tale, and The Sun Queen (1946), which features instantaneous TRANSPORTATION and a race of beings dwelling within the SUN. [JC]Other works: Squaring the Triangle (coll 1944 chap); Fire-Watcher's Night (coll 1944 chap); Hot Swag (coll 1945 chap); The Cynic's Desperate Mission (coll 1946 chap); Ape-Man's Offering (coll 1946 chap); The Naked Foot (coll 1946 chap); The Terror Catches Up (coll 1946 chap); Ordeal by Moonlight (coll 1947 chap). KANTO, PETER Zack HUGHES. KANTOR, MacKINLAY (1904-1977) US writer best known for such works outside the sf field as Andersonville (1955), a long novel set during the US Civil War, the area of his deepest concern. That war is also the setting for If the South had Won the Civil War (1961), the ALTERNATE-WORLDS thesis of the title being a favourite crux for US writers in the genre. [JC] KAPITAN MORS DER LUFTPIRAT See Der LUFTPIRAT UND SEIN LENKBARES LUFTSCHIFF. KAPLAN, ALINE BOUCHER (1947- ) US marketing executive and writer who began publishing sf with Khyren (1988), in which the protagonist finds herself transported from her conventional existence into a world where female worth is measured by fertility; the FEMINIST implications of the tale are not heavily underlined. ABK's second novel, set in the same universe, is World Spirits (1992). [JC] KAPP, COLIN (1928- ) UK writer and worker in electronics. He began publishing sf with "Life Plan" for NW in 1958, where his best work soon appeared, including "Lambda 1" (1962), which gave its title to the John CARNELL collection, Lambda 1 (anth 1964), and Transfinite Man (1964 US; vt under the 1963 mag title The Dark Mind 1965 UK), in which a fierce unkillable SUPERMAN protagonist pits himself against the corrupt Failway [sic] Terminal in duels extending through various DIMENSIONS - access to which the Terminal attempts to control. Despite CK's otherwise unextraordinary plotting, the combination of invulnerability and rage in the tale generates a sense of nearly uncontrollable energy, imparting to this one book something of the exhilaration of Keith LAUMER and a touch of the complexity of Alfred BESTER, whose Gully Foyle - from Tiger! Tiger! (1956 UK) - is clearly evoked. The enjoyable The Wizard of Anharitte (1972), though less energetic, features an intriguing sf power struggle on a backward planet, with the protagonist (who finds himself on the wrong side) repeatedly frustrated by the "wizard's" ingenious technological trickery.CK's later publications include a sequence of problem-solver tales assembled as The Unorthodox Engineers (coll of linked stories 1979), a short series comprising The Patterns of Chaos (1972) and The Chaos Weapon (1977 US), the former featuring a SUPERHERO implausibly capable of manipulating chaos, and the Cageworld sequence of SPACE OPERAS centred on a DYSON SPHERE: Cageworld (1982; vt Search for the Sun! 1983 US), The Lost Worlds of Cronus (1982) and The Tyrant of Hades (1982). [JC]Other works: The Wizard of Anharitte (1973); The Survival Game (1976 US); Manalone (1977); The Ion War (1978 US); The Timewinders (1980).See also: NEW WORLDS; NEW WRITINGS IN SF; TRANSPORTATION. KARAGEORGE, MICHAEL [s] Poul ANDERSON. KAREL AWARD WORLD SF. KARIG, WALTER (1898-1956) US journalist and novelist, a pseudonymous author for many years of the Nancy Drew detective series and others. War in the Atomic Age? (1946 chap) compresses into very few pages a sequence of 21st-century superscience duels between the USA and Galaxia - they include atomic warfare, FORCE FIELDS, biological WEAPONS and underwater ROBOT tanks. The USA wins hands down. In his sf fantasy, Zotz! (1947), a man - given the ancient power to kill by pointing his hand and saying "Zotz!" - is frustrated by bureaucracy in his attempts to help the USA win WWII; the effect is mildly satirical. [JC] KARIMO, AARNO [r] FINLAND. KARINTHY, FRIGYES (1887-1938) Hungarian writer and translator, best known for his work outside the sf field, mostly humorous SATIRES first published in newspapers; he also translated works by Jonathan SWIFT and Mark TWAIN, among others, into Hungarian. His two continuations of Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) - Utazas Faremidoba (1916) and Capillaria (1921) - were assembled as Voyage to Faremido/Capillaria (omni trans Paul TABORI 1965 Hungary). The first carries FK's version of Gulliver to a ROBOT society, the second to one ruled by women. Sharp-tongued and convincingly Swiftian, they are impressive introductions to his melancholy, sometimes savage view of the 20th century. His career, and his prescient use of robots as symbols of the dawning new age, were similar to Karel CAPEK's, but he pulled fewer punches. FK was a dangerous writer. [JC]See also: FANTASTIC VOYAGES; HUNGARY. KARP, DAVID (1922- ) US writer whose sf novel One (1953; vt Escape to Nowhere 1955) is a notable MAINSTREAM use of sf modes as a way of expressing DYSTOPIAN views about the future. Though distinctly less convincing than such predecessors as Arthur KOESTLER's Darkness at Noon (1940) and George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949), it does present a salutarily grim and sharply described vision of a totalitarian future USA and the brutal mind-control that must be imposed if the state is to survive. Part of the novel's interest lies in its sometimes sympathetic insight into the mind of inquisitor as well as victim. The Day of the Monkey (1955) is a fantasy. [JC]See also: POLITICS. KASACK, HERMANN [r] GERMANY. KASTEL, WARREN ZIFF-DAVIS house name used on magazine stories by Chester S. GEIER and possibly others 1948-50, and by Robert SILVERBERG in 1957. [JC] KASTLE, HERBERT D(AVID) (1924-1987) US writer best known outside the genre. He began publishing sf with "The York Problem" for If in 1955. His one sf novel, The Reassembled Man (1964; exp vt Edward Berner is Alive Again! 1975; vt The Three Lives of Edward Berner 1976 UK) depicts without excessive originality the transformation by aliens of a human into a sexually supercharged SUPERMAN. [JC] KAUL, FEDOR (? -? ) German writer. His sf novel, Die Welt ohne Gedachtnis (trans Winifred Ray as Contagion to this World 1933 UK), begins conventionally enough with a deformed SCIENTIST, thwarted in love, determining to revenge himself on the world by releasing dangerous bacteria he has developed; these turn out to have a memory-erasing effect on humans. The scientist's love-affair forgotten, the novel becomes a post- HOLOCAUST vision in which the remnants of mankind mutate into a roving race of giants in harmony with Nature. The scientist grows old and - remarkably - dies forgiven. [JC] KAVAN, ANNA Name under which French-born, much travelled UK writer born Helen Woods Edmonds (1901-1968) wrote her fiction from 1940, having previously signed herself under her married name, Helen Ferguson; the orphaned protagonist of Let Me Alone (1930) and A Stranger Still (1935) is named Anna Kavan, and Edmonds eventually became AK by deed poll. Her life, which ended in suicide, was tragically complicated by heroin addiction, and in most of her work fantasy and mental illness surreally intermingle. She was well known for work outside the sf field, though her last work, the sf novel Ice (1967), is as familiar to readers as anything she wrote. It depicts, through compulsively intense imagery which links her with Franz KAFKA and the Surrealists generally, a post- HOLOCAUST search for a woman through a world increasingly shadowed by an approaching ice age. An earlier novel, Eagles' Nest (1958), traverses the same quest landscape, though in fantasy terms. Later editions of Ice carry an introduction by Brian W. ALDISS, in which he claims AK as one of the great sf writers; he also edited the posthumous My Madness: The Selected Writings of Anna Kavan (coll 1990). [JC]Other works: Asylum Piece and Other Stories (coll 1940); House of Sleep (1947 US; vt Sleep has his House 1948 UK); A Bright Green Field (coll 1958); Julia and the Bazooka (coll 1970); My Soul is in China (coll 1975).See also: END OF THE WORLD; WOMEN SF WRITERS. KAVANNE, RISTO [r] FINLAND. KAVENEY, ROZ (1949- ) UK critic, editor and writer. Her sf criticism, beginning in the late 1970s (before 1980 as by Andrew Kaveney), has appeared in specialist journals like FOUNDATION and in non-genre outlets like the Washington Post and Books and Bookmen; it is marked by a seemingly off-hand general erudition and a knowing sharpness about the field. Much of her non-sf writing has concentrated on issues like FEMINISM, gay rights and censorship. She began publishing sf with "A Lonely Impulse" in Temps: Volume One * (anth 1991), "devised by" Neil GAIMAN and Alex Stewart. She edited Tales from the Forbidden Planet (anth 1987) and More Tales from the Forbidden Planet (anth 1990) as well as three SHARED-WORLD anthologies: The Weerde * (anth 1992),Villains * (anth 1992) andThe Weerde: Book 2 (anth 1993), all with Mary GENTLE. [JC]See also: BIG DUMB OBJECTS; INTERZONE. KAY, SAMUEL M. Charles DE LINT. KAYE, MARVIN (NATHAN) (1938- ) US writer, usually of fantasy and horror, noted here primarily for the Masters of Solitude sf sequence: The Masters of Solitude (1978) and Wintermind (1984), both written with Parke GODWIN (whom see for details). The supernatural novel A Cold Blue Light (1983), also with Godwin, is less successful; and its sequel, Ghosts of Night and Morning (1987), by MK alone, is neither sf nor supernatural. Early in his career, MK wrote some stories with Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb, long thought to be an MK pseudonym). [JC]Other works: The Umbrella/Fillmore fantasy sequence, comprising The Incredible Umbrella (fixup 1979) and The Amorous Umbrella (1981); The Possession of Immanual Wolf and Other Improbable Tales (coll 1981); Fantastique (1992), a fantasy elaborately constructed around Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.As Editor: Brother Theodore's Chamber of Horrors (anth 1975) with Brother Theodore; Fiends and Creatures (anth 1975); Ghosts (anth 1981) with Saralee Kaye; Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (anth 1985) with S. Kaye; Devils and Demons (anth 1987) with S. Kaye; Weird Tales: The Magazine that Never Dies (anth 1988) with S. Kaye; Witches and Warlocks (anth 1990); Haunted America: Star-Spangled Supernatural Stories (anth 1991); Lovers and Other Monsters (anth 1992); Fantastique (1992). KDO CHCE ZABIT JESSII (vt Who Would Kill Jessie?) Film (1965). Filmove studio Barrandov. Dir Milos Macourek, Vaclav Vorlicek, starring Jiri Sovak, Dana Medricka, Olga Schoberova, Karel Effa, Juraj Visny. Screenplay Macourek, Vorlicek. 80 mins. B/w.This very funny Czechoslovak film was conceived for children, but the makers realized that the idea had satirical potential. An overworked professor (Sovak) becomes obsessed with a newspaper comic strip featuring a voluptuous heroine, Jessie (Schoberova), who is constantly being pursued by two villains - a malicious cowboy (Effa) and a displeasing analogue of SUPERMAN (Visny). He dreams a lot about Jessie. The straitlaced wife of the professor (Medricka), also a scientist, has invented a dream-manipulator with which she hopes to eradicate her husband's lascivious dreams, but it malfunctions and the three comic-book characters materialize in their apartment, causing upheaval. This exhilarating, well made film deserves wider distribution. [JB/PN] KEA, NEVILLE [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. KEARNEY, (ELFRIC WELLS) CHALMERS (1881-1966) Australian-born writer, in the UK most of his life, author of the nonfiction Rapid Transit in the Future (only 2nd edn recorded, 1911). His UTOPIA, Erone (1943; rev 1945), an old-fashioned love-story set in a rather sentimentalized communist society on Uranus, had some popular success, though now forgotten. A short pamphlet, The Great Calamity (1948 chap), itemizes the destruction of most of the world. [JC] KEATING, H(ENRY) R(EYMOND) F(ITZWALTER) (1926- ) UK writer, almost exclusively of detective novels, notably those featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID. His two sf novels are The Strong Man (1971), a DYSTOPIAN tale of a dictator and the ambiguous consequences of his removal, and A Long Walk to Wimbledon (1978), in which a man treks laboriously across London to visit his wife just after a DISASTER has devastated the capital. [JC] KEAVENEY, JAMES R. Arthur H. LANDIS. KEE, ROBERT (1919- ) UK broadcaster and writer. A Sign of the Times (1955) is set in the NEAR FUTURE, where regimentation rules along lines familiar in post-WWII UK fiction. [JC] KEENE, CAROLYN Harriet S. ADAMS. KEENE, DAY (1904-1969) US writer, mostly of detective novels and film and tv scripts. In his sf novel, World without Women (1960) with Leonard PRUYN, the few remaining women find themselves in DYSTOPIAN circumstances. [JC] KEITH, LEIGH [s] Horace L. GOLD. KELLAR, VON House name used for 2 routine sf adventures published by CURTIS WARREN: Ionic Barrier (1953) by Dennis HUGHES and Tri-Planet (1953), whose authorship has not been ascertained. [JC] KELLEAM, JOSEPH E(VERIDGE) (1913-1975) US writer and civil servant, an occasional contributor to the sf field since publishing his first story, "Rust", in ASF in 1939. His first novel, Overlords from Space (1956 dos), is a routine tale in which ALIEN conquerors of Earth are defeated at last. The Little Men (1960) and its sequel, Hunters of Space (1960), whose characters are derived from European MYTHOLOGY, traces the fight between Jack Odin and the villainous Grim Hagen, first under the Earth, then in space; various princesses and dwarfs attend. In When the Red King Woke (1966), which may be sf, a mysterious monarch sleeps off-planet in a bubble; as readers of Lewis CARROLL might expect, when the king awakes the planet dies. [JC] See also: ROBOTS. KELLEHER, VICTOR (MICHAEL KITCHENER) (1939- ) Australian lecturer in English and now full-time writer. Born in London, VK spent 20 years in Africa before emigrating to New Zealand (1973) and then Australia (1976). VK's major theme in the sf and FANTASY (he makes no sharp distinction between the two genres) for adolescents for which he is best known is the tension between cyclic/seasonal time and linear time. His sf includes The Green Piper (1984), Taronga (1986) and The Makers (1987); his fantasy includes Master of the Grove (1982) - Australian Children's Book of the Year - Baily's Bones (1988), The Red King (1989), Brother Night (1990),Del-Del (1991), To the Dark Tower (1992), and also his early novels Forbidden Paths of Thual (1979) and The Hunting of Shadroth (1981). Papio (1984) is an adventure story. His post- HOLOCAUST novel for adults, The Beast of Heaven (1985), won a Ditmar AWARD for best Australian sf. He has written four non-sf books for adults. [JW]See also: AUSTRALIA; CHILDREN'S SF. KELLER, DAVID H(ENRY) (1880-1966) US writer, physician and psychiatrist, deeply involved in the last capacity in WWI work on shell shock; he published a great deal of technical work in his professional role. As a writer of fantasy and sf he was active but unpublished for many years before the period 1928-35, his first sf sale being "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" ( DYSTOPIA) to AMZ in 1928. For the next decade he appeared widely in Weird Tales and other PULP MAGAZINES, including AMAZING STORIES, where he published "The Metal Doom" (1932), in which advanced civilization ends when all metal begins to rust. He fell out of wide public notice with the onset of the GOLDEN AGE OF SF, whose optimism about the workability of the Universe he clearly did not share. He remained active in FANDOM, however, and - it is rumoured - wrote a large number of stories, some of which appeared in the 1940s; others were published in the 1970s in response to the continuing appeal of his apparently primitive fiction.DHK's sf is probably inferior to his horror and fantasy work. The Thing in the Cellar (1932 Weird Tales; 1940 chap), for instance, works almost as a hydraulic metaphor (in the Freudian manner) of the relationship between the upstairs daylight of consciousness and the blind tide of unconsciousness beneath our floors. It is much superior to the sf story published as his first book, The Thought Projector (1930 chap).His sf was conservative - against the spirit of the age - in its presentation of the risks inherent in all science; the eponymous detective of the Taine of San Francisco sequence of sf stories (1928-47) generally operates so as to conceal, rather than expose, the truth behind things. Much of DHK's sf concerns dilemmas created by GENETIC ENGINEERING - the stories in Brian M. STABLEFORD's Sexual Chemistry (coll 1991) are readable as a direct rebuttal to DHK's unvarying pessimism - and tends to end in arbitrary apocalypse. His novels are similar. In his first, The Human Termites (1929 Science Wonder Stories; 1979 chap), the human race is almost seen off by invading social insects. Other early novels have not reached book form. In "Life Everlasting" (1934 AMZ), which appears in Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy and Horror (coll 1947), the human race must choose between IMMORTALITY and fertility. The second (and considerably longer) title in The Solitary Hunters; and The Abyss (coll 1948) again demonstrates, by detailing the terrible consequences of any removal of human repressions, DHK's sense of the fragility of the psychic order.Several of his full-length books were story collections, with some sf included in a preponderantly fantasy mix. They include At the Sign of the Burning Hart (coll of linked stories 1938 France; with appendix added, vt At the Sign of the Burning Hart: A Tale of Arcadia 1948 US), which is UTOPIAN, Tales from Underwood (coll 1952), The Folsom Flint and Other Curious Tales (coll 1969), The Street of Queer Houses and Other Tales (coll 1976) and The Last Magician: Nine Stories from "Weird Tales" (coll 1978 chap). [JC]Other works: Wolf Hollow Bubbles (?1934 chap); Men of Avalon (1935 chap dos); The Waters of Lethe (1937 chap); The Television Detective (1938 chap); The Devil and the Doctor (fixup 1940), in which Satan is a HERO-figure; The Eternal Conflict (1939 Les Primaires, part only; 1949); The Homunculus (1949); The Final War (1949 chap); The Lady Decides (1950); A Figment of a Dream: A New Allegorical Fantasy (1962 chap).See also: AIR WONDER STORIES; AUTOMATION; BIOLOGY; HIVE-MINDS; MACHINES; MEDICINE; PSYCHOLOGY; ROBOTS; SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS; TECHNOLOGY; TRANSPORTATION. KELLERMANN, BERNHARD (1879-1951) German writer whose sf novel, Der Tunnel (1913; trans anon as The Tunnel 1915 UK), tells the epic story, sometimes in heartfelt terms, of the construction of a transatlantic tunnel. It was the basis of the German film Der TUNNEL (1933) and its UK remake, The TUNNEL (1935). [JC]See also: GERMANY; TRANSPORTATION. KELLEY, LEO P(ATRICK) (1928- ) US novelist, for some time also an advertising copywriter. He began publishing sf with "Dreamtown, U.S.A." for If in 1955. Several of his sf novels likewise concentrate on societies which invidiously dominate their inhabitants by psychological means, as in his second, Odyssey to Earthdeath (1968). His first, The Counterfeits (1967), as by Leo F. Kelley, similarly puts sociological sf into a routine adventure frame. An oddly affectless baroque style sometimes jars against the stories he tells, pretending an urgency it fails to convey through plots of a fashionable grimness; but he has been a readable contributor to the genre. [JC]Other works: Time Rogue (1970); The Accidental Earth (1970); The Coins of Murph (1971); Brother John * (1971); Time: 110100 (1972; vt The Man from Maybe 1974 UK); Mindmix (1972); Mythmaster (1973); The Earth Tripper (1973); a series of short juveniles, comprising Time Trap (1977 chap), Star Gold (1978 chap; vt Alien Gold 1983), Backward in Time (1979 chap), Death Sentence (1979 chap), Earth Two (1979 chap), Prison Satellite (1979 chap), Sunworld (1979 chap), Worlds Apart (1979 chap), Night of Fire and Blood (1979 chap), Dead Moon (1979 chap), King of the Stars (1979 chap), On the Red World (1979 chap), Where No Sun Shines (1979 chap), Vacation in Space (1979 chap) and Good-bye to Earth (1979 chap).As Editor: Themes in Science Fiction (anth 1972); Fantasy, the Literature of the Marvelous (anth 1973); The Supernatural in Fiction (anth 1973). KELLEY, THOMAS P. (?1905-1982) Ex-prizefighter and, in his own description, "King of the Canadian pulp writers", author mostly of adventure fiction and "true crime", as well as of the sf novel "A Million Years in the Future" (1940 Weird Tales), which never reached book form. Four fantasy novels are I Found Cleopatra (1938 Weird Tales; cut 1946), The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships (fixup 1941), Tapestry Triangle (1946 UK), featuring an immortal Chinese and a race of Amazons, and The Gorilla's Daughter (1950). He contributed under pseudonyms, including Gene Bannerman, Roy P. Devlin and Valentine North, to the Canadian UNCANNY TALES and wrote 40 scripts for Out of the Night, a radio programme specializing in supernatural tales. [PN/JC]See also: CANADA; WEAPONS. KELLEY, WILLIAM MELVIN (1937- ) US writer whose celebrated short novel A Different Drummer (1959) is a borderline-sf fable telling of Black history in an imaginary southern state of the USA, and ending with a mass emigration of all Blacks from the state in 1957. [PN]Other works: Dem (1967); Dunsford Travels Everywhere (1970).See also: POLITICS. KELLOGG, MARJORIE BRADLEY (1946- ) US scenery designer and writer who published her first three novels as by M. Bradley Kellogg to avoid confusion with another Marjorie Kellogg, but from 1991 used her full name. Her first novel, A Rumor of Angels (1983), is unexceptional, but the Lear's Daughters sequence - The Wave and the Flame (1986) and Reign of Fire (1986), both written with NASA climatologist William B(rigance) Rossow (1947) and assembled as Lear's Daughters (omni 1987) - somewhat more interestingly devotes much attention to the ECOLOGY and violent climatic extremes of a potential colony planet, though the conflict between the advocates of exploitation and those of alliance with the pacific cave-dwelling weather-predicting natives lacks originality. MBK's fourth novel, Harmony (1991), is a large and ambitious tale set on an Earth dominated by centuries of POLLUTION, with almost all humans now living in large, strictly controlled domes. But some artists - here MBK again shows an untoward softness of mind - have somehow managed to live in the open, and the book moves slowly towards a wholesome resolution of the conflict between ensuring safety and embracing the world. [JC] KELLY, FRANK K(ING) (1914- ) US writer who began to publish sf with "The Light Bender" for Wonder Stories in 1931, and who rapidly became known for SPACE-OPERA tales of some bleakness, though later titles were infused with an idealistic glow. He stopped writing sf in 1935, turning to non-genre fiction and political histories, and it was not until 45 years later that his sf work became available again, with the release of Starship Invincible (coll 1979). FKK cofounded the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in 1959, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 1982. [JC] KELLY, HAROLD ERNEST (1899-1969): UK writer and publisher, founder with his brother, Hector Kelly, of Everybody's Books, and later of RobinHood Press and Hector Kelly Ltd, for which he wrote many crime novels - being best known for those as by Darcy Glinto - and westerns, along with some sf and horror. In the 1960s, he wrote crime under the house name Hank JANSON. As Eugene Ascher he wrote the Lucius Carolus series of occult detective novels: There Were No Asper Ladies (1944; vt To Kill a Corpse 1959), Uncanny Adventures (coll 1944 chap), and The Grim Caretaker (1944 chap). As Preston Yorke he wrote The Astounding Crime (1943 chap), The Gamma Ray Murders (1943), which was sf, and other crime tales. Space-Time Task Force (1953), also as by Yorke, was set in the distant future, where the robot-like "syntho-selectives" who rule Earth turn to the Primitives, who are true humans, to defend against an alien invasion. [SH] KELLY, JAMES PATRICK (1951- ) US writer who began to publish after attending his first CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP in 1974. With "Dea Ex Machina" for Gal in 1975, the first of about 40 tales to 1992, he began very quickly to establish himself as an author whose work contained, within a sometimes sober demeanour, considerable pyrotechnical charge. In the selfconscious 1980s controversy between CYBERPUNK and "Humanist" modes of sf discourse, he was located with the latter, but like most "Humanists" he has disavowed the distinction - and indeed published a story, "Solstice" (1985), in Bruce STERLING's Mirrorshades (anth 1986). Some of his short work is collected in Heroines (coll 1990). He is perhaps best known for Freedom Beach (fixup 1985) with John KESSEL - an author with whom he has also collaborated on separate stories. In the book several characters find themselves in an interzone in which "reality" and dreamwork wed surreally, and must make sense of their surroundings. The control they exercise can be seen as allegorical of the creative act.Of greater interest are JPK's solo novels, Planet of Whispers (1984) and Look into the Sun (1989), which start the open-ended Messengers Chronicles. Whatever message is carried by the various species who link the Galaxy into a communications network has not been revealed so far. The first tale, set on the planet Aseneshesh, explores in voluminous detail the native race of near-immortal bearlike beings whose mental workings are derived from the attractive hypotheses developed by Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). In Jaynes's book, and in JPK's novel, pre-conscious sentients - i.e., preliterate humans, including Homer - "hear" right-brain "whispers" which they understand to be the voices of the gods, and in this fashion hallucinate normative diktats which shape their culture. No humans appear in the novel. In the second volume, set partly on a depleted Earth, a young architect is recruited by Messengers to travel to Aseneshesh, being engineered en route into the semblance of an Asenesheshian, with a computer-implant substituting for the right-brain voice of God. Aseneshesh is vividly depicted in the two books, in a PLANETARY-ROMANCE style reminiscent at times of Jack VANCE; but the plotting has a slow rigour typical of all JPK's work, an incremental power which transcends the FIXUP structure of Wildlife (1991 IASFM as "Mr. Boy"; fixup 1994), a complex and - at points - singularly cruel analysis of the relationship between a child artificially re-engineered each time he nears puberty and his extraordinary mother. JPK stands at the verge of recognition as a major writer. [JC]See also: CHILDREN IN SF; GODS AND DEMONS. KELLY, ROBERT (1935- ) Extremely prolific US poet; a professor of English. His novel The Scorpions (1967) has been read as sf because of its baroque rendering of a psychiatrist's conviction that a rich patient does in fact have contact with the Scorpions, a race of ultraviolet people. However, like Cities (1971 chap), the book is more plausibly viewed as a FABULATION, depicting US life after the fashion of Harry Mathews (1930- ) and Thomas PYNCHON. In the 1980s RK began to publish short fiction in the same vein, collected in A Transparent Tree: Fictions (coll 1985). [JC] KELLY, WILLIAM PATRICK (1848-1916) UK writer in whose Doctor Baxter's Invention (1912) it proves possible to transfer insanity and homicidal behaviour from one person to another via blood transfusions. [JC] KEMLO E.C. ELIOTT. KEMP, EARL An associate of William L. HAMLING (whom see for details) and recipient of a 1961 fan-writing HUGO. [JC] KENAN, AMOS [r] ISRAEL. KENDALL, GORDON S.N. LEWITT; Susan SHWARTZ. KENDALL, JOHN Pseudonym of UK writer Margaret Maud Brash (1880-? ), author of Unborn Tomorrow (1933), a futuristic DYSTOPIA describing dehumanization, regimentation and subsequent revolution in the UK under communism. [JE]See also: POLITICS. KENDALL, MAY [r] Andrew LANG. KENEALLY, THOMAS (MICHAEL) (1935- ) Australian writer best known for Bring Larks and Heroes (1967 UK) and for Schindler's Ark (1982 UK), vtSchindler's Listwhich won the Booker Prize, but who has several times edged into generic displacements to contain a remarkably intense and occasionally visionary imagination. His first novel, The Place at Whitton (1964 UK), is horror. Blood Red, Sister Rose (1974 UK) is an historical fantasy. Victim of the Aurora (1977), which can be read as a detection, feels like sf in that it depicts Antarctica exactly as an sf writer might depict an alien planet. Ned Kelly and the City of the Bees (1978 UK) is juvenile sf. The eponymous human foetus in Passenger (1979 UK) has been transformed by laser-scan into a conscious and articulate being. [JC] KENNAWAY, JAMES Pseudonym of Scottish writer James Ewing Peebles (1928-1968), best known for such works outside the sf field as Tunes of Glory (1956). His borderline sf novel is The Mind Benders * (1963), which applies MAINSTREAM tactics to a story about brainwashing and the psychological consequences of overexposure to experimental conditions of sensory deprivation. The book was written from his script for the 1963 film of the same name. [JC]See also: PSYCHOLOGY. KENNEALY, PATRICIA Working name of US writer Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (1946- ), "married" to rock singer Jim Morrison (1943-1971); she appeared in a cameo role in Oliver Stone's film The Doors (1991). Her sf oscillates - in a manner common to much 1980s work - between fantasy and sf, in the end seeming more the former than the latter. However, her Keltiad sequence - The Copper Crown (1985), The Throne of Scone (1986) and The Silver Branch (1988) - is set in space, being an expansive SPACE-OPERA reworking of the Arthurian Cycle. A second sequence, the Tales of Arthur, beginning with The Hawk's Gray Feather (1990) and The Oak Above the Rings (1994) as by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, is set 1000 or so years before the first; the tale is set on a single world and a PLANETARY-ROMANCE idiom dominates, so it is hard to read the book as sf. The marriage of modes, however, remains of genuine potential interest. [JC] KENNEALY-MORRISON, PATRICIA Patricia KENNEALY. KENNEDY, EDGAR REES John W. JENNISON. KENNEDY, LEIGH (1951- ) US writer, in the UK since 1985; married to Christopher PRIEST from 1988. Her sf stories, beginning with "Salamander" for ASF in 1977, combine generic sharpness of address and a "literary" density. "Her Furry Face" (1983), perhaps her best-known single work, exemplifies this duality of effect in a striking presentation of love between species, human and primate ( APES AND CAVEMEN); it was assembled, with very various companions, in Faces (coll 1986). The Journal of Nicholas the American (1986) depicts with alarming exactitude the anguish of paranormal empathy ( ESP), which drives the young man who inherits the gift almost to insanity. [JC]Other work: Saint Hiroshima (1987), associational. KENNEDY, R.A. (? -? ) UK metaphysical writer whose curious sf work, written as by "The Author of Space and Spirit" is The Triuneverse: A Scientific Romance (1912). Set in the future, after the destruction of Mars and other events, it has only a thin narrative, being mainly taken up with cosmological speculations about the fabric of the Universe. [JC]See also: COSMOLOGY; GREAT AND SMALL; LIVING WORLDS. KENT, BRAD House name used on 4 routine sf adventures published by CURTIS WARREN, 3 by Dennis HUGHES and Out of the Silent Places (1952) by Maurice G(aspard) Hugi (1904-1947). [JC] KENT, KELVIN Pseudonym used on the Pete Manx series in Thrilling Wonder Stories (1939-44), individually by Arthur K. BARNES (4 stories) and Henry KUTTNER (6 stories), and on the 2 they wrote in collaboration: "Roman Holiday" (1939) and "Science is Golden" (1940). [PN] KENT, MALLORY [s] Robert A.W. LOWNDES. KENT, PHILIP Kenneth BULMER. KENTON, L.P. R. Lionel FANTHORPE. KENWARD, JAMES (MACARA) (1908- ) UK author, mostly of nonfiction studies and memoirs. Summervale (1935) is a tale in which a man is transformed into a dog. The framing narrative of The Story of the Poor Author (coll of linked stories 1959) is sf; it involves SPACESHIPS. [JC] KENYON, ROBERT O. [s] Henry KUTTNER. KEPLER, JOHANNES (1571-1630) German astronomer, one-time assistant to Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and later imperial mathematician and astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. JK's contribution to ASTRONOMY - most notably his 3 laws of planetary motion - provided vital groundwork for Newton's cosmological synthesis. In 1593 JK prepared a dissertation on the heliocentric theory, which explained how events in the heavens would be seen by an observer stationed on the MOON; a new draft, in which the observer is conveniently placed on the Moon by a demon conjured up by his mother, was prepared in 1609 (the manuscript was stolen in 1611 and JK later had to defend his own mother against an accusation of witchcraft, a charge which may have been encouraged by the literary device). Between 1620 and 1630 he annotated the essay extensively, but he died while it was being prepared for publication; it finally appeared as Somnium (1634 in Latin; definitive trans in Kepler's "Somnium" by Edward Rosen 1967; a cut trans had earlier appeared in Beyond Time and Space, anth 1950 ed August W. DERLETH). The last section constructs a hypothetical ECOLOGY for the Moon, a significant pioneering exercise in the imagination of LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS. [BS]See also: BIOLOGY; COSMOLOGY; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GERMANY; HISTORY OF SF; PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; SPACE FLIGHT. KEPPEL-JONES, ARTHUR (MERVYN) (1909- ) South African-born writer, in Canada from 1959, whose When Smuts Goes: A History of South Africa from 1952 to 2010 (1947) takes a gloomy view of the apartheid-ridden future of that country. It is a respectable - though minor - contribution to the future- HISTORY genre. [JC]See also: POLITICS. KERN, GREGORY E.C. TUBB. KERR, KATHARINE (1944- ) US writer, best known for her substantial contributions to modern fantasy (see Other Works below); she became of interest as an author of sf with Polar City Blues (1990), which is set on a desert world populated by a wide ethnic mix of humans, and boxed in by 2 conflicting interstellar empires. The main characters, good and ill, have PSI POWERS, which allies the tale with KK's shaman-dominated fantasies; but there is a genuine hard-edged sf-like feel, and consequentiality, to the novel. Resurrection (1992) is a novella set in a NEAR-FUTURE (or perhaps ALTERNATE WORLD) San Francisco, where a brain-damaged protagonist, after suffering lengthy rehabilitation after a near-fatal crash, must sort out her distressed perception that something is profoundly awry. The tale is due to appear as well in Freeze Frames (coll of linked stories, dated 1994 but 1995). [JC]Other Works: the Kingdom of Deverry sequence, comprising Daggerspell (1986; rev 1993), Darkspell (1987; rev 1994), The Bristling Wood (1989; vt Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood 1989 UK) and The Dragon Revenant (1990; vt Dragonspell: The Southern Sea 1990 UK); and the connectedWestlands Cycle,comprising A Time of Exile(1991), A Time of Omens (1992UK),A Time of War: Days of Blood and Fire(1993 UK; vt Days of Blood and Fire: A Novel of theWestlands 1993 US) and A Time of Justice: Days of Airand Darkness (1994 UK; vt Days of Air andDarkness 1994 US); Weird Tales from Shakespeare(anth 1994) with Martin H. GREENBERG. KERR, MICHAEL Robert HOSKINS. KERSH, GERALD (1911-1968) UK writer-born in the county of Middlesex, despite stories that he was born in Russia-active from the mid-1930s, very prolific in shorter forms; known mainly for such work outside the sf field as Night and the City (1938) and They Die with their Boots Clean (1941). Many of his numerous short stories are sf or fantasy, and had their original book appearance in collections such as The Horrible Dummy and Other Stories (coll 1944), The Battle of the Singing Men (coll 1944 chap),Neither Man nor Dog (coll 1946), Sad Road to the Sea (coll 1947), The Brighton Monster (coll 1953), Men without Bones (coll 1955 UK; with differing contents, rev 1962 US), The Ugly Face of Love (coll 1960), The Terribly Wild Flowers (coll 1962) and The Hospitality of Miss Tolliver (coll 1965). Two US compilations, On an Odd Note (coll 1958 US) and Nightshade and Damnations (coll 1968 US), the latter ed Harlan ELLISON, conveniently abstract some of GK's fantasies and sf from his other short stories, which often take the shape of anecdotes told to a narrator (sometimes identified as GK himself), so that much of his work tends to verge upon the tall-tale or CLUB-STORY genre; The Best of Gerald Kersh (coll 1960) is more general. In "Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo?" (1953) the corporal tells GK of his 500 years of soldier life following a mysterious cure given to him about 1537 ( IMMORTALITY). "Voices in the Dust of Annan" (1947) is a post- HOLOCAUST tale starring fairies. In "Men without Bones" a tropical explorer tells us of a species of loathsome invertebrates, adding the hypothesis that we are really Martians.GK's novels are perhaps less impressive. The Weak and the Strong (1945) grotesquely carries its cast - trapped underground - into claustrophobic fantasy realms, and An Ape, a Dog, and a Serpent: A Fantastic Novel (1945) fabulates a history of film-making with borderline sf elements. The Great Wash (1953; vt The Secret Masters 1953 US) is an sf novel in which the usual narrator - GK - becomes gradually involved in a plot to inundate most of the world and to rule the remains on authoritarian lines. The subplot of Brock (1969) revolves around a new form of nuclear explosive. But GK's strengths as an author are everywhere evident: a strong and vivid sense of character, a colourful style and a capacity to infuse his stories with a deep emotional charge (sometimes sentimentalized). He has strong admirers. [JC]See also: HORROR IN SF; HUMOUR. KESHISHIAN, JOHN M. (1923- ) US doctor of medicine and writer whose sf novel, with Jacob HAY (whom see for details), is Autopsy for a Cosmonaut (1969; vt Death of a Cosmonaut 1970 UK). [JC] KESSEL, JOHN (JOSEPH VINCENT) (1950- ) US academic and writer who began publishing sf with "The Silver Man" for Galileo in 1978, and whose short fiction rapidly established him as an author of cunningly pastiche-heavy, erudite stories. His two best known early tales - both assembled with other work in Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (coll 1992) - are probably "Not Responsible! Park and Lock It!" (1981) and Another Orphan (1982 FSF; 1989 chap dos), which won a NEBULA in 1982; in both, an urgent extremism of metaphor tends to enforce allegorical readings. This extremism with the materials of genre sf also dominates much of JK's first novel, Freedom Beach (1985) with James Patrick KELLY, a tale whose characters find themselves occupying allegorical venues construed according to the styles of various authors, from Aristophanes to Groucho Marx. Of greater interest, perhaps, is his first solo novel, GOOD NEWS FROM OUTER SPACE (fixup 1989), a sustained but dizzying look at the human animal as the millennium approaches, identity crises eat into men and women, the dead are medically reawoken, and dreams of redeeming ALIENS raddle the large cast. There are echoes of Philip K. DICK, but a gonzo Dick, and of Barry N. MALZBERG's allegorized urban desolation (and black wit) - but JK's desolation, very frighteningly and very movingly, is populous with human faces, however fractured. JK seems to be one of the writers capable of bending the tools of sf inward upon the human psyche. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION . KESTEVEN, G.R. Pseudonym of UK teacher and writer Geoffrey Robins Corsher (1911- ), some of whose stories for children have been published under his own name. Of sf interest is The Pale Invaders (1974), a post- HOLOCAUST tale set in the FAR FUTURE and describing the impact upon an isolated valley culture of the discovery of technologies which reveal much hitherto hidden history. The Awakening Water (1977) has less impact. [JC] KETTERER, DAVID (ANTHONY THEODOR) (1942- ) UK-born Canadian academic (with a DPhil from the University of Sussex) based at Concordia University, Montreal. His New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature (1974) interestingly, though in rather academic terminology, links apocalyptic themes in US MAINSTREAM literature with similar obsessions in genre sf. The Rationale of Deception in Poe (1979) covers the whole of Edgar Allan POE's writing, including the PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; a briefer work on Poe is Edgar Allan Poe: Life, Work, and Criticism (chap 1989). Frankenstein's Creation: The Book, the Monster, and Human Reality (1979) is another of DK's later works which, to a degree, enlarge on the thesis of his first. DK's critical work is widely respected and by no means "one-note", but it does often return to the idea of "metaphorical transcendence". The Science Fiction of Mark Twain (coll 1984) ed DK contains 120pp of Introduction and critical apparatus. DK attracted much attention with Imprisoned in a Tesseract: The Life and Work of James Blish (1987). Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (1992US) is an important critical and historical survey of both English and French Canadian sf literature, and includes a bibliography. [PN]See also: CANADA; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; SENSE OF WONDER; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION. KETTLE, LEROY [r] John BROSNAN. KETTLE, (JOCELYN) PAMELA (1934- ) UK writer, author of a historical novel, Memorial to the Duchess (1968) as by Jocelyn Kettle, and of the sf novel The Day of the Women (1969), in which sex-role reversal is instituted - and deplored. [JC] KEY, ALEXANDER (HILL) (1904-1979) US writer who began publishing novels for children with The Red Eagle (1930), and who moved into CHILDREN'S SF with the Sprockets sequence: Sprockets: A Little Robot (1963), Rivets and Sprockets (1964) and Bolts - A Robot Dog (1966). These books were not likely, however, to seize a wide audience, and it was only with the Witch Mountain sequence - Escape to Witch Mountain (1968) and Return from Witch Mountain * (1978) - that AK's easy sentimentality was attached to a narrative strong enough to bear it, as two orphan children on the run gradually come to realize that they are in fact ALIENS with powers (and memories) foreign to their ignorant hosts. Both stories were filmed by Walt Disney, in 1975 and 1978 respectively, both dir John Hough. An earlier alien orphaned on Earth had featured in The Forgotten Door (1965). Other singletons of interest include The Golden Enemy (1969), set thousands of years hence when the descendants of the survivors of nuclear HOLOCAUST must face their human nature, and Flight to the Lonesome Place (1971), where a young mathematical genius flees his oppressors into a space to which only he can understand the route. [JC]Other works: The Incredible Tide (1970); The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer (1973); The Magic Meadow (1975); Jagger, the Dog from Elsewhere (1976); The Sword of Aradel (1977); The Case of the Vanishing Boy (1979).See also: SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS; SUPERMAN. KEY, EUGENE G(EORGE) (1907-1976) US author whose sf collection, Mars Mountain (coll 1936), published by William L. CRAWFORD's semi-professional company Fantasy Publications, was the first full-length book to appear from any US publishing house specializing in sf, and so the precursor of great things to come. Otherwise the 3 stories assembled are unremarkable. [JC] KEYES, DANIEL (1927- ) US writer and university lecturer in English. He began his sf career as associate editor of MARVEL SCIENCE FICTION, Feb-Nov 1951, and it was in that magazine that his first published story, "Precedent" appeared (1952). He is known mainly for one excellent novel, FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (1959 FSF; exp 1966), winner of a 1960 HUGO in its magazine form and of a 1966 NEBULA for the full-length book version, on which was based the film CHARLY (1968). It is the story, largely in the first person, of Charlie Gordon, whose INTELLIGENCE, starting at IQ 68, is artificially increased to genius level ( MEDICINE; SUPERMAN). The mouse Algernon has preceded him in this course, but Algernon soon dies, and Gordon's main contribution to science is his working out of the "Algernon-Gordon Effect", by which "artificially induced intelligence deteriorates at a rate of time directly proportional to the quantity of the increase". The last pages of the novel, detailing the loss of Charlie's faculties, are extremely moving. His treatment as an object of scientific curiosity throughout his ordeal underlines the book's points about deficiencies in the scientific method as applied to human beings. The Touch (1968; vt The Contaminated Man 1977 UK), a borderline-sf tale about the psychological consequences of an industrial accident involving radioactive contamination, has received less attention. After a long silence in the sf field, a new novel from DK was projected for the early 1990s. [JC]See also: ALIENS; CINEMA; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; NUCLEAR POWER; PSYCHOLOGY; RADIO. KEYES, THOM (1943- ) UK writer whose sf novels, The Battle of Disneyland (1974) and The Second Coming (1979), apply the tools of sf SATIRE, without excessive energy, to a NEAR-FUTURE USA. [JC] KEYHOE, DONALD E. [r] DR. YEN SIN; EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS; UFOS. KEYNE, GORDON [s] H. BEDFORD-JONES. KHAN, OBIE Robert E. VARDEMAN. von KHUON, ERNST [r] GERMANY. KIDD, (MILDRED) VIRGINIA (1921- ) US literary agent and writer, married to James BLISH 1947-63, who began to publish professionally in the early 1950s, writing at least 1 story with Blish; her first solo sf story, "Kangaroo Court", did not appear until much later, in Orbit 1 (anth 1966) ed Damon KNIGHT. She edited 3 strong ORIGINAL ANTHOLOGIES: Millennial Women (anth 1978; vt The Eye of the Heron, and Other Stories 1980 UK), Interfaces (anth 1980) with Ursula K. LE GUIN, and Edges (anth 1980), also with Le Guin. As a literary agent from 1965, she became known for her FEMINIST views and - although she did not handle only WOMEN WRITERS - for representing a highly capable range of feminist authors, including Carol EMSHWILLER, Le Guin, Josephine SAXTON and James TIPTREE Jr. [JC] KILIAN, CRAWFORD (1941- ) US-born writer, in Canada from 1967, who began publishing sf with The Empire of Time (1978 US), the first volume of the Chronoplane Wars sequence. This sequence - which continued with The Fall of the Republic (1987 US) and Rogue Emperor: A Novel of the Chronoplane Wars (1988 US) - is dominated by the discovery in a savagely declining NEAR-FUTURE USA of the I-Screens, through which travel to a series of ALTERNATE WORLDS is possible. Each Earth is located uptime or downtime of our base reality but, ominously, uptime is uninhabitable, seemingly because of the effects of an alien INVASION; the protagonist gradually uncovers a seamy truth. Perhaps more interestingly, Icequake (1979) and its sequel Tsunami (1983) - the latter set in Vancouver - depict an Earth very much closer to home, with the ozone layer gone and the Antarctic icecap beginning to melt disastrously. Eyas (1982) moves into the very FAR FUTURE, where the eponymous primitive gingers his tribe into readiness for the dawn of a new age. Brother Jonathan (1985 US) describes the effect of experiments which permit human-animal interfaces, these soon being invaded by AIs in typical CYBERPUNK fashion. Lifter (1986 US) is a fairly unserious tale about ANTIGRAVITY and Gryphon (1989 US) somewhat unadventurously deals with an alien invasion. CK's work can be analysed in terms of its Canadianness, its emphasis on themes of survival ( CANADA); but he slips too often into generic dogpaddling for this kind of analysis to be entirely fruitful. [JC]Other works: Wonders, Inc. (1968), a juvenile; Greenmagic (1992), a fantasy. KILLDOZER Made-for-tv film (1974). Universal TV/ABC. Dir Jerry London, starring Clint Walker, Carl Betz, Neville Brand. Teleplay Richard Mackillop, Theodore STURGEON, based on Sturgeon's "Killdozer" (1944). 74 mins. Colour.Though derived from Sturgeon's own well known story about a huge bulldozer that becomes possessed by a seemingly ALIEN force - actually a semi-intelligent entity fabricated, aeons earlier, by a pre-human terrestrial civilization - this tv movie does not live up to its potential. The story is a tightly constructed description of the battle between the machine and a group of men on a Pacific island; the film pads this material out with cliched emotional conflicts between the human characters. [JB] KILLOUGH, (KAREN) LEE (1942- ) US writer and Chief Technologist at the Department of Radiology, Kansas State University Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. She began publishing sf with "Caveat Emptor" for ASF in 1970, and since then has published about 30 stories, perhaps most notably the tales assembled as Aventine (coll of linked stories 1982), set in an artist's colony in a decadent future whose resemblance to that depicted in J.G. BALLARD's Vermilion Sands (1971 US) led some critics to brand it as merely derivative, though others accepted it as a homage. Her first novel, A Voice out of Ramah (1979) - set on a planet where 90 per cent of males are ritually slaughtered at puberty - is typical of much of her work in its plumping for unexceptionable presentations of various issues ( FEMINISM in this case) while at the same time tending to stumble over the generic working-out of those presentations. The Doppelganger Gambit (1979) and its sequels, Spider Play (1986) and Dragon's Teeth (1990), are police procedurals starring Janna Brill and Mama Maxwell and set in a USA that must be wary of COMPUTERS; and Blood Hunt (1987) and its sequel Bloodlinks (1988) are police-procedural fantasies dealing with a cop's confrontation of the fact that he has become a vampire. In both series there is a recurring sense that unexamined plots have tended to dominate proceedings. LK's singletons are various. The Monitor, the Miners, and the Shree (1980) amiably deals with the issue of human exploitation of alien planets. Deadly Silents (1981) again involves the police, though this time on another world. The Leopard's Daughter (1987) is a vibrant fantasy set in Africa. [JC]Other work: Liberty's World (1985).See also: ARTS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. KILPI, VOLTER [r] FINLAND. KILWORTH, GARRY (DOUGLAS) (1941- ) UK writer who began to publish sf and fantasy stories and novels in the mid-1970s on retiring after 18 years' service as a cryptographer in the RAF; raised partly in Aden, he has travelled and worked in the Far East and the Pacific. He published his first sf story, "Let's Go to Golgotha"with the Sunday Times Weekly Review in 1974, having won the associated competition, and some of his many stories have been assembled as The Songbirds of Pain (coll 1984), In the Country of Tattooed Men (coll 1993) and Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands (coll 1993 US). He has written novels as Garry Douglas. His first sf novel, In Solitary (1977), is set on an Earth whose few remaining humans have for over 400 years been dominated by birdlike ALIENS, and deals with a human rebellion whose moral impact is ambiguous; the novel is the first of several combining generic adventurousness-indeed opportunism, for GK seldom accords his full attention to the raw sf elements in his tales - and an identifiably English dubiety about the roots of human action. Consequences of such action in a GK novel are seldom simple, rarely flattering. The Night of Kadar (1978) places humans whose culture has an Islamic coloration, and who are hatched from frozen embryos on an alien planet where they must attempt to understand their own nature. Split Second (1979) similarly isolates a contemporary human in the mind of a Cro-Magnon. Gemini God (1981) again uses aliens to reflect the human condition. A Theatre of Timesmiths (1984) isolates a human society in an ice-enclosed city ( POCKET UNIVERSE) as computers fail and questions about the meaning of human life must be asked. Cloudrock (1988) pits brothers - GK often evokes kinship intimacies - against themselves and each other in a further pocket-universe setting. Abandonati (1988), set in a desolate NEAR-FUTURE London, reflects grittily upon the implications for the UK of the last decades of this century. GK's non-genre novels (see listing below) follow the same pattern; of them, Witchwater Country (1986), among his finest works, has autobiographical elements. At the end of the 1980s, in an apparent break with his sf career, he began to publish animal fantasies: Hunter's Moon: A Story of Foxes (1989; vt The Foxes of First Dark 1990 US), Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves (1990) and Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares (1992), in all of which he scrutinized nonhuman terrestrial life with an unblinking eye. He has also moved into contemporary HORROR with Angel (1993) and its sequel, Archangel (1994). Much of his short fiction is uneven; but in his novels GK has developed into an observer whose reports are both subtle and frank. [JC]Other works: Spiral Winds (1987), In the Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave: A Novel and Seven Stories (coll 1989) and Standing on Shamsan (1992), all containing some fantasy elements; a juvenile series comprising The Wizard of Woodworld (1987) and The Voyage of the Vigilance (1988); Trivial Tales (coll 1988 chap); The Rain Ghost (1989), Dark Hills, Hollow Clocks: Stories from the Otherworld (coll 1990), The Drowners (1991), a ghost story, The Third Dragon (1991), associational, Billy Pink's Private Detective Agency (1993), The Electric Kid (1993) and The Phantom Piper (1994), all juveniles.As Garry Douglas: Highlander * (1986), a film novelization; The Street (1988), horror.See also: INTERZONE; ISLANDS; MESSIAHS; RELIGION; TIME TRAVEL. KIMBERLY, GAIL (1937- ) US writer who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Prince and the Physician" for Medical Opinion & Review in 1969, and who has been moderately productive in short forms ever since. She has written young-adult adventure novels under the house name Dayle Courtney and a Gothic, Secret of the Abbey (1980) as by Alix Andre. Her sf novel is Flyer (1975), a meditative tale of an Earth occupied by MUTANTS who fly and swim. Dracula Began (1976) is horror. [JC] KIMBRIEL, KATHARINE ELISKA (1956- ) US writer whose work of sf interest - though she has published some fantasy stories - is restricted to the Nuala sequence: Fire Sanctuary (1986), Fires of Nuala (1988) and Hidden Fires (1991). Threatened by mutations (caused by high radioactivity in the planetary crust) and by intergalactic war, the inhabitants of the eponymous long-lost colony planet must cope with intrigues, spies, dynastic disputes and an extremely harsh climate. The plots are sometimes congested, but KEK's sense of local colour and her capacity to create genuinely engaging characters have made the sequence into something more than routine. [JC] KING, ALBERT [r] or CHRISTOPHER Paul CONRAD. KING, JOHN Ernest L. MCKEAG. KING, JOHN ROBERT (1948- ) UK writer whose Bruno Lipshitz and the Disciples of Dogma (1976) rather uneasily juggles a number of ingredients in a complex plot: an ALIEN invasion, a strange RELIGION, interpersonal conflicts and dollops of adventure. [JC] KING, PAULA Paula E. DOWNING. KING, STEPHEN (1947- ) US writer of HORROR fiction. With over 80 million books in print already-his first book was published less than 20 years ago-he is probably the most successful bestseller novelist in history; the example of his success has revolutionized the horror-fiction business, which is considerably more flourishing in 1990 than it was in 1975.At first he was attracted to sf, beginning with the unpublished novel The Aftermath (written when he was 16) and, commercially, with "The Glass Floor" for Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Night Shift (coll 1978) collects much of his early short fiction, his main market then being Cavalier; it includes some grisly sf in the pulp style. He was perhaps diverted from a conventional sf career by the response of Donald A. WOLLHEIM to his first novel submission: "We here at Ace Books are not interested in negative Utopias."SK has since concentrated on horror/fantasy with occasional sf grounding, as exemplified by the focus on PSI POWERS, notably TELEKINESIS, in his first published novel, Carrie (1974), successfully filmed as CARRIE (1976). Other paranormal talents feature in The Dead Zone (1979) (precognition) and Firestarter (1980) (pyrokinesis), both also filmed ( The DEAD ZONE and FIRESTARTER). While SK does not have the analytical approach of the HARD-SF writer, and is not especially interested in "explanations" of his GOTHIC creations, he has a down-to-earth quality which gives even his purely supernatural fiction a true sf "feel"; he eschews the nebulous; he describes and specifies with some exactness.Under his own name SK has written two further novels which are sf by any measure (though both incorporate elements from other genres). The earlier and better is THE STAND (abridged from manuscript 1978; with text largely restored, rev 1990 UK), a long and intelligent story of the HOLOCAUST AND AFTER in the USA, beginning with the accidental release of a germ-warfare virus by the US military; in the second half of the book a supernatural struggle between powers of light and darkness weakens the impact from an sf point of view, but the novel remains a very superior example of its genre, clearly owing something to George R. STEWART's EARTH ABIDES (1949), but not imitative of it. THE STAND (1994) is an unusually strong tv miniseries that deals well with this long and complex story. The Tommyknockers (1987) is gothic horror dressed in sf clothes, a lurid, eminently readable tale of an alien SPACESHIP buried for millions of years and now dug up, and of the effects it has on people nearby: sudden technological brilliance, physiological changes and a melding into a group mind. A four-hour ABC tv miniseries dramatization, also called The Tommyknockers, was broadcast in May 1993, and is available on videotape.The Talisman (1984), with Peter Straub, is an uneasy collaboration in which two very strong individual voices seem to muffle one another; primarily a fantasy quest, it uses the sf device of PARALLEL WORLDS, as does the ongoing Dark Tower fantasy series by SK alone: to date The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982), #2: The Drawing of the Three (1987) and #3: The Waste Lands (1991); different in tone from most of SK's work - and perhaps more demandingly inventive than usual - these have an undeniable mythic charge, partly because of the alienated-adolescent theme that runs through them. As the series continues, and especially in the third volume, it has looked more like sf and less like pure FANTASY, both in its post-holocaust imagery and in its use of a self-aware AI as a major threat to the protagonists.SK wrote four early novels (the first three before Carrie came out) subsequently published as paperback originals as by Richard Bachman: Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982). Shortly after the publication of a fifth, Thinner (1984), Bachman's cover was blown, and an omnibus edition of the first four out-of-print Bachman titles was published as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King (omni 1985; vt The Bachman Books: Four Novels by Stephen King UK). The Long Walk and The Running Man are both fringe sf about futuristic sadistic sports events, the first a marathon walk where those who fall behind are shot, the second duelling to the death as a tv game show; the latter was filmed as The RUNNING MAN (1987).It is generally held that most films based on SK's novels, stories and original screenplays are poor. In fact Carrie, The Shining (1980), The Dead Zone (1983), Cujo (1983), Stand By Me (1986) and Misery (1990) are all strong films, although SK dislikes the second. The Shawshank Redemption (1994), neither sf nor horror, is a fine prison buddy movie based on a novella from Different Seasons. Fantasy/horror films aside from those already mentioned are Salem's Lot (tv miniseries 1979), Creepshow (1982), Christine (1983), Cat's Eye (1984), Children of the Corn (1984), Silver Bullet (1985), Creepshow II (1987), Pet Sematary (1989), Graveyard Shift (1990) and It (tv miniseries 1990). Return to Salem's Lot (1987) dir Larry COHEN is "based on characters created by Stephen King". Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), an anthology film based on the tv series of the same name, contains an adaptation of SK's "The Cat from Hell" (1977). The eight-hour tv anthology miniseriesThe Golden Years of Stephen King(1991) was a ratings flop, and was re-released on videotape in 1992 with a new ending and cut to 236 mins.The Dark Half (1991 but released 1993 because of Orion Pictures' financial problems), dir George ROMERO, is a valiant attempt to dramatize a not wholly satisfactory original. SK rightly repudiated the sf film The LAWNMOWER MAN (1992), allegedly based on a short story by him, as having nothing to do with his work, and won a lawsuit demanding that his name be removed from the credits. He wrote an original screenplay for the uneven vampire film Sleepwalkers (1992; vt Stephen King's Sleepwalkers). Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice(1992) is a sequel to a film based on an SK story, but otherwise has no connection with him. Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back" (1993) is a 97-min tv movie adaptation dir Tim McLoughlin. Needful Things (1994), 120 mins, dir Fraser C. Heston is less satisfyingly apocalyptic than the original novel.One film adaptation of a story by SK - "Trucks" (1973) - was directed by King himself from his own screenplay: Maximum Overdrive (1986). Though not as bad as some critics stated, it flopped commercially. Technically sf, it has Earth passing through the tail of a comet that mysteriously gives self-awareness to MACHINES (trucks, lawnmowers, hairdryers, electric carving knives, etc.), which then revolt against humans. This paranoid fantasy is crudely made with very broad stereotypes, but at least one sequence, of a boy cycling through a quiet township littered with bodies, suggests latent cinematic talent.SK's occasional critical commentaries, the reverse of academic in style, are usually observant and interesting. Danse Macabre (1981), a study of horror in books, films and comics, won a HUGO for Best Nonfiction Book in 1982.SK's pungent prose, his sharp ear for dialogue, his disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciations of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to CHILDREN), put him among the more distinguished of "popular" writers. [PN]Other works: 'Salem's Lot (1975); The Shining (1977); The Monkey (1980 chap); Cujo (1981); The Raft (1982 chap); The Plant (1982 chap); Creepshow (coll 1982); Different Seasons (coll 1982); Pet Sematary (1983), one of SK's finest works; Christine (1983; text differs slightly in UK edition); Cycle of the Werewolf (1983; exp as coll with film screenplay "Silver Bullet" 1985); The Eyes of the Dragon (1984; rev 1987); Skeleton Crew (coll 1985; exp by 1 story 1985); It (1986; the 1st edn was the German translation as Es [1986]); Misery (1987); My Pretty Pony (1988 chap); Dolan's Cadillac (1989 chap); The Dark Half (1989 UK); Four Past Midnight (coll 1990); Needful Things (1991); Gerald's Game (1992); Nightmares and Dreamscapes (coll 1993); Insomnia (1994).Nonfiction includes: Nightmares in the Sky (1988), a book of photographs by "F-Stop Fitzgerald" with minimal contribution by SK; Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King (coll 1988); Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King (coll 1989).About the author: Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King (coll 1982) ed Tim UNDERWOOD and Chuck MILLER; Stephen King: The Art of Darkness (1984; rev 1986) by Douglas E. Winter; The Stephen King Companion (coll 1989) ed George Beahm; many others, including at least 10 from STARMONT HOUSE.See also: CINEMA; CLICHES; DISASTER; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; EC COMICS; ESP; FRANCE; INTELLIGENCE; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MUSIC. KING, T(HOMAS) JACKSON (Jr) (1948- ) US archaeologist and writer, married to Paula E. DOWNING. He began publishing sf with his first novel, Retread Shop (1988), a somewhat congested but pleasingly vivid tale of the upbringing of a young human in the SPACE HABITAT of the title, and of his complicated dealings with alien merchants and crises of various sorts. The energy of the telling constitutes a forecast of much further work. [JC] KING, VINCENT Pseudonym of UK writer, artist and teacher Rex Thomas Vinson (1935- ), who worked in Cornwall and began publishing sf with "Defence Mechanism" for New Writings in SF No 9 (anth 1966) ed E.J. CARNELL. His more successful novels, like Light a Last Candle (1969 US) and Candy Man (1971 US), tend to combine elements of epic and grotesque sf adventure with a characteristically English darkness of emotional colouring and a tendency towards downbeat conclusions. [JC]Other works: Another End (1971 US); Time Snake and Superclown (1976). KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS Film (1977). Arachnid Productions/Dimension. Dir John "Bud" Cardos, starring William SHATNER, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode. Screenplay Richard Robinson, Alan Caillou, from a story by Jeffrey M. Sneller, Stephen Lodge. 95 mins, cut to 90 mins. Colour.In its modest way, this is one of the better films in the revenge-of-Nature cycle ( MONSTER MOVIES). Near a small town in Arizona, tarantulas whose ECOLOGY has undergone changes because of crop-dusting sprays are migrating north in large numbers and apparently acting with communal intelligence ( HIVE-MINDS). Starting small and building to local apocalypse, the film is crisply made, the masses of spiders (normal size) are believable, and the end, though clearly echoing Hitchcock's The BIRDS (1963), offers a genuine minatory thrill with its vision of a whole town cocooned in spider-silk, its occupants now preserved as food. Shatner plays the vet trying to puzzle out why the normally solitary spiders are acting in concert. [PN] KING-HALL, LOU Working name of UK writer Louise (variously Luise) Olga Elisabeth King-Hall (1897- ), whose Fly Envious Time (1944) posits a NEAR-FUTURE world in which eugenics dominates and women have achieved full equality; WWIII follows rather rapidly, in 1999. Her brother was Stephen KING-HALL. [JC] KING-HALL, (WILLIAM) STEPHEN (RICHARD) (1893-1966) UK naval officer, writer and politician; brother of Lou KING-HALL. His military experiences (1914-29) influenced his work as a writer, especially the long series of admonitory newsletters he published from 1936 for 30 years, first as the K-H News Service and later under other names. Posterity (1927 chap), a play, is fantasy; it appears also in Three Plays and a Plaything (coll 1933) along with "The Republican Princess", a RURITANIAN spoof. In Post-War Pirate (1931) a submarine uses a newly invented gas to disable shipping. Bunga-Bunga (1932) is a SATIRE set on an ISLAND where anything is permitted. Number 10 Downing Street (1948), a play which depicts an occupied UK, takes place in the mid-1950s. His last novel, Men of Destiny (1960; vt Moment of No Return 1961 US), is again set in the NEAR FUTURE. [JC] KING KONG 1. Film (1933). RKO. Dir Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot. Screenplay James A. Creelman, Ruth Rose, from a story by Cooper, with credit also given to Edgar WALLACE. Special effects designed and supervised by Willis H. O'BRIEN. 100 mins. B/w.The classic MONSTER MOVIE. On a remote island inhabited by unfriendly natives and prehistoric MONSTERS, of which the most powerful is a giant APE called Kong, a young actress (Wray) from a visiting film unit is kidnapped by tribesmen and offered to Kong, a gift which he eagerly accepts. She is rescued and Kong is captured and taken to New York, where he is exhibited, escapes, rampages, recaptures the girl (for whom he appears to cherish strong feelings), and makes a last defiant stand on top of the Empire State Building before being machine-gunned down by a squadron of biplanes.Although KK is an early film, its special effects are still very convincing today, many being the product of the technique of stop-motion photography that had been pioneered by O'Brien in The LOST WORLD (1925). The classic status of KK, which has become one of the great mythopoeic works of the 20th century, has probably to do with the ambiguous feelings - much as with its fairy-tale model, "Beauty and the Beast" - created by the film towards Kong himself: terror at his savagery; admiration for his strength, naturalness and effortless regality in his primeval surroundings; and pity for his squalid end - the most memorable of all cinematic images of Nature destroyed in the city. This ending is also an image of the great destroyed by the small: the humans are dwarfed by the ape and indeed by the city they have created, a feeling emphasized by the ambience of the Great Depression, with a bored, impoverished populace ready to grasp at any ersatz marvel but panicking when it finds itself faced with the real thing. Yet another polarity is that of innocence destroyed by sophistication, a feeling enhanced by the crucial story-element of Kong's capture being to do with the shooting of a movie. The narrative moves with elan, and the film has been almost as popular with critics as with the general public. There is a GRAPHIC NOVEL version of the tale: King Kong: The Greatest Adventure Story of All Time * (graph 1970) illus Alberto Giolitti.The disappointing sequel was SON OF KONG (1933). Another Willis O'Brien giant ape, not quite so big, starred in MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949; vt Mr Joseph Young of Africa).2. Film (1976). Dino De Laurentiis/Paramount. Dir John Guillermin, starring Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, Ed Lauter. Screenplay Lorenzo Semple Jr, based on the 1933 screenplay. 134 mins. Colour.In this lavish and heavily publicized remake, it is an oil-company executive who leads the expedition to Kong's island. Kong is taken back to the USA in an oil supertanker. His last stand is on top of the World Trade Center, and he is shot dead by a group of helicopter gunships.This version did not use model animation and was therefore more restricted - and indeed more primitive - in its effects: most shots of Kong show a man in an ape suit. The original set-piece battles between Kong and prehistoric monsters are gone. The vigorous narrative of the original is here slowed down by didactic, moralizing scenes in a manner which suggests that the new Hollywood has a much lower opinion of the intelligence of the public than the old one did. The delicate balance of the original between pity and terror is here shifted towards pity, and Kong is softened. Tragedy becomes at best pathos, yet many scenes remain moving, and the startlingly vulgar heroine (now feminist and tough, no longer a limp screamer) has a more interesting role than her original. In a flurry of self-contradiction, KK seems designed to be spoof, tragedy, nostalgia-epic, spectacle and allegory about "the rape of the environment by big business" - all rolled into one. [JB/PN]See also: CINEMA; GREAT AND SMALL; LOST WORLDS. KING KONG TAI GOJIRA GOJIRA. KING KONG VS. GODZILLA GOJIRA. KINGSBURY, DONALD (MacDONALD) (1929- ) US-born academic and writer, in Canada from 1948, a teacher of mathematics at McGill University from 1956 until his retirement in 1986. He began publishing sf with "Ghost Town" for ASF in 1952; although he produced relatively little for nearly 30 years, his intermittent appearances in ASF, with both fiction and nonfiction, were generally noticed. What could not have been noted - because of the sparseness of his production and the wide-ranging nature of his underlying construct - was that almost everything he wrote shared a common future HISTORY, somewhere into the middle of which his first novel, COURTSHIP RITE (1982 US; vt Geta 1984 UK), fitted smoothly; indeed, the polished sweep and exuberance of this large epic PLANETARY ROMANCE must have owed something to DK's long familiarity with its sustaining Universe. The planet Geta is a venue which amply contains: several warring cultures for whom all aspects of life are agonistic; complicated group marriages; an elaborate ethical and ecological justification of cannibalism in a world of terrible scarcity ( ECOLOGY); and the highly productive worship of a God in the sky (in fact, in a standby orbit, the starship that seeded the world) who rewards worship by raining down computer chips full of precious data. The plot, involving the forced courtship of a woman from another culture by members of a group marriage, is perhaps less convincing than the background; but the pace is sufficient to intrigue and to engage even those readers who might be dubious about the Libertarian assumptions underlying certain elements of the unrelenting agons of Geta.DK's second novel, The Moon Goddess and the Son (1979 ASF; exp 1986), is set so early in his Future History that the NEAR-FUTURE setting of certain parts of the tale seems directly extrapolative of current thinking about space technologies. The HARD-SF arguments, about the design and construction of space stations capable of grappling space freighters into dock, are as gripping as this sort of narrative can sometimes be; and later sections, featuring the eponymous Diana a generation or so further on, adequately point a way forward into romance. A third novel, "The Survivor", forms the bulk of Man-Kzin Wars IV * (anth 1991) in the Larry NIVEN Man-Kzin Wars SHARED-WORLD enterprise; it is bleak and exorbitant, and constitutes a self-sufficient tale.DK is a writer whose energy is conspicuous, and whose imagined Universe does not lack ambition. At the time of writing, further connective tissue is still wanting, but can be hoped for. [JC]See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; CANADA; GODS AND DEMONS. KING-SIZE PUBLICATIONS FANTASTIC UNIVERSE. KINGSMILL, HUGH Working name of UK writer and anthologist Hugh Kingsmill Lunn (1899-1949), who remains best known for An Anthology of Invective and Abuse (anth 1929). The Dawn's Delay (coll 1924) contains "The End of the World", of interest for its vision of a Solar System populated by various species, and "W.J.", about a future WAR in 1966-72. The Return of William Shakespeare (1929) presents within a sketchy sf frame the thoughts and activities of a Shakespeare reconstituted in the 20th century ( ARTS; REINCARNATION). In revised form both of these volumes were assembled as The Dawn's Delay (omni 1948). With Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), HK wrote two SATIRES rendering NEAR-FUTURE doings in the form of newspaper stories: Brave Old World: A Mirror for The Times (1936) and Next Year's News (1938). A much-loved figure, HK appears in novels and reminiscences of writers like William GERHARDI and Lance SIEVEKING. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD; SUN. KINGSTON, JEREMY 1. Full name Jeremy Hervey Spencer Kingston (1931- ), UK writer, mostly of plays. His novel, Love Among the Unicorns (1968), a surreal fantasy set in South America, features a LOST WORLD.2. Pseudonym under which John Gregory BETANCOURT wrote Robert Silverberg's Time Tours #6: Caesar's Time Legion * (1991). [JC] KINLEY, GEORGE Edmund COOPER. KINROSS, ALBERT (1870-1929) UK writer in various genres whose The Fearsome Island (1896), most of which takes the form of a recently discovered 16th-century manuscript, describes its protagonist's experiences after being shipwrecked on an unknown ISLAND full of alarms and delights - including a huge mechanical man, an ominous castle which has many perilous marvels, and a Caliban-like native. The maker of all this, it turns out, is a cruel Spanish inventor who left his homeland long ago on a pre-Columbian expedition to the Americas. Some of the stories in Within the Radius (coll 1901) are sf. [JC] KINVIG UK tv series (1981). London Weekend Television. Created and written by Nigel KNEALE. Prod and dir Les Chatfield; starring Tony Haygarth, Patsy Rowlands, Colin Jeavons, Prunella Gee. 7 25min episodes. Colour.This most recent of Kneale's many sf plays and series for tv was a sitcom, fuelled apparently by a certain animus against sf FANDOM, about two lunatic fans living seedy urban lives, one of whom (Haygarth) has a fat wife (Rowlands) and a fat dog, and is entranced by an ALIEN from Mercury (Gee) in the guise of a beautiful customer at his electrical repair shop. He has adventures with her (she wearing a variety of sexy catsuits) and helps ward off an INVASION of Earth by the alien Xux. The scripts lacked the precision required for decent farce, and the invasive canned laughter did not help. Kneale's belief that sf fans are typologically identical with UFO cultists, and that both have an obsessive need for alien glamour to lighten their ghastly lives, was offensive to some viewers. [PN] KIPLING, ARTHUR WELLESLEY (? - ) UK author, possibly pseudonymous, of 2 future- WAR novels. The New Dominion (1908) pits the USA triumphantly against Japan and The Shadow of Glory (1910) visualizes a worldwide conflict, mainly naval. [JC] KIPLING, (JOSEPH) RUDYARD (1865-1936) UK poet, short-story writer and novelist, known mainly for such works outside the sf field as Plain Tales from the Hills (coll 1888 India) and Kim (1901). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Before the age of 27, RK wrote a considerable number of stories containing elements of fantasy and horror. Some, like "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" (1885), are to be found in The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Tales (coll 1888 India; rev 1890 UK), the title story of which is also fantasy; others appear in Life's Handicap, Being Stories of Mine Own People (coll 1891) and Many Inventions (coll 1893), which includes "The Lost Legion" (1892). The Brushwood Boy (1895; 1899 chap) is fantasy, as are the various linked and unlinked stories assembled in The Jungle Book (coll 1894) and The Second Jungle Book (coll 1895), while Just So Stories for Little Children (coll 1902) contains classic children's fables. "They" (1905 chap) is a ghost story. Puck of Pook's Hill (coll 1906) and its sequel, Rewards and Fairies (coll 1910), contain a series of stories about the formation and growth of Britain as told by Puck to two children. In several of his late stories, all of which are complex, elliptic, highly crafted and deeply pessimistic, RK made some ambiguous use of supernatural principles of explanation; of these, "A Madonna of the Trenches" and "The Wish House", both from 1924, are assembled along with "The Gardener" in Debits and Credits (coll 1926), which has a claim to being his finest collection. These tales are not comfortably amenable to either sf or fantasy reading, but they demonstrate the power of hinted supernatural themes in writing of high virtuosity. The Complete Supernatural Stories of Rudyard Kipling (coll 1987) conveniently assembles this category of his output, as does Kipling's Fantasy (coll 1992) ed John BRUNNER. Thy Servant a Dog: Told by Boots (1930 chap), not included in either collection, is an animal fantasy of almost perverse fervour.Sf proper appears infrequently in RK's work, though "The Finest Story in the World" (1891), whose narrator encounters a case of REINCARNATION, and "A Matter of Fact" (1892), about a modern sea-serpent sighting - both assembled in Many Inventions - are arguably sf, as are "The Ship that Found Herself" (1895) and "007" (1897) from The Day's Work (coll 1898). Other early tales include "Wireless" (1902; in Traffics and Discoveries [coll 1904]), in which amateur-radio experiments make communication possible between a shop assistant and John Keats; "The House Surgeon", in Actions and Reactions (coll 1909), explains a ghost in terms of PSI POWERS; "In the Same Boat" (1911), in A Diversity of Creatures (coll 1917), suggests a prenatal cause for bouts of irrational dread; "The Eye of Allah", in Debits and Credits, describes the ALTERNATE HISTORY that is almost generated when a microscope falls into the hands of medieval English churchmen; and "Unprofessional" (1930), assembled in Limits and Renewals (coll 1932), suggests that planetary "tides" may affect human tissue.RK's most notable and unmistakably sf stories are perhaps With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (1905 McClure's Magazine; 1909 chap US) and its sequel, "As Easy as A.B.C." (1912), which was collected in A Diversity of Creatures. Both tales revolve about the Aerial Board of Control, or A.B.C., which dominates the world. The first is a dramatized travelogue, depicting some incidents on a dirigible journey from London to Quebec, and is accompanied by an appendix of futuristic advertisements; in the second - a somewhat DYSTOPIAN vision of centralized government probably based on Wellsian models - agents of the A.B.C. fly to Chicago to deal with a revolt of the local underclass, whose demands for a return of democracy have generated attacks by the rest of the population. The A.B.C. - though not necessarily the political views it stands for - has influenced writers as far apart as Michael ARLEN and Rex WARNER. Although its reprint of With the Night Mail is incomplete, Kipling's Science Fiction (coll 1992; vt The Science Fiction Stories of Rudyard Kipling 1994) ed John Brunner is otherwise thorough in its coverage of this part of RK's work.Although RK was not an sf writer by inclination, his intense, somewhat feverish talent makes even the least characteristic of his works of more than peripheral interest to the sf reader. [JC]About the author: Literature on RK is extensive. Charles Carrington's Rudyard Kipling (1955) is the definitive biography, while J.M.S. Tompkins's The Art of Rudyard Kipling (1959) very competently surveys both prose and poetry. RK's own posthumous, sanitized autobiographical fragment, Something of Myself (1937), is of some interest. Angus WILSON's The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling (1977) combines biography and criticism in a sustained, intense study. Also interesting is Rudyard Kipling and his World (1977) by Kingsley AMIS.See also: APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; HISTORY OF SF; PREDICTION; TRANSPORTATION. KIPPAX, JOHN Pseudonym of UK writer John Charles Hynam (1915-1974). He was a regular contributor to the UK sf magazines during 1955-61, publishing over 30 stories in that time. His first two stories appeared in Dec 1954: "Dimple" in Science Fantasy and "Trojan Hearse" in NW. The latter was a collaboration with Dan MORGAN, with whom he also published a SPACE-OPERA series - A Thunder of Stars (1968), Seed of Stars (1972 US), The Neutral Stars (1973 US) and, by JK alone, Where No Stars Guide (1975) - about the Space Corps team of the Venturer Twelve. [JC] KIRBY, JACK (1917-1994) US comic-book illustrator, born Jacob Kurtzberg. One of the giants in the COMICS industry, he began his 50+-year career in 1935 working on newspaper comic strips (with a break in 1936, animating Popeye cartoons for Max Fleischer). He later broke into the comic-book field, creating Captain America with Joe Simon in 1941 for Timely Comics (later MARVEL COMICS); he also worked on CAPTAIN MARVEL. His main claim to fame, however, was his work in the 1960s for Marvel Comics, by then under the direction of Stan LEE. In 1961 JK created The Fantastic Four (a group of SUPERHEROES), one of the most popular series in the history of the genre. He also created, or helped create, dozens of other superheroes, including The Incredible Hulk, which helped launch Marvel to the top of the business. He left the Lee organization in 1970 and for a while worked for DC COMICS, where he produced an interesting group of four interconnected superhero comics, including New Gods (referred to as "Kirby's Fourth World"), before returning to Marvel. JK's style is blocky, almost primitive, but with a power and sense of drama that many other comics artists lack. His use of motion-picture techniques (such as still-frame storytelling) and dramatic perspectives has influenced most of today's comics artists. His work is reproduced in Origins of Marvel Comics (1974), Son of Origins of Marvel Comics (1975) and Bring on the Bad Guys (1976), all ed Stan Lee, and in many more recent and accessible collections, including #2-#4, #6-#8, #13 and #14 of the Marvel Masterworks series (1986 onwards). [JG/RH/PN] KIRBY, JOSH (1928- ) UK illustrator, trained at Liverpool School of Art. JK's work in sf began with covers for the 1956 paperback of Ian FLEMING's Moonraker (1955) and for Authentic Science Fiction. Most of his art has been for paperback covers, for publishers including Corgi, Panther and New English Library and, in the USA, ACE BOOKS, BALLANTINE BOOKS, DAW BOOKS and Lancer Books. His style is colourful and intricate, and often designed on a small scale: the painting is frequently no larger than the book cover itself. His trademark is the grotesquerie of his creations. He belongs to a tradition derived more obviously from grotesque fantasists like Arthur Rackham than from sf illustrators. JK's work has been strongly identified, in the 1980s and since, with both hardcover and paperback editions of the novels of Terry PRATCHETT, with whom he shares a cover credit for the richly illustrated Eric (1990) - even Pratchett imitators often get JK covers. A portfolio of his work is Voyage of the Ayeguy (1981). The Josh Kirby Poster Book (1989), in large format and introduced by Pratchett, contains 13 posters. JK's most substantial and recent book is In the Garden of Unearthly Delights (1991), 159 paintings by JK with intro by Brian W. ALDISS. [JG/PN]See also: FANTASY. KIRCHER, ATHANASIUS (1602-1680) German priest and scientist who predicted the germ theory of disease. For his relevance to sf, MARS, MERCURY, OUTER PLANETS, RELIGION and VENUS, in each of which entries there is reference to AK's speculative, visionary round-trip to the planets, Itinerarium Exstaticum ["A Journey in Rapture"] (1656 Rome). [PN] KIRK, RICHARD Robert P. HOLDSTOCK; Angus WELLS. KIRKHAM, NELLIE (? - ) UK writer whose sf novel, Unrest of Their Time (1938), used contrasting colours of type to represent the simultaneity of lives lived in different periods by the one protagonist. [JC] KIRKUP, JAMES (FALCONER) (1923- ) UK poet and writer whose first book, The Cosmic Shape:An Interpretation of Myth and Legend with Three Poems and Lyrics (coll1946) with Ross Nichols, is at times foggy, but at times illuminating. The True Mistery of the Passion (1961) is a fantasy play;Tales of Hoffmann (coll trans 1966) is a goodselection; and Queens Have Died Young and Fair: A Fable of theImmediate Future(1993) is an sf SATIRE whoseimprecations encompass sex, politics, and culture. [JC] KIRST, HANS HELLMUT (1914-1989) German writer best known for his novels about WWII. His NEAR-FUTURE sf novel, Keiner Kommt Davon (1957; trans Richard Graves as The Seventh Day 1959 US; vt No One Will Escape 1960 UK), deals with the period directly preceding WWIII and with the atomic HOLOCAUST that then kills off the cast. [JC] KISS ME DEADLY Film (1955). Parklane. Prod and dir Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Maxine Cooper, Gaby Rogers, Chloris Leachman. Screenplay A.I. Bezzerides, based remotely on Kiss Me Deadly (1952) by Mickey Spillane. 105 mins. B/w.This extraordinary film noir, now recognized as one of the greatest of its period, substitutes a boxful of radioactivity - a kind of surrogate atom bomb - for the packet of narcotics everyone seeks control of in Spillane's original. In a sadly tarnished world, the lethal Pandora's Box takes on a glamour which literally shines out - destroying the world - at the apocalyptic climax. Painful and furious, KMD gives an extraordinarily abrasive quality to the stereotypes of the private-eye genre, but it is the box itself that dominates the movie, growing from an apparent MCGUFFIN into an icon of a menacing future, the object of worship in an impoverished present which, by implication, yearns for the hard white light that abolishes all shadows. [PN]See also: CINEMA. KJELGAARD, JIM [r] David A. DRAKE. KLASS, PHILIP [r] William TENN. KLEIN, GERARD (1937- ) French writer, anthologist, critic and editor. An economist by profession, GK is one of the few European sf writers known in the USA. He has used the pseudonyms Gilles d'Argyre, Francois Pagery and Mark Starr. His first stories, heavily influenced by Ray BRADBURY, appeared in 1955 when he was only 18 years old, and he soon made a major impact on the field in France, publishing over 40 delicately crafted stories 1956-62 (60 by 1977), while also establishing himself as a forceful and literate critic of the genre with a series of 30 penetrating essays in various publications. His first novel, Le gambit des etoiles (1958; trans C.J. Richards as Starmaster's Gambit 1973 US), a clever and wide-ranging adventure yarn, shows the increasing influence that US GENRE SF was having on GK, a trend which comes strongly to the fore in novels like Le temps n'a pas d'odeur (1963; trans P.J. Skolowski as The Day before Tomorrow 1972 US) and Les seigneurs de la guerre (1971; trans John BRUNNER as The Overlords of War 1973 US); these, though well conducted and interesting, lack the poetic invention of his early work. From 1969, GK edited the Ailleurs et Demain imprint for publisher Robert Laffont, where he was instrumental in introducing some of the major modern US-UK sf writers to the French public while also encouraging the better local authors - Philippe CURVAL, Michel Jeury, Christian LEOURIER, Andre Ruellan and Stefan WUL. Many of GK's works feature an imagery and even a structure influenced by chess. [MJ]Other works: Agent galactique ["Galactic Agent"] (1958) as by Mark Starr; Embuches dans l'espace ["Ambushes in Space"] (1958 as by Francois Pagery); Les perles du temps ["Pearls of Time"] (coll 1958); Chirurgiens d'une planete ["Planet-Surgeons"] (1960) as by Gilles d'Argyre; Les voiliers du soleil ["Sailors of the Sun"] (1961) as by d'Argyre; Le long voyage ["The Long Journey"] (1964) as by d'Argyre; Les tueurs du temps (1965; trans C.J. Richards as The Mote in Time's Eye 1975 US), as by d'Argyre in France, GK in USA; Le sceptre du hasard ["The Sceptre of Chance"] (1966) as by d'Argyre; Un chant de pierre ["Stone Song"] (coll 1966); La loi du talion ["The Law of Retaliation"] (coll 1973); Histoires comme si ["Stories as If"] (coll 1975); Anthologie de la science-fiction francaise (anth in 3 vols 1975, 1976, 1977) with others; Le Livre d'or du Gerard Klein ["The Book of Gold of Gerard Klein"] (coll 1979).See also: CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; FRANCE; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GAMES AND SPORTS; LIVING WORLDS. KLINE, OTIS ADELBERT (1891-1946) US songwriter, author and literary agent, active in music before beginning to write popular fiction in several genres, predominantly fantasy, in the early 1920s, most notably for Weird Tales and The Argosy. With the exception of marginal sf tales like "The Bride of Osiris" (1927) and space adventures such as "Race Around the Moon" (1939), most of his genre work is HEROIC FANTASY, and is generally thought to have been written in competition with (and slavishly derived from) Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's PLANETARY ROMANCES. The Robert Grandon sequence is typical: comprising The Planet of Peril (1929), The Prince of Peril (1930) and The Port of Peril (1932 Weird Tales as "Buccaneers of Venus"; 1949), it carries the swashbuckling Grandon to VENUS, where he rises from slavery to marry a princess; the later adventures expand upon this. Linked to this series through the character of Dr Morgan - a scientist who makes interplanetary transfers easy - are The Swordsman of Mars (1933 Argosy; 1960) and its sequel, The Outlaws of Mars (1933 Argosy; 1960). In Maza of the Moon (1930) the P'an-ku who rule the MOON bomb Earth after Earth bombs them. Call of the Savage (1931 Argosy as "Jan of the Jungle"; 1937; vt Jan of the Jungle 1966) and its sequel Jan in India (1935 Argosy; 1974) again ape Burroughs, the target this time being Tarzan. In his later years, OAK's time was almost entirely taken up by his literary agency. Violently coloured, crudely racist and sniggeringly sexist, his tales represent pulp fiction at its worst, but they retain a raw compulsiveness. [JC]Other works: The Man who Limped and Other Stories (coll of linked stories 1946); Tam, Son of the Tiger (1931 Weird Tales; 1962); Bride of Osiris and Other Weird Tales (coll 1975 chap).See also: COMICS; MARS; PUBLISHING. KNEALE, (THOMAS) NIGEL (1922- ) UK author and screenwriter, married to Judith Kerr (1923- ), a well known children's author. After attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and working as an actor, NK began writing short stories, 26 of which - some horror or fantasy - appear in Tomato Cain and Other Stories (coll 1949). Since then most of his writing work has been for TELEVISION and film, often using sf themes, most commonly consisting of scientific rationalizations of ancient motifs from HORROR fiction and MYTHOLOGY. His first major tv success was in 1953 with a serial, The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT . In 1954 he successfully adapted George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) for BBC TV; it caused much controversy. Two more Quatermass serials for BBC TV were QUATERMASS II (1955) and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1958-9). All three were adapted into feature films by Hammer Films, as The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955; vt The Creeping Unknown), QUATERMASS II (1957; vt Enemy from Space) and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1968; vt Five Million Years to Earth). NK coscripted the second of these films, and scripted the third. The tv scripts were published as The Quatermass Experiment: A Play for Television in Six Parts * (1953 BBC TV; rev 1959), Quatermass II: A Play for Television in Six Parts * (1955 BBC TV; rev 1960) and Quatermass and the Pit: A Play for Television in Six Parts * (1958-9 BBC TV; rev 1960). NK also scripted FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964) and the horror film The Witches (1966), adapted from novels by H.G. WELLS and Peter Curtis respectively.Three further tv plays, "The Road" (1963), "The Year of the Sex Olympics" (1969) and "The Stone Tape" (1972) have been collected in The Year of the Sex Olympics and Other TV Plays (coll 1976). The first is an 18th-century ghost story in which the ghosts are apparitions of 20th-century TECHNOLOGY; the second deals satirically with a future tv-watching population and improved methods of apathy control; the third again combines Gothic horror with messages across time. In 1971 "The Chopper", about a biker's ghost, was televised as part of the OUT OF THE UNKNOWN series. The 1975 ATV tv series Beasts was scripted by NK, the beasts in question ranging from psychological to supernatural.In 1979 Quatermass returned, this time to ITV, in a new tv serial (4 parts) entitled QUATERMASS. An edited-down version, retitled The Quatermass Conclusion, was intended for cinema release, but in the UK was released only on videotape. It had in fact been written a decade earlier for BBC TV, and its plot (featuring mystically inclined flower children about to be harvested by ALIENS via messages beamed through stone circles) seemed curiously old-fashioned. The book version by NK, Quatermass (1979), which appeared concurrently, is not a novelization, and diverges in detail from the tv series. A more sinister version of the same theme appears in NK's script for the film HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1983), in which microchips made out of a Stonhenge monolith are used to booby-trap children's Halloween masks with a hideous destruction device, this being the plot of a madman who wishes (as perhaps NK does) that the true meaning of Halloween had not been vulgarized.It had now become clear from NK's sf/horror work that he had little interest in, or even knowledge of, sf proper, a genre about which he has consistently expressed contempt (sf being "very disappointing and horribly overwritten" and sf fans, he said in a 1979 interview, being either fat with wispy wives or wispy with fat ones); it is interesting, for example, that the two films he repudiated as having vulgarized his scripts, Quatermass II - which he has kept from circulation for years - and Halloween III, are among the better ones. With hindsight, there is a clear pattern in NK's work of ordinary people being seen as stupid and ignorant, and ready prey for the supernatural or sciencefictional forces that will almost inevitably attempt to control them. There is a seigneurial, Edwardian element in this, a recoiling from the vulgar. It is worth labouring the point, because he is certainly a much better than average scriptwriter - the Quatermass series especially is exemplary - and his scripts have been, paradoxically, very influential on sf, at least at the GOTHIC and irrational margin of the genre where sf meets fantasy and horror (and particularly among film and tv producers, who never expect sf to make sense anyway).NK's revulsion against what he saw sf as standing for came into gloomy focus with the 1981 tv series KINVIG, which attempts to call forth derisory laughter at the granting (through the introduction of a very beautiful ALIEN) of two sf fans' romantic longings for mysteries in a mundane world; it is a sitcom notable for its contemptuous treatment of the leading characters. [PN]See also: MUSIC; PSEUDO-SCIENCE; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. KNEBEL, FLETCHER (1911-1993) US journalist and novelist, most of whose books are political thrillers, not excepting his borderline-sf books. Seven Days in May (1962), with Charles W. BAILEY, later filmed ( John FRANKENHEIMER), describes an attempted military coup in the USA. Night of Camp David (1965) tells of a NEAR-FUTURE President of the USA who goes mad and almost destroys the country. In Trespass (1969), set in 1973, a Black activist group takes over White properties and upsets the FBI. [JC/PN] KNEIFEL, HANS [r] GERMANY; PERRY RHODAN. KNIGHT, DAMON (FRANCIS) (1922- ) US writer and editor; his third marriage was to Kate WILHELM. Like many sf writers, DK became involved in sf FANDOM at an early age, and by 1941 was a member of the FUTURIANS in New York, where he shared an apartment with Robert A.W. LOWNDES and met James BLISH, C.M. KORNBLUTH, Frederik POHL and others. (In The Futurians: The Story of the Science Fiction "Family" of the 30's that Produced Today's Top SF Writers and Editors [1977] he published a candid history of the group and its era.) His first professional sale was a cartoon to AMZ. His first story was "Resilience" (1941) in STIRRING SCIENCE STORIES, edited by another Futurian, Donald A. WOLLHEIM; but DK's career as a short-story writer lay fallow for several years. In 1943 he became an assistant editor with Popular Publications, a PULP-MAGAZINE chain. Later he worked for a literary agency, then returned to Popular Publications as assistant editor of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES. In 1950-51 he was editor of WORLDS BEYOND, but the magazine ran for only 3 issues; later he edited IF for 3 issues 1958-9.DK made his initial strong impact on the field as a book reviewer, and is generally acknowledged to have been the first outstanding GENRE-SF critic. His very first piece - a fanzine review (in Larry SHAW's Destiny's Child) of the 1945 ASF serial version of A.E. VAN VOGT's The World of A (1948) - remains perhaps his best known; it is in any case one of the most famous works of critical demolition ever published in the field, inspiring considerable revisions in the published book, and being credited (perhaps a touch implausibly) for van Vogt's eventual slide from pre-eminence. DK later reviewed books for a number of amateur and professional magazines, notably INFINITY and The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION , expressing throughout a sane and consistent insistence on the relevance of literary standards to sf. His early reviews were collected in In Search of Wonder (coll 1956; rev 1967), and won him a HUGO in 1956. He stopped reviewing entirely when FSF declined to print a negative response to Judith MERRIL - the review of The Tomorrow People (1960) which appears in In Search of Wonder. In 1975 he received a retrospective PILGRIM AWARD from the SCIENCE FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION.DK's 1940s stories - including occasional collaborations with Blish, once using the collaborative pseudonym Donald Laverty, and 3 times as Stuart Fleming - were of only mild interest until the release in 1949 of his ironic END OF THE WORLD story "Not With a Bang" in one of the first issues of FSF. This magazine, and GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION even more so, now provided markets in which DK could develop his urbane and darkly humorous short stories-including the famous "To Serve Man" (1950), "Four in One" (1953), "Babel II" (1953), "The Country of the Kind" (1955) and "Stranger Station" (1956) - though as the decade advanced, and as his perspectives on the human enterprise darkened, even these markets proved too narrow, and he was forced to publish some of his finest work in lesser journals, where his scouring, revisionary, anatomical rewrites of the genre's already sclerotic conventions could appear in safe obscurity. DK's reputation as a writer has primarily rested on the short stories published during the 1950s and, to a lesser extent, the 1960s; they are adult and sane and have not dated. His best work has been assembled in various collections, including Far Out (coll 1961), In Deep (coll 1963; cut 1964 UK), Off Center (coll 1965 dos; exp vt Off Centre 1969 UK), Turning On (coll 1966; exp 1967 UK) and Rule Golden (coll 1979); later collections like Late Knight Edition (coll 1985), One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories (coll 1991) and God's Nose (coll 1991) tend to mix early and later work.From the first, novels presented something of a difficulty for DK. Most of them - like his first, HELL'S PAVEMENT (fixup 1955; vt Analogue Men 1962), a DYSTOPIAN story of a future society with humanity under psychological control, Masters of Evolution (1954 Gal as "Natural State"; exp 1959 chap dos) and The Sun Saboteurs (1955 If as "The Earth Quarter"; 1961 dos) - were expanded from stories, losing in the process the compressed drivenness of his short work. Of them all, only The People Maker (1959; rev vt A for Anything 1961 UK) and the late The World and Thorinn (fixup 1981), a scintillating picaresque derived from some 1960s tales, seem comfortably to fill the longer format; and by the mid-1960s he appeared to have turned his attention permanently elsewhere.Like Frederik Pohl, DK became adept at all aspects of the writing business, having worked as magazine editor, short-story writer, novelist and critic. He now involved himself in formalizing the professional collegiality so important to the sf field, first by cofounding, with Blish and Merril, the MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE in 1956, which he ran (soon with Wilhelm) for over 20 years, later participating in its spiritual offspring, the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP writing seminar, for which he edited The Clarion Writers' Handbook (anth 1978; rev as Creating Short Fiction 1981; rev under that title 1985); and second by being responsible for founding the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, serving as its first president 1965-7. At about the same time he began to issue well conceived reprint ANTHOLOGIES like A Century of Science Fiction (anth 1962), First Flight (anth 1963; vt Now Begins Tomorrow 1969; exp vt First Voyages 1981 with Martin H. GREENBERG and Joseph D. OLANDER), Tomorrow x 4 (anth 1964), A Century of Great Short Science Fiction Novels (anth 1964) and many others. He also translated a number of French sf stories, some for publication in FSF, and collected them as 13 French Science-Fiction Stories (anth 1965). But his greatest editorial achievement during these years was the ORBIT series of ORIGINAL ANTHOLOGIES that he began in 1966, and which would become the longest-running and most influential series of that sort yet seen in the field; among writers strongly identified with Orbit were Gardner DOZOIS, R.A. LAFFERTY, Kate WILHELM and Gene WOLFE.In the 1980s, after the end of Orbit, DK became more active as a writer again, though without making a huge impression on a new generation of readers. But if The Man in the Tree (1984) seems unduly slack and irony-poor in its presentation of a contemporary MESSIAH figure, DK returned to something like form, though without quite the energy of earlier efforts, in the wickedly UTOPIAN sequence comprising CV (1985), The Observers (1988) and A Reasonable World (1991), about ALIEN parasites who turn out not to be the PARANOIA-justifiying plague of 1950s sf but moralistic symbionts who enforce something like rational behaviour upon humanity's leaders; in the third volume, a plethora of sf devices and utopian appeals somewhat weakens the pleasurable sting, but the series as a whole seems young at heart, and DK's cognitive energy remains clearly evident - as also demonstrated by the autumnal ironies of Why Do Birds (1992), in which the world is brought to an end. There is still a sense that he may have a mind to continue to shock the sf world. In 1995, he was granted the NEBULA Grand Master Award. [MJE/JC]Other works: Beyond the Barrier (1964); The Rithian Terror (1953 Startling Stories as "Double Meaning"; exp 1965 dos); Mind Switch (1965; vt The Other Foot 1966 UK); Three Novels (omni 1967; vt Natural State and Other Stories 1975 UK); World without Children, and The Earth Quarter (coll 1970) including The Sun Saboteurs as "The Earth Quarter", its magazine title; Two Novels (omni 1974) presenting The Rithian Terror and The Sun Saboteurs, both under their magazine titles; THE BEST OF DAMON KNIGHT (coll 1976); Better than One (coll 1980) with Kate Wilhelm; Rule Golden/Double Meaning (omni 1991) presenting the collection Rule Golden plus The Rithian Terror as Double Meaning.Nonfiction: Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained (1970); Turning Points: Essays on the Art of Science Fiction (anth 1977), critical essays.As Editor: Beyond Tomorrow (anth 1965); The Dark Side (anth 1965); The Shape of Things (anth 1965); Cities of Wonder (anth 1966); Nebula Award Stories 1965 (anth 1966); Science Fiction Inventions (anth 1967); Worlds to Come (anth 1967); The Metal Smile (anth 1968); One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (anth 1968); Toward Infinity (anth 1968); Dimension X (anth 1970; in 2 vols, the 2nd vol vt Elsewhere x 3 1974 UK); A Pocketful of Stars (anth 1971); First Contact (anth 1971); Perchance to Dream (anth 1972); Science Fiction Argosy (anth 1972); Tomorrow and Tomorrow (anth 1973); The Golden Road (anth 1973); A Shocking Thing (anth 1974); Happy Endings (anth 1974); Science Fiction of the Thirties (anth 1975); Monad 1: Essays on Science Fiction (anth 1990),Monad 2: Essays on Science Fiction (anth 1992) and Monad 3: Essays on Science Fiction (anth 1994).The Orbit anthologies: Orbit 1 (anth 1966); Orbit 2 (anth 1967); Orbit 3 (anth 1968); Orbit 4 (anth 1968); Orbit 5 (anth 1969); Orbit 6 (anth 1970); Orbit 7 (anth 1970); Orbit 8 (anth 1970); Orbit 9 (anth 1971); Orbit 10 (anth 1972); Orbit 11 (anth 1972); Orbit 12 (anth 1973); Orbit 13 (anth 1974); Orbit 14 (anth 1974); Orbit 15 (anth 1974); Orbit 16 (anth 1975); Orbit 17 (anth 1975); Best Stories from Orbit: Volumes 1-10 (anth 1975); Orbit 18 (anth 1976); Orbit 19 (anth 1977); Orbit 20 (anth 1978); Orbit 21 (anth 1980).About the author: "All in a Knight's Work" by James Blish, Speculation 29, 1971; "Knight Piece" by DK in Hell's Cartographers (anth 1975) ed Brian W. ALDISS and Harry HARRISON.See also: ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARTS; COMMUNICATIONS; COSMOLOGY; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; ECOLOGY; ECONOMICS; EVOLUTION; GENETIC ENGINEERING; IMMORTALITY; INVISIBILITY; MONSTERS; NEBULA; PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS; SF MAGAZINES; SCI FI; SPACE HABITATS; TABOOS; TRANSPORTATION. KNIGHT, HARRY ADAM John BROSNAN. KNIGHT, NORMAN L(OUIS) (1895-1972) US writer and pesticide chemist for the Department of Agriculture until his retirement in 1963. He was not a prolific writer, publishing only 11 stories altogether, the first of which was the novella "Frontier of the Unknown" for ASF in 1937. He made his main contribution by collaborating with James BLISH on A Torrent of Faces (1967). This novel - whose UNDER-THE-SEA sequences and amphibious Tritons (genetically engineered humans; GENETIC ENGINEERING) are taken from NLK's first story and from "Crisis in Utopia" (1940 ASF) - depicts an ambiguously UTOPIAN Earth whose trillion people ( OVERPOPULATION) must face up to the challenge of an approaching meteor. [JC]See also: ASTEROIDS. KNIGHT RIDER Glen A. LARSON. KNIGHT, ROBERT Christopher EVANS. KNOWLES, W(ILLIAM) P(LENDERLEITH) (1891- ) UK writer whose Jim McWhirter (1933), set in 1953, advances towards a not unusual socialist UTOPIA via a sequence of very violent catastrophes, including an emission of poison gases from within the crust of the Earth. [JC] KNOX, CALVIN M. Robert SILVERBERG. KNOX, G.D. [r] T.C. WIGNALL. KNOX, [Monsignor] RONALD A(RBUTHNOTT) (1888-1957) UK Roman Catholic priest (converted 1917, ordained 1919) and extremely prolific writer. Among his many books are several then-popular detective novels, volumes of parodies, a new translation of the Testaments, and some genre work. A Still More Sporting Adventure! (1911) with Charles R.L. Fletcher (1857-1934), published anon, takes two women back in time to spy on Queen Dido in Carthage, thus parodying An Adventure (1911) by Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, a bestselling nonfiction tale of the authors' experiences via supposed timeslip in Versailles. Absolute and Abitofhell (1915 chap), as by R.A.K., is a fantasy poem about Noah's Ark; with further material, some of genre interest, it was republished in Essays in Satire (coll 1928). Memories of the Future: Being Memoirs of the Years 1915-1972 Written in the Year of Grace 1988 by Opal, Lady Porstock (1923) satirizes the type of evolutionary UTOPIA most closely identified with H.G. WELLS. The story is perhaps too cleverly told, and its imitation of the genteel memoir too exact in places. Other Eyes than Ours (1926), which features an apparatus for communicating with the dead, is in fact hoax sf, the device having been concocted to bring an obsessive to his senses; The Rich Young Man: a Fantasy (1928 chap) is a Christian fantasy. [JC] KNYE, CASSANDRA Thomas M. DISCH; John T. SLADEK. KOCH, ERIC (1919- ) German-born writer and tv producer, in Canada from 1935, three of whose novels are of some sf interest. In The French Kiss: A Tongue in Cheek Political Fantasy (1969), set in a NEAR-FUTURE Canada threatened - as usual - by separatism, a reincarnated colleague of Napoleon muses on De Gaulle's similarity to the long-dead Emperor. The Leisure Riots: A Comic Novel (1973) suggests that, in 1980, the enforced leisure of the executive class will trigger riots. In The Last Thing You'd Want to Know (1976) a "witch" becomes US President, sweeping all before her except one tortured ex-Nazi. EK was sometimes amusing, but fatally inattentive to questions of verisimilitude. [JC] KOESTLER, ARTHUR (1905-1983) Hungarian-born author and journalist who narrowly avoided execution in the Spanish Civil War and spent the rest of his life in the UK and France, becoming a naturalized UK citizen in 1940. All his books after the famous DYSTOPIA Darkness at Noon (trans Daphne Hardy 1940) were written in English. Several of the speculative, philosophical works of his later career have a direct interest for sf readers and have probably been influential on sf writers. They include The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), The Act of Creation (1964), The Case of the Midwife Toad (1971) - about the "Lamarckian" inheritance of acquired characteristics ( EVOLUTION; PSEUDO-SCIENCE) - and The Roots of Coincidence (1972). His play, Twilight Bar: An Escapade in Four Acts (written 1933; English version 1945), is a UTOPIAN fantasia set on a world- ISLAND visited by ALIENS who threaten to destroy human life unless we better ourselves immediately. The Age of Longing (1951), is NEAR-FUTURE sf, a discussion novel set in France; it distils his intimate experience with European thought and POLITICS into a prediction of the nature of our response to a threatened INVASION from the East. The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy (1972) is a discussion novel on sf-related themes. AK was an important speculative thinker, many of whose ideas challenged (sometimes with some success) "orthodox" scientific and social thought. He several times expressed contempt for sf. [JC]See also: THEATRE. KOHOUT, PAVEL (1928- ) Czech poet, playwright, novelist and, since his emigration in 1968, emigre activist. Though his early poetry had been pro-communist, his politics changed and his work remained unpublished in Czechoslovakia in the period 1968-89; some was published there in 1990. His sf novel, which deals with the political persecution of a man who can control ANTIGRAVITY, is Bila kniha o kauze Adam Juracek, profesor telocviku a kresleni na Pedagogicke skole v K., kontra Sir Isaac Newton, profesor fyziky na univerzite v Cambridge (written 1970 and circulated in samizdat form; 1978 Canada; trans Alec Page as White Book: Adam Juracek, Professor of Drawing and Physical Education at the Pedagogical Institute in K., vs. Sir Isaac Newton, Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge 1977 US). [JO]See also: CZECH AND SLOVAK SF; THEATRE. KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER US tv series (1974-5). Francy Productions for Universal TV/ABC. Created Jeff Rice. Executive prod Darren McGavin. Prod Paul Playton, Cy Chermak. Story consultant David Chase. 20 50min episodes. Colour.This fondly remembered series was a spin-off from a successful made-for-tv movie, The Night Stalker (1972), prod Dan Curtis and written Richard MATHESON, about a vampire in contemporary Las Vegas. This led to a feature-length sequel, The Night Strangler (1973), also written by Matheson, about a youth serum produced from murdered women. The tv series was partly sparked off by the enthusiasm of McGavin, star of the two movies, who became K:TNS's executive producer. He again played the reporter, Kolchak, who each week uncovered some fantastic threat. Unable to persuade anyone in authority of its existence, he was usually obliged to combat the menace alone. Most episodes featured supernatural creatures; sf-related episodes were "They Have Been, They Will Be, They Are" ( ALIEN intervention), "The Energy Eater" (invisible creature feeds on radioactivity), "Mr. R.I.N.G." (government-created killer ROBOT), "The Primal Scream" (cells from the Arctic grow into a prehistoric ape-creature) and "The Sentry" (lizardlike monster). The series was entertaining and atmospheric, but too unvarying in its rigidly formulaic stories. [JB] KOLUPAYEV, VIKTOR (DMITRIEVICH) (1936- ) Russian writer who made a striking debut in 1966, soon becoming a leading author of SOFT SF; his work has been likened to that of Ray BRADBURY. His lyrical short stories are assembled in Slutchitsia Zhe S Tchelovekom Takoie! ["What Can Happen to a Man?"] (coll 1972), Katcheli Otshel'nika (coll 1974; trans Helen Saltz Jacobson with somewhat differing contents as Hermit's Swing 1980 US) and Poiushii Les ["The Singing Forest"] (coll 1984). VK's only novel is the controversial and somewhat unsuccessful Firmenny Poezd "Fomitch" ["The 'Fomitch' Special Train"] (1979). [VG] KOMAN, VICTOR (1944- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "When it Worked" for New Libertarian Notes in 1976. Much of his subsequent output has emphasized material and points of view that could be characterized under the LIBERTARIANISM rubric. After publishing Saucer Sluts (1980), and collaborating with Andrew J. OFFUTT under the joint pseudonym John CLEVE for two Spaceways sf adventures, #13: Jonuta Rising! (1983) and #17: The Carnadyne Horde (1984), VK released his first novel of substance, The Jehovah Contract (1985 Germany, trans as Der Jehova-Vertrag; 1987 US), in which a Los Angeles private eye is commissioned, in 1999, to kill God; the ensuing events might be considered blasphemous by some readers. In Solomon's Knife (1989) abortions are averted through a medical technique which allows the transfer of foetuses into the wombs of infertile women who want a child. The Prometheus Meltdown (1990) is a round-robin libertarian tale whose other contributors were Brad LINAWEAVER, J. Neil SCHULMAN, Robert SHEA, L. Neil SMITH and Robert Anton WILSON. [JC] KOMARCIC, LAZAR [r] YUGOSLAVIA. KOMATSU, SAKYO (1931- ) Japanese novelist and essayist regarded as the premier sf writer of his country. His main novels consistently deal with large subjects: the destiny of the Universe and Homo sapiens's place within it. They are highly regarded for their panoramic vision and the encyclopedic knowledge they display. A graduate of Kyoto University, SK worked at many jobs from factory manager to comedy writer. His first sf was the novelette "Chi Niwa Heiwa Wo" ["Peace on Earth"] (1961); nominated later for the Naoki Award, Japan's most prestigious literary prize, it was reprinted in Chi Niwa Heiwa Wo (coll 1963) along with other early short fiction. His most popular work is the DISASTER novel Nippon Chinbotsu (1973; trans Michael Gallagher, cut by one-third, as Japan Sinks 1976 US; vt Death of the Dragon 1978). It sold about four million copies in JAPAN and was filmed by Toho Eiga as NIPPON CHINBOTSU (1973) with a very limited release in the West as The Submersion of Japan; the film was later rereleased in the West as Tidal Wave (1974), cut to two-thirds and with new scenes added by producer Roger CORMAN. In the novel the Japanese archipelago begins to slide inexorably into the Japan Trench. Beyond its well worked-out geological basis, Japan Sinks is effective as an obviously deeply felt elegy for Japan herself in all her physical and cultural fragility: the story has no heroes or villains, the main focus of our attention being the dying of the country.SK's novel Sayonara Jupiter ["Goodbye Jupiter"] (1982) was also filmed by Toho Eiga, in 1984 (vt, tastelessly, Bye-Bye Jupiter), prod and dir SK himself, who also wrote the screenplay. It features a scheme to turn Jupiter into a small Sun to render the outer Solar System habitable; the book predated Arthur C. CLARKE's 2010: Odyssey Two (1982), which uses the same central image. SK's most recent novel, Kyomu Kairo ["Gallery of Nothingness"] (1987), has an immortal "Artificial Existence" (developed in an AI laboratory) riding a spaceship to research a mysterious"SS"(super-structure), a cylinder 1.2 light years in diameter and 2 light years in length, which suddenly appears 5.8 light years from Earth ( BIG DUMB OBJECTS). SK's other main works include Nippon Apache-Zoku ["Japanese Apache"] (1964), Fukkatso No Hi ["The Day of Resurrection"] (1964), filmed as FUKKATSO NO HI (1981; vt Virus), Hateshi Naki Nagare No Hateni ["At the End of Endless Flow"] (1966), an extraordinary tale of PARALLEL WORLDS and human EVOLUTION, Tsugu Nowa Dareka? ["Who Succeeds Humanity?"] (1972), which won the Sei'un AWARD, and Shuto Shoshitsu ["The Disappearance of Tokyo"] (1985), which won the Nippon SF Taisho.SK is active also as a journalist and publicist - for example, as a consultant for and organizer of Expos. In 1970 he conducted the "International SF Symposium", recognized as the first truly worldwide gathering of sf authors, including 5 delegates from the USSR as well as Brian W. ALDISS, Arthur C. CLARKE and Frederik POHL. [TSh/JC] KONEC SRPNA V HOTELU OZON (vt The End of August at the Hotel Ozone) Film (1966). Ceskoslovensky armadni film. Dir Jan Schmidt, starring Ondrej Jariabek, Beta Ponicanova, Magda Seidlerova, Hana Vitkova. Screenplay Pavel Juracek. 87 mins. B/w.This Czech film is set in a desolate landscape 15 years after a nuclear HOLOCAUST. A band of brutalized women survivors live primitively (in what looks to Western eyes like an art-film version of an exploitation movie), not really understanding the occasional remnants they come across of the old world. One such survival is a deserted hotel; another is its proprietor, who alas for him is too old to be of any use to them. The film's bleakness is monotonous. [PN] KOONTZ, DEAN R(AY) (1945- ) US writer of much fiction under various names. He began his career with a number of sf novels; since 1975 he has concentrated on HORROR, becoming one of the bestselling authors in that genre, and a figure of genuine significance for his well crafted and very various work, though he lacks Peter Straub's panache and Stephen KING's compelling sense of locality. Much of his horror output first appeared (see listing below) as by Brian Coffey, Deanne Dwyer, K.R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige and Owen West; from the 1980s, these titles when reprinted are acknowledged as by DRK or Dean Koontz (on many of his more recent books the middle initial is omitted). Sf titles have appeared also as by David Axton, John Hill and Aaron Wolfe.DRK began publishing work of genre interest in 1966 with "Kittens" for Writers & Readers and sf proper in 1967 with "Soft Come the Dragons" for FSF, which with other stories was collected in Soft Come the Dragons (coll 1970 dos). His first novel, Star Quest (1968 dos), was followed by at least 20 more sf novels within half a decade. The sensibility that would find horror congenial quickly revealed itself in a tendency to write stories in which, cruelly and effectively, the boundaries of human identity were stretched. Monstrous children - who classically embody a horror at the potential aliens beneath the human skin - appear in Beastchild (1970; text restored 1993) and Demon Seed (1973), filmed as DEMON SEED (1977); and MUTANTS and CYBORGS and ROBOTS appear throughout, notably in books like Anti-Man (1970) and A Werewolf Among Us (1973). As an sf writer, DRK managed frequently to transcend the plotting conventions he seemed to obey and the forced "darkness" of imagery and style to which he was prone, and to create worlds of invasive mutability. Of those novels written within a more normal sf frame, Nightmare Journey (1975) stands out; though overcomplicated, it impressively depicts a world 100,000 years hence when humanity, thrust back from the stars by an incomprehensible ALIEN intelligence, goes sour in the prison of Earth, where radioactivity has speeded mutation, causing a religious backlash.DRK's large body of work contains some surprises; there are comic novels like The Haunted Earth (1973), drolleries like Oddkins (1988), and several fantasies. Some of his horror novels - like Night Chills (1976) and Lightning (1988) - are plotted around sf premises, but the use of these is clearly subordinate to the mode within which they fit as arbitary enabling devices; they are best discussed as HORROR. In the end, the effect of his work is oddly diffuse. After 50 books, the portrait of the artist remains blurred. [JC]Other works: The Fall of the Dream Machine (1969 dos); Fear that Man (1969 dos); Dark Symphony (1970); Dark of the Woods (1970 dos); Hell's Gate (1970); The Crimson Witch (1971); A Darkness in My Soul (1972); Warlock! (1972); Time Thieves (1972 dos); The Flesh in the Furnace (1972), Starblood (1972); Hanging On (1973); After the Last Race (1974); The Vision (1977); Whispers (1980); Phantoms (1983); Darkness Comes (1984 UK; vt Darkfall 1984 US); Twilight Eyes (1985; exp 1987 UK); STRANGERS (1986); Watchers (1987); The House of Thunder (1988 UK); The Shadow Sea (1988); Midnight (1989); The Bad Place (1990); Cold Fire (1991); Three Complete Novels (omni 1991), assembling The Servants of Twilight (under its vt Twilight), Darkfall and Phantoms; Hideaway (1992); Lightning/Midnight/The Bad Place (omni 1992 UK); Three Complete Novels (omni 1992), containing Shattered, Whispers and Watchers; Dragon Tears (1993); Trapped (graph 1993) adapted by Ed Gorman, illus Anthony Bilau; Mr Murder (1993 UK); Dean Koontz Omnibus (omni 1993 UK), containing Cold Fire, The Face of Fear and The Mask;Three Complete Novels (omni 1993), containing Lightning, The Face of Fear and The Vision: Dark Rivers of the Heart(1994); Three Complete Novels (omni 1994), containing STRANGERS, The Voice of the Night and The Mask; Dean Koontz Omnibus (omni 1994), containing Hideaway and The Vision: Winter Moon(1994); Strange Highways (coll 1995).As David Axton: Prison of Ice (1976); rev vt Icebound 1995 as DK), sf.As Brian Coffey: Blood Risk (1973); Surrounded (1974); Wall of Masks (1975); The Face of Fear (1977; 1978 UK as K.R. Dwyer; 1989 UK as DRK); The Voice of the Night (1980; 1989 UK as DRK).As Deanne Dwyer: Demon Child (1971); Legacy of Terror (1971); Children of the Storm (1972); The Dark of Summer (1972); Dance with the Devil (1973).As K.R. Dwyer: Chase (1972; 1988 UK as DRK); Shattered (1973; 1989 UK as DRK); Dragonfly (1975).As John Hill: The Long Sleep (1975), sf.As Leigh Nichols: The Key to Midnight (1979; 1990 UK as DRK); The Eyes of Darkness (1981; 1989 as DRK); The House of Thunder (1982; 1988 as DRK); Twilight (1984; vt The Servants of Twilight 1985 UK; under original title, 1988 US as DRK); Shadowfires (1987; 1990 as DRK).As Anthony North: Strike Deep (1974), not sf/fantasy.As Richard Paige: The Door to December (1985; 1987 UK as Leigh Nichols; 1991 UK as DRK; rev 1994 US).As Owen West: The Funhouse * (1980; with new afterword 1992 as DK), film novelization; The Mask (1981; 1988 as DRK).As Aaron Wolfe: Invasion (1975 Canada), sf.Nonfiction: Writing Popular Fiction (1972); How to Write Best Selling Fiction (1981), which incorporates parts of the earlier book.About the author: A Checklist of Dean R. Koontz (last rev 1990 chap) by Christopher P. STEPHENS.See also: BIOLOGY; GOTHIC SF; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MONSTERS. KORNBLUTH, C(YRIL) M. (1923-1958) US writer. A member of the FUTURIANS fan group, he published prolifically during the years 1940-42 in magazines edited by fellow Futurians Donald A. WOLLHEIM and Frederik POHL. His first sf publication was "Stepsons of Mars" with Richard WILSON, writing together as Ivar TOWERS, for Astonishing Stories in 1940; his first solo sf story was "King Cole of Pluto" for Super Science Stories as S.D. GOTTESMAN, also in 1940. He used many other pseudonyms, both for solo work and for work written in collaboration with Pohl (and sometimes others, including Robert A.W. LOWNDES); these included Arthur COOKE, Cecil Corwin, Walter C. Davies, Kenneth Falconer, Paul Dennis Lavond and Scott MARINER. (He also wrote 1 non-sf novel in the early 1950s as Simon Eisner and 4 as Jordan Park.) After WWII, in which he served as an infantryman and was decorated, CMK went into journalism. He resumed writing sf in 1947, using his own name, and quickly established himself as a brilliant short-story writer. His classic works include "The Little Black Bag" (1950), about the misuse of a medical bag timeslipped from the future ( MEDICINE), and the controversial SATIRE "The Marching Morons" (1951), about a future where the practice of birth control by the intelligentsia has had a spectacularly dysgenic effect ( INTELLIGENCE). Such stories as "With These Hands" (1951) and "The Goodly Creatures" (1952) are delicate and sensitive, but much of his work is deeply ingrained with bitter irony. "The Cosmic Charge Account" (1956) is a black comedy about a little old lady who finds the power to remake her environs. "Shark Ship" (1958) is an early alarmist fantasy about OVERPOPULATION and POLLUTION. The ALTERNATE-WORLD story "Two Dooms" (1958) is one of the better studies of a world in which the Nazis won WWII ( HITLER WINS).CMK wrote two routine novels in collaboration with Judith MERRIL as Cyril JUDD: Outpost Mars (1952: rev vt Sin in Space 1961), about the colonization of MARS, and Gunner Cade (1952), about a future in which WAR is a spectator sport ( GAMES AND SPORTS). His first solo sf novel, Takeoff (1952), is a weak NEAR-FUTURE story about the building of the first Moon ROCKET; but when CMK began working again in collaboration with Frederik Pohl they produced a classic, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1952 Gal as "Gravy Planet"; 1953), about a world run by advertising agencies in the service of capitalist consumerism. This became the archetype of a whole generation of sf novels which showed the world of the future dominated by one particular institution or power group. Two other collaborations with Pohl - the episodic satirical comedy Search the Sky (1954; rev by Pohl 1985) and Gladiator-at-Law (1955) - belong to the same subspecies. The last novel CMK wrote with Pohl was Wolfbane (1957; rev by Pohl 1986), in which the Earth is moved out of its orbit by ALIENS who capture humans in order to use their bodies in a vast COMPUTER complex. CMK and Pohl also wrote two non-sf novels, A Town is Drowning (1955) and Presidential Year (1956). Collaborative stories continued to appear for four years after CMK's premature death, and Pohl wrote some more stories from CMK's ideas in the early 1970s, one of which - "The Meeting" (1972) - won a HUGO. Some of the collaborative short stories are reprinted in the overlapping collections The Wonder Effect (coll 1962), Critical Mass (coll 1977) Before the Universe (coll 1980) and Our Best (coll 1986). CMK's other solo novels are undistinguished: The Syndic (1953) ironically depicts a future USA run by organized gangsterism in a semi-benevolent fashion; Not this August (1955; vt Christmas Eve 1956 UK; exp by Pohl under first title 1981) describes a revolution in a future USA which has been conquered by communists.The best of CMK's short work is collected in The Explorers (coll 1954; with 1 story cut and 4 added, vt The Mindworm and Other Stories 1955 UK), A Mile Beyond the Moon (coll 1958; paperback omits 3 stories) and The Marching Morons (coll 1959). Eclectic selections from these volumes are Best SF Stories of Cyril M. Kornbluth (coll 1968) and The Best of C.M. Kornbluth (coll 1976), the latter ed Pohl. A selection of early stories originally signed Cecil Corwin is Thirteen O'Clock and Other Zero Hours (coll 1970) ed James BLISH. CMK's essay "The Failure of the Science Fiction novel as Social Criticism" (in The Science Fiction Novel coll 1959 intro by Basil DAVENPORT) is an important early piece of sf criticism, sharply pointing out the genre's shortcomings. His widow, Mary Kornbluth, compiled Science Fiction Showcase (anth 1959) as a memorial. [BS]Other work: Gunner Cade, Plus Takeoff (omni 1983).See also: ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARTS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CYBERNETICS; DYSTOPIAS; ECOLOGY; ECONOMICS; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; HEROES; HISTORY IN SF; HISTORY OF SF; INVASION; LEISURE; LIBERTARIANSF; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PARANOIA; PSYCHOLOGY; SF IN THE CLASSROOM; SCIENTISTS; SOCIOLOGY; SPACE HABITATS; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES; TIME TRAVEL; UFOS; VENUS. KORNWISE, ROBERT [r] Piers ANTHONY. KORZYBSKI, ALFRED (HABDANK SKARBEK) (1879-1950) Polish-born aristocrat (a count) sent after WWI to the USA as an artillery expert. He remained, and wrote a quasiphilosophical text, Science and Sanity (1933), which became the basic handbook of the GENERAL SEMANTICS movement, later to prove so influential on the writer A.E. VAN VOGT. With the support of a Chicago millionaire, AK set up the Institute of General Semantics in 1938. [PN]About the author: Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957; rev exp vt of In the Name of Science 1952) by Martin GARDNER.See also: PSEUDO-SCIENCE. KOSINSKI, JERZY (NIKODEM) (1933-1991) Polish writer whose harrowing experiences as a child in WWII are reflected in his first novel, The Painted Bird (1965; rev 1976), a hallucinated picaresque set in the surrealistic landscape of war-devastated Poland; its child protagonist - like JK himself - is driven mute by his experiences. JK regained the power of speech at the age of 15, moved to the USA in 1958, and wrote all his fiction in English. Most of his novels are shaped as mosaics of deracination ( FABULATION), and tales like Cockpit (1975) displace these chips of reality in an sf direction. His nearest approach to sf proper, Being There (1970), treats the US political system as one from which any meaning has been evacuated; its vacant-minded protagonist, named Chance, reflects through his media-shaped emptiness the desires and delusions of the world, while at the same time being selected to run for high office; it was filmed as Being There (1979). JK's later years were not happy. Illness, accusations that he had made excessive and unacknowledged use of helpers's work (F. Gwynplaine MACINTYRE, for instance, ghost-wrote part of Pinball (1984), giving one of the characters his own middle name), distressingly close examinations of the background behind the childhood experiences he claimed to have suffered, and (it may be) the fatalism that has often afflicted survivors of the Holocaust attended him. He committed suicide. [JC]About the author: Jerzy Kosinski: The Literature of Violation (1991) by Welch D. Everman.See also: ABSURDIST SF. KOTANI, ERIC Pseudonym used by US astrophysicist and writer Yoji Kondo (1933- ) for all his fiction. He has been professor of astrophysics at the University of Oklahama (1972-7), the University of Houston (1974-7), the University of Pennsylvania (from 1978) and concurrently the George Mason University (from 1989), with over 100 scientific papers to his credit. He has edited the journal Comments on Astrophysics since 1979, was President of the International Astronautical Union Commission on Astronomy from Space 1985-8, and received a NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1990. Compared with the evident achievements of his academic career, his fiction has been quite deliberately lightweight, though vigorously speculative within those limits, consisting in general of adventures substrated by HARD-SF concerns. He is perhaps best known for a NEAR-FUTURE sequence written in collaboration with John Maddox ROBERTS: Act of God (1985), The Island Worlds (1987) and Between the Stars (1988). The action is at times congested, and is somewhat unrelentingly military in orientation, but the vision that unfolds of a bustling and expanding Solar System frequently exhilarates. Delta Pavonis (1990), also with Roberts, is again an sf adventure; and Supernova (1991) with Roger MacBride ALLEN, probably his most interesting novel to date, recounts with gripping verisimilitude the scientific process involved in discovering that a nearby star is due to go nova and flood Earth with hard radiation - which happens. [JC]Other works: Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein (coll 1992) ed as Yoji Kondo. KOTLAN, C.M. [r] G.C. EDMONDSON. KOTZWINKLE, WILLIAM (1938- ) US writer who began his career with several novels for children (see listing below); his genre-crossing FABULATIONS - some of them making use of sf material - created something of a literary stir in the 1970s. These early tales for adults - like Hermes 3000 (1972), Fata Morgana (1977), set in the Paris of 1871 and plausibly describable as proto- STEAMPUNK, and Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman (1978) - tend to treat genre boundaries as thresholds through which characters pass from more or less everyday realities into fantastic or sf-like worlds which rewrite those realities in allegorical terms, sometimes feyly. Doctor Rat (1976), on the other hand, never shifts from one plane, and seems all the more extraordinary for that consistency. The tale is mostly narrated by an elderly laboratory rat, his mind jumbled by too much maze-running, who sees himself as an active collaborator with the human experimenters; the destiny of the animal world, he feels, is that it be subjected to such experiments for the ultimate good. Crises in the ECOLOGY, however, drive the brutalized animals to form a global consciousness, and war ensues between Man and animals; Doctor Rat heroically quells revolt in the lab, until eventually he is the only animal left alive.WK is best known in the sf world for some excellent film ties. They include E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial, in his Adventure on Earth * (1982) - which appeared at the same time as a text for younger readers, E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial Storybook * (1982 chap) - and E.T., The Book of the Green Planet * (1985; cut for younger readers 1985 chap), based on a story by Stephen SPIELBERG ( E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL) and designed to work as a bridge between the first E.T. film and its yet-unmade successor. It too was accompanied by a text for younger readers, E.T., The Storybook of the Green Planet: A New Storybook * (1985 chap), probably derived from the cut version of the main title. A further tie, Superman III * (1983), is perhaps less memorable.At the same time WK continued to produce fabulations, including Christmas at Fontaine's (1982), Great World Circus (1983), Queen of Swords (1984), The Exile (1987), in which a contemporary US actor is transported back to Nazi Germany, where he gets involved in black-market activities, and The Midnight Examiner (1989), a perhaps overbroad comedy in which a journalist - an ideal kind of protagonist for the typical WK novel - becomes tangled in a world of Mafia revenges, voodoo and other sorceries. Short work has been assembled in Elephant Bangs Train (coll 1971), Trouble in Bugland: A Collection of Inspector Mantis Mysteries (coll 1983) - Sherlock Holmes pastiches for younger readers - Jewel of the Moon (coll 1985), Hearts of Wood and Other Timeless Tales (coll 1986 chap) - mostly fairytales - and The Hot Jazz Trio (coll 1989), which contains 3 long stories, each involving a transgressive journey from "normal" reality into other worlds, including the Land of the Dead. Because he crosses genres with such ease, WK could fairly be accused of frivolity; but the charge itself seems frivolous when his harsher texts are looked at square. [JC/PN]Other works for children: The Fireman (1969); The Ship that Came Down the Gutter (1970); Elephant Boy: A Story of the Stone Age (1970); The Oldest Man and Other Timeless Stories (coll 1971); The Supreme, Superb, Exalted, and Delightful, One and Only Magic Building (1973); The Leopard's Tooth (1976 chap); The Ants who Took away Time (1978 chap), in which the Solar System must be searched for the ant-dismembered Watch which keeps Time together; Dream of Dark Harbor (1979); The Nap Master (1979); The Empty Notebook (1990). KOZAK, ELLEN [r] Sharon JARVIS. KOZUMI, REI [r] Takumi SHIBANO. KRAFT, ROBERT [r] GERMANY. KRAJEWSKI, MICHAps DYMITR [r] POLAND. KRAKATIT Karel CAPEK; CZECH AND SLOVAK SF; TEMNE SLUNCE. KRENKEL, ROY G(ERALD Jr) (1918-1983) US illustrator. A lifelong resident of New York, he studied at Burne Hogarth's School of Visual Arts after WWII and started his career at EC COMICS, where he became friends with Frank FRAZETTA. A great deal of his art, heavily influenced by the work of J. Allen ST JOHN and also by the Australian artist Norman Lindsay (1879-1969), was published in the SWORD-AND-SORCERY fanzine Amra ( George H. SCITHERS), where it came to the attention of Donald A. WOLLHEIM of ACE BOOKS. Ace were planning to reprint many of the works of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, and Krenkel's style fitted perfectly. RGF did about 20 of these Burroughs covers, and because of their popularity won a 1963 HUGO as Best Professional Artist; when he could not meet all the deadlines, he got Wollheim to ask Frazetta onto the project, thus launching Frazetta's sf career. Krenkel also did covers for DAW BOOKS, some interior work for sf magazines and, most celebratedly, cover and interior illustrations for several Robert E. HOWARD collections published by Donald M. Grant. Though his covers were good, it was with his pen-and-ink work, his first love, that he was most at home; it is both delicate and spirited. All his best work was in the field of HEROIC FANTASY. A book of his work is Cities & Scenes from the Ancient World (1974). [JG/PN]See also: COMICS. KRESS, NANCY (ANNE) (1948- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "The Earth Dwellers" for Gal in 1976, and whose first novels were fantasies like The Prince of Morning Bells (1981), a quest tale during which, surprisingly, the young princess involved ages into an old woman before the close, and The Golden Grove (1984), which, again surprisingly, treats Greek myth with something of the iron darkness it merits. After a further fantasy novel, The White Pipes (1985), and an intermittently rewarding collection, Trinity and Other Stories (coll 1985), which includes the NEBULA-winning "Out of All Them Bright Stars" (1985), NK moved forthrightly into sf with her fourth novel, the slow-moving but cumulatively impressive AN ALIEN LIGHT (1988), set on a planet inhabited by two sets of irreconcilably opposed humans, the descendants of the people from a starship that crashed there centuries earlier after a battle with the ALIEN Ged. All knowledge of this history has been lost, and the Ged set up a huge technological honey-trap to entice humans inside for study, as they have found the territoriality and attendant aggressiveness of Homo sapiens baffling. What they learn from the two sets of stranded humans does not lead them to feel that they will win the war against a species whose savagery seems ultimately unopposable. Brain Rose (1990), just as impressively, presents an extremely grim NEAR-FUTURE Earth whose inhabitants are harassed by an AIDS-like disease which eats memory; the protagonists of the tale sign up for medically dubious Previous Life Access Surgery ( MEDICINE), which is intended somehow to counter the dimming out of the world itself through a "genuine" return to the past. Beggars in Spain (1991), a novella, is set within a framework familiar to most sf readers: a group of specially bred children who need no sleep must band together to defend themselves against the jealousy and oppressive behaviour of normal humans. But within this frame NK embeds speculations about not only GENETIC ENGINEERING but also the ethical consequences of "superiority" ( SUPERMAN) in a world which demands an "ecology of help" to survive; the novella version won a NEBULA, and the full-length version, Beggars in Spain (1992) which expands the novella into an ironic saga set partly in space, is almost certainly her best work yet; with Beggars & Choosers (1994), the sequence has begun to acquire the scope - and to encounter some of the difficulties of focus - of genuine Future HISTORY. Her recent fiction - much of which makes virtuoso use of sf devices, but from an angle of vision which gives the impression that the author deems them irremediably belated - appears in The Aliens of Earth (coll 1993). There seem few subjects that NK, in an already fascinating career, will be unable to assimilate. [JC]Other Works:The Price of Oranges (1992 chap).See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION . KRING, MICHAEL K. (1952- ) US writer whose Space Mavericks series of SPACE OPERAS - The Space Mavericks (1980) and Children of the Night (1981) - carries its protagonists through various adventures but not to their destination planet: the conclusion to the series was never published, due to difficulties experienced by MKK's publisher, Leisure Books. [JC] KROL, GERRIT [r] BENELUX. KRONOS Film (1957). Regal/20th Century-Fox. Prod and dir Kurt Neumann, starring Jeff Morrow, Barbara Lawrence, John Emery. Screenplay Laurence Louis Goldman, from a story by Irving Block. 78 mins. B/w.A scientist is possessed by an alien lifeform of pure energy. Shortly afterwards (the incidents are connected) an "asteroid" (actually a flying saucer) deposits a huge mechanical creature on a Mexico beach. When activated, it moves across the countryside, crushing anything and anyone in its path: its aim is to destroy power stations and absorb their energy, too much of which ultimately causes it to explode after it has been deliberately short-circuited. The script of this low-budget MONSTER MOVIE is mediocre, but Kronos itself is such an unusual monster that it stands out among all the giant reptiles, giant insects, etc., of the 1950s sf boom. Prod/dir Kurt Neumann's other sf films include ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950) and the very successful The FLY (1958). [JB/PN] KUBE-McDOWELL, MICHAEL P. Pseudonym of US writer Michael Paul McDowell (1954- ), who attached his wife's name, Kube, in 1975; some years later this proved useful when both he and Michael M. McDowell were writing scripts for the tv series Tales from the Darkside. His first published sf story, "The Inevitable Conclusion" for AMZ in 1979, also marked the inception of his Trigon Disunity sequence, comprising his first three novels - Emprise (1985), Enigma (1986) and Empery (1987) - along with other tales like "Antithesis" (1980). Though failing to rise above some of the less attractive assumptions held by popular writers in the sf field about the comical incompetence of politicians compared to the world-changing nerve of scientific entrepreneurs ( EDISONADE), the series triumphs through the expansive exuberance of its premise: that an earlier wave of humanity had long ago colonized the Galaxy, and that the apparent ALIENS whose probing has reawakened contemporary humanity's interest in the stars - and revitalized a decaying planet - are in fact our own cousins; the final volume moves, less convincingly, into a vision of the human species melding its differences through a form of communion. Alternities (1988) similarly combines efficient action, in this case among a number of ALTERNATE WORLDS, and marginally vapourish speculations about the human species; but THE QUIET POOLS (1990), MPK-M's best novel to date, successfully coordinates action and thought in a story about the ambiguous nature of humanity's drive outwards to the stars, carried through the troubled consciousness of a man who is genetically incapable - just as most of humanity has always been - of denying the planet, of leaping into space. The book's genetic determinism, which is much too explicit to have been inadvertent, is both bleak and bracing. Rather more baldly, Exile (1992) takes the sclerotic China of 1988's Tiananmen Square massacre as a model for the construction of a rigid, terraformed colony world in the throes of a tragic confrontation with its own youth. MPK-M has become, quite suddenly, one of the authors to watch. [JC]Other works: Photon: Thieves of Light * (1987) as Michael Hudson, a tv adventure tie; Isaac Asimov's Robot City #1: Odyssey * (1987), the first of the tied ROBOT sequence.See also: COMMUNICATIONS. KUBIN, ALFRED [r] AUSTRIA. KUBRICK, STANLEY (1928- ) US film-maker, resident in the UK. Born in New York, the son of a doctor, he early became obsessed with photography; Look magazine hired him as soon as he left school. Motion pictures became his dominant interest, and he left Look after four years to make two short films with his own money and then two feature films, Fear and Desire (1953) and Killer's Kiss (1955), borrowing the production money from relatives. By then he had also become a fully qualified cameraman. In 1956 he made The Killing, which attracted the attention of critics, and his reputation was further enhanced by Paths of Glory (1957); he directed most of Spartacus (1960). In 1961 he moved to the UK and, with Lolita (1962), began the cycle of films that have made him internationally famous. In 1963 he made his first sf film, DR STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, and at the end of 1965 he started work on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which he completed in 1968. His next film was also sf - the controversial A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971). Breaking away from sf but remaining true to his concerns, SK's continued his slim output with Barry Lyndon (1975), from W.M. Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844; 1852), The Shining (1980), from Stephen KING's bestselling The Shining (1977), and Full Metal Jacket (1987), from The Short Timers (1979), a Vietnam novel by Gustav Hasford (1947- ). Having avoided direct involvement in Peter Hyam's 2010, the sequel to 2001, SK is currently (1992) planning a return to sf with an adaption of Brian W. ALDISS's "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" (1969).SK is one of the few film-makers who has succeeded in maintaining control over all aspects of his films (Spartacus was the exception), and his personal style is stamped on all his work, its most obvious characteristic being a cool and ironic wit. His films manifest a formidable intelligence, unusual in a maker of high-budget spectaculars. SK is reported to have an almost obsessive desire for perfection, which shows itself in a fastidious attention to detail. Critics have emphasized the intellectual authority of SK's work - though some see him as merely cold-bloodedly stylish - but he is also, and perhaps primarily, a consummate showman. His sf work is notable for distasteful, ultimately impotent protagonists dwarfed or cowed by enigmatic, dehumanizing TECHNOLOGY; but his main theme, older than sf, appears to be Original Sin. [JB/KN/PN]See also: CINEMA; COMMUNICATIONS; MUSIC; ORIGIN OF MAN; PARANOIA. KUCZKA, PETER (1923- ) Hungarian publisher and critic who, beginning in the 1960s, was a powerful force in the renaissance of Hungarian sf, even during a period of Hungarian history not conducive to literary experiment (though the situation was liberalized in the 1970s). In 1968 PK took over as controller and editor of the publisher Mora's brand-new sf imprint Kozmosz Fantasztikus Konyvek, which was and remains the most important sf publisher in HUNGARY in terms of both original Hungarian sf and translations. In 1972 Mora followed this paperback series with the magazine Galaktika, ed PK, first as a quarterly and now as a monthly with a circulation of about 50,000; it has several times won awards as the best sf magazine in Europe. He also introduced sf into the Hungarian Writers' Association (no easy task in a country whose literati and academics have often regarded sf with revulsion), has been from the outset (1972) connected with the Eurocons (trans-European sf CONVENTIONS), and is a director of WORLD SF. Like all impresarios he has been criticized, but he has done more for Hungarian sf than any other individual. He has published a variety of essays on sf, many in Hungarian, some in English, and is the author of the entry on HUNGARY in this encyclopedia. [PN] KUNETKA, JAMES [r] Whitley STRIEBER. KUPPORD, SKELTON Pseudonym of UK writer J. Adams (? -? ), whose sf novel, A Fortune from the Sky (1903), features several inventions that are all linked to "panergon", which is capable of generating a profitable sky-writing ray but which its inventor soon uses, more conventionally, as a DEATH RAY. Soon the UK is ringed with victims, mostly innocent ones. In the end, world peace is enforced. [JC] KUPRIN, ALEXANDER (IVANOVICH) [r] RUSSIA. KURD LASSWITZ AWARD AWARDS. KURLAND, MICHAEL (JOSEPH) (1938- ) US writer who began publishing sf in 1964 with "Elementary" with Laurence M. JANIFER for FSF and Ten Years to Doomsday (1964) with Chester ANDERSON. The latter is a lightly written alien- INVASION novel, full of harmless violence in space and on other planets. MK then participated in the writing of an unusual trilogy comprising The Butterfly Kid (1967) by Anderson, The Unicorn Girl (1969) by MK and The Probability Pad (1970) by T.A. WATERS. The books all feature the various authors as characters. The Unicorn Girl deals with a number of sf themes in a spoof idiom which is sometimes successful; MATTER TRANSMISSION and invasions abound. Although MK has perhaps gained most recognition for his suspense novel A Plague of Spies (1969), which won an Edgar Allan Poe Scroll from the Mystery Writers of America, his later sf has admirers for its briskness and its bright touristic promenades through various venues.Transmission Error (1970) is an adventure set on a colourful planet. Pluribus (1975), a post- HOLOCAUST novel, though breaking no new ground makes effective use of its US locations. The Whenabouts of Burr (1975) is an ALTERNATE-WORLDS tale featuring Aaron Burr (1756-1836). The Princes of Earth (1978), a crowded juvenile, takes its young backwater-planet protagonist to school on Mars. The Last President (1980) with S.W. Barton (pseudonym of Barton Stewart Whaley [1928- ]) posits the survival of a Nixon-like President in office and his subsequent destruction of democracy. Star Griffin (1987), another tale whose main flaw is crowdedness, sets its protagonist a series of detective puzzles on an overpopulated Earth choked with sects, some of which may be opposing the development of a FASTER-THAN-LIGHT vehicle. Perchance (1989) initiates a projected sequence of humorous TIME-TRAVEL tales, to be called The Chronicles of Elsewhen. Unlike many lesser (and some more significant) writers, MK puts the themes and venues of sf to work in a professional manner, with no radical innovations but always imparting a sense of secure competence. [JC]Other works: The War, Inc series, sf, comprising Mission: Third Force (1967), Mission: Tank War (1968) and A Plague of Spies; Tomorrow Knight (1976); two Sherlock Holmes pastiches, being The Infernal Device * (1979) and Death by Gaslight * (1982); Psi Hunt (1980); First Cycle (coll 1984) with H. Beam PIPER; a fantasy series set in the Lord Darcy universe created by Randall GARRETT, comprising Ten Little Wizards * (1988) and A Study in Sorcery * (1989), the latter again invoking Sherlock Holmes; Button Bright (1990), borderline sf. KURTEN, BJORN (OLAF) (1924-1988) Finnish palaeontologist and writer; his fiction appeared in Swedish. His sf novels - Den svarta tigern (1978 Sweden; trans BK as Dance of the Tiger 1980 US with foreword by Stephen Jay Gould) and Mammutens raddare (1984 Sweden; trans BK as Singletusk 1986 US) - fascinatingly apply late-20th-century speculations about EVOLUTION to the old subgenre of prehistoric sf ( ANTHROPOLOGY; ORIGIN OF MAN), offering the suggestion that blond and burly Neanderthals fell fatally in love with their Black, beautiful, neotenous Cro-Magnon neighbours, bringing them home to engage in sterile matches. Neoteny can be defined as an indefinite prolongation of childlike behaviour and physical proportions; the notion that our ancestors rose to preeminence through cuteness is intriguing. [JC] KURTZ, KATHERINE (IRENE) (1944- ) US writer employed in various fields including oceanography and cancer research, as well as a stint as instructional designer for the Los Angeles Police Department. Her fiction, basically FANTASY, has been dominated from the beginning by the unfolding Chronicles of the Deryni sequences, all set in a highly detailed, coherent ALTERNATE WORLD whose society is hierarchical and in many of its aspects medieval Welsh. By internal chronology they are: The Legends of Camber of Culdi, comprising Camber of Culdi (1976), Saint Camber (1978) and Camber the Heretic (1980); The Heirs of Saint Camber, comprising The Harrowing of Gwynedd (1989), The Chronicles of the Deryni (omni 1985) - which assembles her first novel, Deryni Rising (1970), Deryni Checkmate (1972) and High Deryni (1973) - King Javan's Year (1992) and The Bastard Prince (1994); and The Histories of King Kelson, comprising The Bishop's Heir (1984), The King's Justice (1985) and The Quest for Saint Camber (1986). These chronicles tell the history of a group of humans whose witchlike PSI POWERS, the explanation for which hovers between sf and mysticism, cause them to be persecuted by a medieval Church. The first novel is perhaps the best, but the whole is generally much above average for HEROIC FANTASY and is well characterized, although sometimes archaic and modern language clash. Appended to the series are 2 supplementary volumes: The Deryni Archives (1986) and Deryni Magic: A Grimoire (1991). Her other work of interest includes The Legacy of Lehr (1986), juvenile sf. [JC/PN]Other works: Lammas Night (1983); the Adam Smith sequence comprising The Adept (1991) with Deborah Turner Harris (1951- ),The Adept: The Lodge of the Lynx (1992) with Harris, and The Adept: The Templar Treasure (1994) with Harris.See also: DEL REY BOOKS; MAGIC. KUTTNER, HENRY (1915-1958) US writer. His interest in WEIRD TALES early led him to correspond with H.P. LOVECRAFT and others; his first sale to the magazine was a poem, followed by "The Graveyard Rats" (1936). His stories for it included a Robert E. HOWARD-like SWORD-AND-SORCERY series collected as Elak of Atlantis (1938-41; coll of linked stories 1985). He began to publish sf stories in 1937 with "When the Earth Lived" for TWS. His early sf work included a series about the movie business of the future: "Hollywood on the Moon" (1938), "Doom World" (1938), "The Star Parade" (1938), "The Energy Eaters" (1939) and "The Seven Sleepers" (1940), the last two in collaboration with Arthur K. BARNES. (He and Barnes also wrote together as Kelvin KENT.) HK achieved a certain notoriety with the slightly risque stories he wrote for MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES, notably "The Time Trap" (1938). He used many pseudonyms in this part of his career, and even more after marrying C.L. MOORE in 1940, when the two wrote very many stories in collaboration; these names included Paul Edmonds, Noel Gardner, Keith Hammond, Hudson Hastings, Robert O. Kenyon, C.H. Liddell, K.H. Maepen, Scott Morgan and Woodrow Wilson Smith. HK also published stories under various house names, including James Hall and Will Garth, as though he wrote "Dr Cyclops" (1940 Thrilling Wonder Stories) under his own name a novelette confusingly unconnected with the novelization as by Will Garth (probably Alexander SAMALMAN) of that same year's film DR CYCLOPS; HK's tale was reprinted as the title story of Dr Cyclops (anth 1967) ed anon ( Will GARTH for more details).After their marriage in 1940, most of HK's and Moore's works were to some extent joint efforts - it is said that each could pick up and smoothly continue any story from wherever the other had left off. Moore seems to have been the more fluent and perhaps the more assiduous (indeed, talented) writer, but HK's wit, deftly audacious deployment of ideas and neat exposition complemented her talents very well. During WWII they became part of John W. CAMPBELL Jr's stable of writers working for ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. It was then that they devised their best known pseudonyms, Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell, much of their best work appearing initially under these names. The Padgett stories are ingenious and slickly written, often deploying offbeat HUMOUR. HK was the sole author of the Padgett Galloway Gallegher series collected as Robots Have No Tails (1943-8; coll of linked stories 1952 as by Padgett; 1973 as HK; paperback as by HK; vt The Proud Robot: The Complete Galloway Gallegher Stories 1983 UK). Other notable Padgett stories include "The Twonky" (1942), filmed as The TWONKY (1952), and the classic "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943), about educative toys timeslipped from the future. Two Padgett short novels, Tomorrow and Tomorrow & The Fairy Chessmen (1946-7; coll 1951; 1st story published separately as Tomorrow and Tomorrow 1963 UK; 2nd story published separately vt Chessboard Planet 1956 US and vt The Far Reality 1963 UK), are intensely recomplicated tales in the tradition of A.E. VAN VOGT, whose influence is also evident in the Baldy series about persecuted SUPERMEN, assembled as MUTANT (1945-53; fixup 1953 as by Padgett; 1954 UK as HK). Most of the O'Donnell stories were Moore's work, including the remarkable "Clash By Night" (1943), whose sequel Fury (1947 as by O'Donnell; 1950; vt Destination Infinity 1958 US) was a collaboration.HK and Moore wrote many colourful novels for STARTLING STORIES during the 1940s. "When New York Vanished" (1940) and The Creature from beyond Infinity (1940 as "A Million Years To Conquer"; 1968) are slapdash sf probably by HK alone, but subsequent works - which became archetypes of the hybrid genre SCIENCE FANTASY - neatly fused HK's vigorous plotting with Moore's romanticism. These included The Dark World (1946 as by HK; 1965 as by HK), Valley of the Flame (1946 as by Keith Hammond; 1964 as by HK), "Lands of the Earthquake" (1947 as by HK), The Mask of Circe (1948 as by HK; 1971), The Time Axis (1949 as by HK; 1965), Beyond Earth's Gates (1949 as "The Portal in the Picture" by HK; 1954 dos as by Padgett and Moore) and Well of the Worlds (1952 as by HK; as a GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL by Padgett 1953; vt The Well of the Worlds as by HK 1965 US). The first, second and fifth were combined in The Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner (omni 1987). Earth's Last Citadel (1943 Argosy as by HK and Moore; 1964 as by Moore and HK) also belongs to this sequence, although one other Startling Stories novel, "Lord of the Storm" (1947 as by Hammond), does not. For Startling's companion THRILLING WONDER STORIES HK wrote the humorous Hogben series about an ill assorted family of MUTANT hillbillies: "Exit the Professor" (1947), "Pile of Trouble" (1948), "See You Later" (1949) and "Cold War" (1949). In 1950 HK and Moore went to study at the University of Southern California; they wrote a number of mystery novels thereafter but very few sf stories. HK graduated in 1954 and went on to work for his MA, but died of a heart attack before it was completed.During his career HK rarely received the credit his work merited, and was to an extent overshadowed by his own pseudonyms. His reputation as one of the most able and versatile of modern sf writers has risen steadily since. His influence on the young Ray BRADBURY was considerable, and many later writers have acknowledged their debt to him. His short stories are distributed over numerous overlapping collections: A Gnome There Was (coll 1950 as by Padgett), Ahead of Time (coll 1953), Line to Tomorrow (coll 1954 as by Padgett), No Boundaries (coll 1955 as by HK and Moore), Bypass to Otherness (coll 1961), Return to Otherness (coll 1962), The Best of Kuttner, Volume 1 (coll 1965 UK) and Volume 2 (coll 1966 UK), THE BEST OF HENRY KUTTNER (coll 1975) with intro by Ray Bradbury, Clash by Night and Other Stories (coll 1980 UK as by HK and Moore), Chessboard Planet and Other Stories (coll 1983 UK as by HK and Moore) and Secret of the Earth Star and Others (coll 1991). Another early sword-and-sorcery series was collected in Prince Raynor (1939 Strange Stories; coll 1987 chap), while 3 early non-sf stories are in Kuttner Times Three (coll 1988 chap). [MJE/BS]See also: ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ATLANTIS; AUTOMATION; CHILDREN IN SF; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; COMICS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; DIMENSIONS; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; ECOLOGY; ECONOMICS; ESP; FANTASY; FAR FUTURE; GAMES AND SPORTS; GODS AND DEMONS; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; INTELLIGENCE; MESSIAHS; OUTER PLANETS; PARALLEL WORLDS; PSI POWERS; RECURSIVE SF; RELIGION; ROBOTS; SCIENTISTS; SUPERMAN [character]; TIME TRAVEL; UFOS; UNDER THE SEA; VENUS. al-KUWAYRI, YUSUF [r] ARABIC SF. KYLE, DAVID A(CKERMAN) (1919- ) US sf fan, writer, illustrator, owner of several radio stations, and publisher. DK is a member of "first fandom", having been active in the field since 1933. Until the 1970s his writing activities were only occasional. His first published sf was "Golden Nemesis" for Stirring Science Stories in 1941. In 1948, with Martin GREENBERG, he founded the fan publishing company GNOME PRESS, which maintained what were probably the highest standards of any of the SMALL PRESSES of the period; DK designed several of the book jackets. For much of the 1970s DK was resident in the UK, where he wrote two well and lavishly illustrated coffee-table-style books on sf, the first dealing primarily with the HISTORY OF SF and the second with sf's dominant themes: A Pictorial History of Science Fiction (1976) and The Illustrated Book of Science Fiction Ideas and Dreams (1977). Both are descriptive rather than analytic, and the main interest of their texts, which are conservatively skewed towards HARD SF of the so-called GOLDEN AGE OF SF, is in their well informed data about sf PUBLISHING.When E.E. "Doc" SMITH's Lensman books were reissued in the early 1980s, new novels were published by other hands, continuing and infilling the series. DK, who had been a friend of Smith, wrote 3 of these: The Dragon Lensman (1980), Lensman from Rigel (1982) and Z-Lensman (1983). The second, perhaps the most interesting, is about an ALIEN who has progressed to the level of Second Stage Lensman. DK succeeded to a degree in capturing the flavour of Smith, but not his compulsiveness. [PN]See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; FUTURIANS; ILLUSTRATION; NEW WAVE. |