SF&F encyclopedia (M-M)McALLISTER, ANGUS (? - ) Scottish writer whose first novel, The Krugg Syndrome (1988), briefly conceals the mild-mannered and amusing tale of a country boy in the big city by suggesting for a few pages that his personality has been replaced by that of a telepathic alien. AM's second novel, The Canongate Strangler (1990), plays more darkly with Doppelganger themes in a tale of possession, murder and (once again) ESP. [JC] McALLISTER, BRUCE (HUGH) (1946- ) US writer, editor and academic, director since 1974 of the creative-writing programme at the University of Redlands, California, and Professor of English from 1983. He has written at least 40 stories since starting to publish sf in 1963 with "The Faces Outside" (for If), which is also the title story of a long-projected collection of his best work. "The Boy" (1976) - a peculiarly revolting, skilful tale of the entropic life of a reconstructed Peter Pan and Wendy on a less than utopian ISLAND - is an exercise about, and to some extent in, literary sadism, which at the same time gives exemplary form to his ongoing obsessions with psychic and physical entrapment and with the alienation of human beings in worlds they have not made. His first novel, Humanity Prime (1971), which takes some material from "The Faces Outside" and was used as his thesis for an MFA degree in creative writing, ingeniously depicts the complex underwater environment of the planet Prime, where humans have, after 3000 years, become deeply adapted to their aquatic life; they cope with both the demented CYBORG starship which brought them there and an incursion of reptile-like aliens. His second novel, the elegant and incandescent Dream Baby (1989), is set in Vietnam during the darkest years of US involvement there, and recounts the long excruciation of a nurse whose paranormal power (she has precognitive dreams about the deaths of soldiers: the title is an imperative) leads her, under the control of a secret military unit, into the heart of the darkness.BM edited SF Directions (anth 1972), the special sf issue of the New Zealand journal Edge (Autumn/Winter 1973), which comprised a sizeable anthology of original stories, and the fine Their Immortal Hearts (anth 1980), to which he contributed the title novella. Because his first novel was published in a dying series (it was a late Ace Special), because his second novel speaks unrelentingly of painful matters, and because his shorter work remains scattered, BM continues to be relatively obscure long past the point at which he should have attained considerable prominence. [JC]About the author: The Work of Bruce McAllister: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1985 chap; rev 1986) by David Ray Bourquin.See also: IMMORTALITY; WAR. MAC AND ME The PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT. MacAPP, C.C. Pseudonym used by US colour printer Carroll M. Capps (?1917-1971) in his writing career, which began - after illness forced his retirement-with "A Pride of Islands" in 1960 for If, with which magazine (and its stablemates) he was associated for the balance of his short career. Much of his fiction concerns itself with alien- INVASION themes, notably the Gree stories (in If and Worlds of Tomorrow 1965-6) and his first novel, Omha Abides (1964-6 Worlds of Tomorrow; fixup 1968), in which a long-lasting alien occupation is opposed by Terrans whose Native-American nature finds expression also in CCM's most ambitious novel, Worlds of the Wall (1964 Fantastic; exp 1969), an intriguing adventure of initiation and self-fulfilment set in a strange other-dimensional world. Though most of his work skimps character development in favour of action-oriented plots, CCM's last novel, Bumsider (1972), pays more attention to the development of his cast's personalities. In general he wrote clearly and excitingly, and his range was still growing at the time of his death; the early truncation of his career was much regretted. [JC]Other works: Prisoners of the Sky (1966 If; exp 1969); Secret of the Sunless World (1969) as Carroll M. Capps; Recall Not Earth (1970); Subb (1968 If; fixup 1971). McARTHUR, JOHN Arthur WISE. MacAULAY, DAVID (ALEXANDER) (1946- ) US writer, much of whose work, beginning with Cathedral: The Story of its Construction (1973), has concentrated on architectural subjects, a focus reflected in Unbuilding (1980 chap), which depicts in pictures and text the hypothetical demolition of the Empire State Building. Of more specific sf interest are Motel of the Mysteries (graph 1979 UK), a comic FABULATION whose surreal twists cleverly evoke displaced worlds, and Baaa (1985 chap), a fantasy SATIRE in which sheep take over the world. [JC] MACAULAY, (EMILIE) ROSE (1881-1958) UK author of 23 novels from 1906, the most famous being her last, The Towers of Trebizond (1956). Some of these books - like And No Man's Wit (1940), in which a mermaid appears - venture edgily into fantasy. What Not: A Prophetic Comedy (1918; libellous passages cut 1919), set several years after the conclusion of WWI, depicts the coming to power in the UK of an autocratic government designed to counter postwar crises. (Although copies exist of the 1918 version, which portrays a newspaper proprietor attempting political blackmail, it may never have been officially released.) Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings (1922) is set in an undefined NEAR FUTURE where a monarchist counter-revolution has replaced the Bolsheviks in Russia and a reporter (a woman in drag) helps save the League of Nations from a conspiracy designed to restore communism. Orphan Island (1924) is a borderline UTOPIA (see also ISLANDS) set in the 19th and 20th centuries and satirizing conventional Victorian social and sexual mores. [JC]About the author: Rose Macaulay: A Writer's Life (1991) by Jane Emery.See also: POLITICS. McAULEY, PAUL J. (1955- ) UK biologist and writer. He began publishing sf with "Wagon, Passing" for IASFM in 1984; his best shorter work is collected in The King of the Hill and Other Stories (coll 1991). With his first novel, FOUR HUNDRED BILLION STARS (1988 US), he launched conspicuously into a far-reaching series which, combining SPACE-OPERA plots and cosmological speculations, fruitfully amalgamated influences from both US and UK traditions: H.G. WELLS and Larry NIVEN consort, sometimes uncomfortably, in these tales of interstellar warfare, world-building and universe-creation. Further volumes are Of the Fall (1989 US; vt Secret Harmonies 1989 UK) and the very substantial Eternal Light (1991), which best exemplifies to date PJM's control over the instruments of 1990s HARD SF: wormholes, agathics to forestall death, GENETIC ENGINEERING and cosmogony on the hugest scale. The series itself ostensibly concerns the attempts of an almost fatally wearied corporation-run Earth - reminiscent of Cordwainer SMITH - to fend off the panicked aggressions of an ancient starfaring species, itself hiding from enemies of its own ilk; but the pleasures of this ongoing sequence seem more and more to lie in the increasingly comprehensive physical history of the entire Universe adumbrated in Eternal Light.PJM's next two novels are singletons, and represent his most accomplished work to date. Red Dust (1993) is set, like many 1990s novels, on a MARS which has been colonized (and terraformed) by humans. His treatment of this dominant theme - in terms of a quest plot which takes its American protagonist across a complex landscape ruled by the Chinese - is vivid, swift, and spontaneous-seeming. Pasquale's Angel (1994) is an ALTERNATE WORLD story set in a Renaissance Italy dominated by the remote figure of Leonardo da Vinci, who in this reality has created a dystopian society through the power of his engineering genius. In the mid 1990s, PJM is beginning to look like one of the significant exploratory talent of late sf. [JC] Other work: In Dreams (anth 1992) with Kim NEWMAN. See also: ALIENS; AMAZING STORIES; BLACK HOLES; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CYBORGS; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; ECOLOGY; EVOLUTION; GAMES WORKSHOP; INTERZONE; METAPHYSICS; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; PARANOIA; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION. MacAULEY, ROBIE (MAYHEW) (1919- ) US writer, active as a non-genre story writer from 1947 but almost certainly best known for his first novel, The Disguises of Love (1952). His second, A Secret History of Time to Come (1979), sf, displays some literary finesse in traversing a post- DISASTER terrain, but is unoriginal. [JC] MacAVOY, R(OBERTA) A(NN) (1949- ) US writer, primarily of FANTASY - which tends to be quirky, well written and scholarly about historical detail - and of one sf novel. Her first book, Tea with the Black Dragon (1983), is a witty contemporary fantasy about the friendship that grows between a middle-aged woman musician and an ageless Oriental who is probably the human incarnation of a dragon. The sequel was Twisting the Rope: Casadh an t'Sugain (1986). The Trio for Lute trilogy - Damiano (1983), Damiano's Lute (1984) and Raphael (1984), collected as A Trio for Lute (omni 1985) - is set in an ALTERNATE-WORLD Renaissance Italy, France and Moorish Spain where MAGIC works. The Book of Kells (1985) features time-travel from the present day to a god-frequented 10th-century Ireland. The Grey Horse (1987), also set in Ireland (Connemara in the late 19th century), is a finely told, complex romance about local resistance allied to the Land League, featuring a puca, or fairy-horse. RAM's sf novel is The Third Eagle (1989), an entertaining romance about a naive Native-American warrior's learning experiences on a variety of planetary and spacecraft venues; though promising, it is less focused than most of her fantasy. RAM returned to fantasy with theLens of the World trilogy, comprising Lens of the World (1990), and King of the Dead (1991) and Winter of the Wolf (1993; vt The Belly of the Wolf 1994 US): more coming-of-age material, this time set in a marginally fantasticated baroque or renaissance alternate world. RAM has become an important fantasist, especially in the unfamiliarity of her material, which has enlivened a genre specializing all too often in retreads. [PN]See also: JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD. McBAIN, ED Evan HUNTER. McBAIN, GORDON (DUNCAN III) (1946-1992) US teacher and writer who, in his brief sf career, wrote the moderately appealing but unremarkable Exoterra young-adult sf series: The Path of Exoterra (1981) and Quest of the Dawnstar (1984). [JC] McCAFFREY, ANNE (INEZ) (1926- ) US writer, now living in Ireland. Most of her work is sf, though tinged with the tone and instruments of FANTASY. She began publishing with "Freedom of the Race" for Hugo GERNSBACK's Science Fiction Plus in 1953, but became active only a decade or so later with her first novel, Restoree (1967), which rather conventionally, though with tongue in cheek, tells the story of a young woman who is flayed alive by alien flesh-eaters, is saved, and with her skin restored has some adventures. Soon AM began publishing the linked novels and stories that have made her reputation as a writer of romantic, heightened tales of adventure explicitly designed to appeal - and to make good sense to - a predominantly female adolescent audience.Her major series is set in a long-lost Earth colony, Pern, a world whose humans, symbiotically pair-bonded with tame, time-travelling, telepathic and telekinetic dragons, engage in high adventures and defend the planet from the poisonous Threads. It comprises several shorter units: DRAGONFLIGHT (fixup 1968) (containing the 1968 HUGO-winner "Weyr Search" and the 1968 NEBULA-winner "Dragon Rider"), Dragonquest (1971) and The White Dragon (1978) are assembled as The Dragonriders of Pern (omni 1978); Dragonsong (1976), Dragonsinger (1977) and Dragondrums (1979), which are juveniles, are assembled as The Harper Hall of Pern (omni 1979); Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern (1983 UK; exp 1983 US) and Nerilka's Story (1986) are closely connected. Further titles include Dragonsdawn (1988), a prequel to the overall sequence, which is followed by The Renegades of Pern (1989), All the Weyrs of Pern (1991), The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (coll of linked stories (1993), The Girl Who Heard Dragons (coll 1994), The Dolphin's Bell (1994) and The Dolphins of Pern (1994). A Time When: Being a Tale of Young Lord Jaxom, his White Dragon Ruth, and Various Fire-Lizards (1975 chap) is connected to the series; DRAGONFLIGHT (graph 1991) is the first of a projected series of graphic-novel versions of the material. Though the tone is that of fantasy, the premises underlying Pern are orthodox sf; even the dragons turn out to have been bio-engineered eons previously by humans as a defence against a vacuum-traversing spore. The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern (1989) with Jody Lynn Nye (1957- ) may be of assistance to readers.Other series include: the Pegasus books - To Ride Pegasus (fixup 1973), which deals with a corps of parapsychological investigators in the near future and is notable for its political conservatism, Pegasus in Flight (1990), these two being assembled as Wings of Pegasus (omni 1991) - the Ireta books-Dinosaur Planet (1978 UK) and Dinosaur Planet Survivors (1984), both being assembled as The Ireta Adventure (omni 1985) - the Killashandra tales - The Crystal Singer (1974-5 Continuum ed Roger ELWOOD; fixup 1982 UK), Killashandra (1985), and Crystal Line (1992) and the Planet Pirates books - Sassinak (1990) with Elizabeth MOON, The Death of Sleep (1990) with Jody Lynn Nye, and Generation Warriors (1991) with Moon, all three being assembled as Planet Pirates (omni 1993); the Rowan sequence - linked with the Pegasus books (see above) to the extent that they may be considered as a single series, the Talents books - comprising The Rowan (1990),Damia (1992), Lyon's Pride (1994) and Damia's Children (1994), features a powerful female telepath who engages in adventures and much sex with an even more powerful male telepath named Jeff Raven. The Petaybee sequence, about a sentient planet (see LIVING PLANETS), comprises Powers That Be (1993) with Elizabeth Ann SCARBOROUGH and Power Lines (1994) with Scarborough, with further volumes projected.AM's early singletons include Decision at Doona (1969) - disappointingly sequeled much later by Crisis on Doona (1992) with Jody Lynn Nye (1957- ) and Treaty Planet (1993; vt Treaty at Doona 1994 US), also with Nye - and The City who Sang (fixup 1969) - unexcitingly sequeled by PartnerShip (1992) with Margaret Ball (1947- ), and The Ship who Searched (1992) with Mercedes Lackey (1950- ), The City Who Fought (1993) with S.M. STIRLING and The Ship Who Won (1994) with Jody Lynn Nye. The two original 1969 titles were assembled with Restoree as The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey (omni 1981 UK). Though less popular than the Pern books, these (the sequels excepted) are perhaps more clearly inventive. The Ship who Sang, for instance, intriguingly presents a deformed girl who is grafted into a SPACESHIP ( CYBORGS) and in effect becomes the ship; the emotional difficulties facing a musical lady spaceship are many ( Hyperlink to: MUSIC). Later singletons, like The Coelura (1983 chap) - strangely assembled with Nerilka's Story from the Pern sequence as Nerilka's Story & The Coelura (omni 1987) - tend to downgrade their sf premises in favour of romance. AM's stories, including some connected work, have been collected in Get Off the Unicorn (coll 1977). Though her work has been criticized as oversentimental, AM is among the most popular writers in her particular subgenre. [JC]Other works: The Mark of Merlin (1971), Ring of Fear (1971) and The Kilternan Legacy (1975), none sf or fantasy, and all assembled as Three Women (omni 1990); The Smallest Dragonboy (1982 chap Ireland); Stitch in Snow (1984 Ireland) and The Year of the Lucy (1986 Ireland), neither being sf or fantasy; The Girl who Heard Dragons (1985 chap); Habit is an Old Horse (coll 1986 chap); The Lady (1987; vt The Carradyne Touch 1988 UK), a romance; Rescue Run (1991 chap), an sf novella.As Editor: Alchemy & Academe (anth 1970); Cooking Out of This World (anth 1973), a collection of recipes supplied by various sf writers.About the author: Anne McCaffrey, Dragonlady and More: A Working Bibliography (latest rev 1989 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ARTS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; DEL REY BOOKS; PLANETARY ROMANCE; PSI POWERS; SCIENCE FANTASY; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION; WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST. McCANN, ARTHUR [s] John W. CAMPBELL Jr. McCANN, EDSON Pseudonym used by Frederik POHL and Lester DEL REY on the novel Preferred Risk (1955), hurriedly written for a GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION novel competition because no acceptable submission had been received. Cast in the same mould as Pohl's and C.M. KORNBLUTH's THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953), it features a world dominated by insurance companies. [BS]See also: SATIRE. McCARTHY, SHAWNA (LEE) (1954- ) US editor who served 1983-5 as editor of ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE and 1985-8 as sf editor of BANTAM BOOKS. For IASFM she produced 4 anthologies: Isaac Asimov's Wonders of the World (anth 1982), Isaac Asimov's Aliens & Outworlders (anth 1983), Isaac Asimov's Space of Her Own (anth 1984; vt Isaac Asimov's Space of Your Own 1984 UK; cut under original title 1989) and Isaac Asimov's Fantasy! (anth 1985; cut 1990). With Lou ARONICA of Bantam she was involved in the FULL SPECTRUM original-anthology series, editing Full Spectrum (anth 1988) with Aronica and Full Spectrum 2 (anth 1989) with Aronica, Patrick LoBrutto and Amy Stout. [JC] McCARTHY, WIL Working name of US writer William Terence McCarthy (1966- ) who began publishing sf with "What I Did with the OTV Grissom" forAboriginal in 1990; the first of the 2 stories assembled in Dirtyside Down/C-Minor (coll 1991 chap dos) with Gregory R.Hyde is by WMcC. In his first novel, Aggressor Six (1994), 34th century humanity is confronted by an implacable alien race which wages interstellar war against us, and is only defeated in the end due to discoveries made by a team of humans who have been trained to think like the enemy. The action is fast and clean, though not entirely unpredictable. [JC] McCAY, BILL Working name of US writer William McCay (? - ), who has exclusively restricted himself to TIES. They include 2 titles in the 4th Tom Swift sequence ( TOM SWIFT): The Black Dragon * (1991) and The Negative Zone * (1992), both as by Victor APPLETON; 3 Nintendo Adventure Books: Monster Mix-Up * (1991), Koopa Capers * (1991) and Doors to Doom * (1992); a Star Trek title: Star Trek: The Next Generation: Chains of Command * (1992) with Eloise Flood; and 2 volumes in Stan Lee's Riftworld series about a superhero comic publisher accompanied by giants: Stan Lee's Riftworld: Crossover * (1993) and #2: Villains * (1994). [JC] McCAY, (ZENAS) WINSOR (1867-1934) US COMIC-strip artist and creator of animated cartoons, of seminal importance in both fields. His earliest years were obscure (it is not known where he was born; his name is sometimes given as Winsor Zenic McCay, and his year of birth as 1869 or 1871), but by 1889 he was employed in Chicago as an engraver in a printing firm, and during the 1890s he worked as a freelance poster painter and as an in-house artist at Cincinnati's Vine Street Dime Museum before, in 1898, starting his newspaper career by doing editorial cartoons for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. By 1900 WM had switched papers and was drawing his first comic strip, Tales of the Jungle Imps, signed Felix Fiddle.His new interest in strips and success as a cartoonist for Life led to his moving in 1902 to New York, where he began to work for the two New York papers owned by James Gordon Bennett (1841-1918): the New York Herald as WM and the New York Telegram as "Silas". A cascade of humorous allegories followed, including A Pilgrim's Progress by Mr Bunion, Hungry Henrietta, Poor Jake and Little Sammy Sneeze. 1904 saw the debut of WM's nightmarish Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, which carried its characters into a variety of very frightening dyspepsia-generated dream experiences; it appeared in book form as Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend (graph coll 1905; rev 1973). The success of this strip inspired his masterpiece, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which appeared in the New York Herald (1905-11), then for William Randolph Hearst papers under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams (1911-14), then for the Herald-Tribune (1924-7) under the original title. The first sequence was the most innovative and inspired, and soon selections were reprinted as Little Nemo in Slumberland (graph coll 1909). Later titles included an adaptation by Edna Sarah Levine, Little Nemo in Slumberland * (1941) illus WM, and The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland (graph coll 1989-90) ed Richard Marschall, a definitive version in 4 vols of the 1905-11 strip, reproducing the original colours; a 5th vol, The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams:1911-1912 (graph coll 1991), also ed Marschall, was followed by a 6th vol, The Complete Little Nemo in Slumberland: In the Land of Wonderful Dreams: 1913-1914 (graph coll 1994) ed Bill Blackbeard, which together reprinted the second sequence. Many of the first-sequence episodes - all drawn in WM's florid, hallucinatory, meticulously crafted, architectonic, poster-like Art Nouveau style - were straightforward dream fantasies; but later sustained sequences - like those dealing with Shantytown, with Befuddle Hall, and with a voyage by airship into outer space during 1909 - intermittently displayed an sf-like verisimilitude; as pioneering explorations into the techniques of narrating complex visions through sequential drawings, the strip as a whole was of vital importance.While busy with Little Nemo, WM was also able to continue with other graphic work, including many individual drawings, those making up the Spectrophone series of visions of the future being of particular sf interest. After he moved to Hearst, he began concentrating on political cartoons from a conservative point of view; but continued to issue enormously detailed prophetic drawings involving vast airships, cityscapes and catastrophes. Some of these have been assembled as Daydreams & Nightmares: The Fantastic Visions of Winsor McCay (graph coll 1988) ed Richard Marschall.WM also took a central role in the development of the animated cartoon - indeed, some claim that he invented the art of animation. In whatever medium he worked, he drew with incredible speed; this gave rise to the vaudeville act he presented from 1906, during which he executed a series of 40 chalk drawings, one every 30 seconds, showing a man and a woman ageing while the orchestra played a suitable melody. From here it was a logical step to animation. With astonishing industry, he hand-painted each frame of his cartoons; beginning in 1909 he produced 10 short films: Little Nemo (1911), which required c4000 drawings; The Story of a Mosquito (1912; vt How a Mosquito Operates); Gertie, the Dinosaur (1914), which required c10, 000 drawings; The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), the most ambitious, requiring c25,000 drawings done in much more detail than in the earlier films; The Centaurs, a fantasy film, Flip's Circus and Gertie on Tour, these 3 being done c1918-21 and surviving only as fragments; and 3 Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend shorts, all released in 1921: The Pet, Bug Vaudeville and The Flying House. In The Pet household animals drink an elixir and swell to huge proportions; a 10-storey cat ravages a city and, KING-KONG-style, is assailed by airships. Bug Vaudeville is a Silly Symphonies-style (but pre-Disney) fantasy. In The Flying House a couple, escaping their creditors, fit out their house with wings and a propeller and fly off into outer space where, inter alia, they meet a giant on the Moon. It is not certain why WM gave up animation after these successes, but it was possibly because he thought - wrongly, as was soon proven by Felix the Cat and Walt Disney's Alice and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit - that animation, as an artform, was a deadend street to whose end he had come. He continued to produce newspaper strips and illustrations, however, until the end of his life. [JC/JGr/SW]Further reading: "Winsor McCay" by John Canemaker in The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology (anth 1980) ed Danny Peary and Gerald Peary; Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (1987) by John Canemaker; Comic Artists (1989) by Richard Marschall. McCLARY, THOMAS CALVERT (?1909-1972) US speechwriter and ghostwriter whose sf appeared in ASF in the 1930s under his own name and under the pseudonyms Thomas Calvert, Miles Cramer and Calvin Peregoy - the latter for the Doctor Conklin series in ASF in 1934-5. For Unknown he wrote "The Tommyknocker" (1940). Basic to his two sf novels, Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot (1934 ASF; 1944) and Three Thousand Years (1938 ASF; 1954), is the theory, reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), that a small scientific elite unhindered by the opportunism of businessmen and politicians could keep the world running in decency and comfort. Both are worked out in post- HOLOCAUST settings, intentionally and instantaneously precipitated in the former by means of a ray which obliterates all memory and in the latter by the transition of all lifeforms to a state of SUSPENDED ANIMATION. In both books the idealistic theory is set up only to be exploded. [JE/RB/PN] MacCLOUD, MALCOLM (? - ) US writer of two sf juveniles for older children, The Tera Beyond (1981) and A Gift of Mirrorvax (1981), the latter attempting with only moderate success to make plausible a mirror Earth on the other side of the Sun. [JC] MacCLURE, VICTOR (THOM MacWALTER) (1887-1963) UK writer of popular fiction. His Ultimatum: A Romance of the Air (1924; vt The Ark of the Covenant: A Romance of the Air and of Science 1924 US) tells of world disarmament brought about by pacifists armed with dirigibles carrying a sleep gas and a ray that transmutes elements. They also possess atomic energy and other weapons invented by their dying South American "Master". After the US President is converted to their cause, peace ensues. [JC/PN]See also: AIR WONDER STORIES; WEAPONS. McCLURE'S MAGAZINE US "slick" magazine published by S.S. McClure, ed Ida Tarbell and others. Monthly June 1893-Jan 1926 (irregularly towards the end). Recommenced June 1926 as a romance magazine. Merged with Smart Set in Apr 1929.Initially conceived as the US edition of The IDLER, MM appeared as a new magazine with original stories and features, although some sf was reprinted from The Idler. MM's best remembered sf publication is Rudyard KIPLING's With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD (1905; 1909 chap US). Two interesting disaster stories were "Within an Ace of the End of the World" (1900) by Robert BARR and "The End of the World" (1903) by Jules Guerin. Jack LONDON's "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910) is a future- WAR Yellow-Peril story in which the author, famous as a believer in the Brotherhood of Man, recommends genocide of the Chinese. A serialized novel was Cleveland MOFFETT's The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory: U.S. A. 1921 A.D. (May-Aug 1915 as "The Conquest of America in 1921"; 1916). [JE/PN] MacCOLL, HUGH (? -? ) UK author of Mr Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889), an interplanetary novel describing a spaceship journey to MARS and the discovery there of two races of Earth origin, one of which has attained a UTOPIAN ideal ( EVOLUTION). Although lacking the depths of Percy GREG's influential Across the Zodiac (1880), the book proved popular and may in turn have influenced H.G. WELLS, especially in its account of the death of a Martian through exposure to bacteria in Earth's atmosphere. [JE] McCOLLUM, MICHAEL A. (1946- ) US writer and control-systems engineer specializing in aerospace propulsion. MAM began publishing sf with "Duty, Honor, Planet" for ASF in 1979. His first novel, A Greater Infinity (fixup 1982), established the pattern he would follow through the 1980s: a complex SPACE-OPERA adventure plot involves humans (in this case Terrans) with one or more alien races as wars, quests and challenges galore generate a sense of movement. The Makers series - Life PROBE (1983) and Procyon's Promise (1985) - and the Antares series - Antares Dawn (1986) and Antares Passage (1987) - are in this mould, but Thunderstrike! (1989) deals more mundanely with what happens when a comet strikes Earth, and The Clouds of Saturn (1991) concerns human and internecine strife in the cloud-cities colonizing Saturn. MAM's touch is usually light, and accusations of racism - occasioned by the sorry fate Africa suffers in the Makers books - seem almost certainly misdirected. [JC]Other Works: The Sails of Tau Ceti (1992). McCOMAS, J(ESSE) FRANCIS (1911-1978) US editor and writer who published a number of sf stories under his own name - including "Shock Treatment" (1954) and "Parallel" (1955) - and as Webb Marlowe. He was co-editor with Raymond J. HEALY of the 35-story ANTHOLOGY Adventures in Time and Space (anth 1946; cut vt Selections from Adventures in Time and Space 1954; recut vt More Adventures in Time and Space 1955; text restored vt Famous Science-Fiction Stories 1957), which was initially published by Random House, one of the two or three most prestigious literary publishers of the time, and whose contents - a very wide selection from the new US sf of the previous decade - were made available for the first time to a wide non-genre audience. It was in this anthology that he published his first story, "Flight into Darkness" (1946) as by Webb Marlowe. JFM was also joint editor with Anthony BOUCHER of The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION from #1 (1949) until Aug 1954, though he has not generally received his due share of credit for establishing the direction of that magazine. He also co-edited with Boucher the first 3 vols of the Best from FSF sequence: The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1952), #2 (anth 1953) and #3 (anth 1954). He remained advisory editor of FSF until March 1962. JFM was a member of the Mystery Writers of America. [MJE/JC]Other works as editor: The Graveside Companion (anth 1962); Crimes and Misfortunes (anth 1970); Special Wonder: The Anthony Boucher Memorial Anthology of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1970; in 2 vols vt Special Wonder #1 1971 and #2 1971).See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; GOLDEN AGE OF SF. McCORD, GUY [s] Mack REYNOLDS. McCOY, ANDREW Pseudonym of South African-born Australian writer Andre Jute (1945- ), who has concentrated as AM on violent tales of conflict in the continent of his birth, most of them verging into the NEAR FUTURE. Novels as AM include Atrocity Week (1978 UK), The Insurrectionist (1979 UK), African Revenge (1980 UK), Blood Song (1983 UK), Cain's Courage (1985 UK), Survivors and Winners (1986 UK) and The Meyeresco Helix (1988 UK). Under his own name he has published tales of a similar nature though less aggressively told: Reverse Negative (1982 UK), Festival (1982 UK), Sinkhole (1982 UK) and Iditarod (1990 UK). [JC] MacCREIGH, JAMES Frederik POHL. McCRUMB, SHARYN (1948- ) US writer, in most of whose titles detective plots intersect with fantasy and/or sfmaterial,though her first novel to invoke these genres, Bimbos of theDeath Sun: Murder Most Fun at the Ultimate Fantasy Con (1987),a RECURSIVE tale set at an sf convention, does not actually turn into sf, and the first of theJay Omega sequence. What is most remarkable about the book, for the sf reader, maybe SMcC's intimate understanding of fans and writers and their typical interactions, aknowledgeability which also marks Zombies of the Gene Pool (1992), in which sf writer Jay Omega - in real life James Mega, aprofessor of engineering - visits another convention, and becomes embroiled in ancient sf scandals; there may be some roman a clefmoments in the text. Of her other novels, The Hangman's BeautifulDaughter (1992) and She Walks These Hills (1994) both have fantasy elements. [JC] McCULLOUGH, COLLEEN (1937- ) Working name of Australian writer Colleen McCullough-Robinson, who remains most famous for The Thorn Birds (1977). A Creed for the Third Millennium (1985 US), set in the 21st century, has a familiar plot in which a charismatic figure ambiguously revitalizes a disillusioned world. The Ladies of Missolonghi (1987 UK) is a ghost story. [JC] McCUTCHAN, PHILIP (1920- ) UK writer, a Sandhurst attendee (though not graduate), author of several routine sf thrillers, most of them in his Commander Shaw series, which began with Gibraltar Road (1960) and closed with Corpse (1980). Of these, Skyprobe (1966), The Screaming Dead Balloons (1968), The All-Purpose Bodies (1969) and The Bright Red Business Men (1969) make the clearest use of sf instruments, though never centrally. The Commander's function, which is to involve himself with espionage and to save the world from mad SCIENTISTS who grow extraterrestrial fungi, construct malign CYBORGS, etc., generally necessitates the destruction of any sf device before the story's end. [JC/PN]Other works: Bowering's Breakwater (1964), a UK liner faces trouble after the start of a nuclear world war; A Time for Survival (1966), a post- HOLOCAUST story of unremitting bleakness; The Day of the Coastwatch (1968), a DYSTOPIA; This Drakotny . . . (1971); Flood (1991), the northern polar icecap melts. MCCUTCHEON, GEORGE BARR RURITANIA. McDANIEL, DAVID (1939-1977) US writer who also wrote as Ted Johnstone. He published a SPACE OPERA, The Arsenal Out of Time (1967), and a number of tv spin-offs, most of them in the MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. series. They are The Dagger Affair * (1966), The Vampire Affair * (1966), The Monster Wheel Affair * (1967), The Rainbow Affair * (1967), The Utopia Affair * (1968) and The Hollow Crown Affair * (1969). He also wrote a spin-off from the tv series The PRISONER, The Prisoner #2: Number Two * (1969; vt Who is Number Two? 1982 UK). [JC] McDERMOT, MURTAGH Pseudonym of a UK or Irish author whose satirical MOON-voyage novel, A Trip to the Moon (1728), describes various remarkable sights and beings after the fashion of CYRANO DE BERGERAC. The necessary propulsion is provided by gunpowder. [JC] McDERMOTT, DENNIS [s] P. Schuyler MILLER. McDEVITT, JACK Working name of US writer John Charles McDevitt (1935- ), who began publishing sf with "The Emerson Effect" for Twilight Zone in 1981, coming to prominence with "Cryptic" (1984), a tale whose theme - First Contact between humans and the ALIEN races who are sending communications across space - was elaborated in his first novel, The Hercules Text (1986). Despite the occasional descent into CLICHES in his plotting and his politics (even as early as 1986 the vision of the USA coming close to war with the USSR over ownership of the information in the signals lacked extrapolative vigour), JMcD managed in this tale to concentrate very effectively on the human dimensions of the conundrum posed by the existence of a COMMUNICATION whose contents, when deciphered, might well devastate human civilization; and the Roman Catholic viewpoint of one of the SCIENTISTS involved in decoding the message is presented with an obvious sympathy which does not hamper the storytelling, which involves threats of violent skulduggery. JMcD's second novel, A Talent for War (1989), set in a galactic venue eons hence, similarly sets a religious frame around the central quest plot, in which a young man must thread his way through the unsettled hinterlands dividing human and alien space in his search for the secret that may retroactively destroy the reputation of a human who has been a hero in the recent wars. His third novel, The Engines of God (1994), puts into the darkly humane terms that have become his trademark an epic space opera plot that gives some new life to old movements of story: the ancient artifact; the unfolding COSMOLOGY; and so forth. In all three novels, JMcD wrestles valiantly with the task he has set himself: that of imposing an essentially contemplative structure upon conventions designed for violent action. He comes, at times, close to success. [JC]See also: PHILIP K. DICK AWARD. MacDONALD, ANSON Robert A. HEINLEIN. MacDONALD, GEORGE (1824-1905) Scottish author and editor, noted for his fairy tales. His former occupation as a clergyman was reflected in his allegorical fantasies, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) and Lilith (1895; rev 1924), the latter work being his closest to sf. Based on the premise that an infinite number of three-dimensional universes can exist in a four-dimensional frame ( PARALLEL WORLDS), Lilith draws heavily from the Talmud in its enigmatic description of a search, set in both this Universe and another, for the self. It compares interestingly with David LINDSAY's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920).After GM's death, his son Greville wrote three fantasy novels as well as the biographical George MacDonald and his Wife (1924). [JE/JC]Other works: Adela Cathcart (coll 1864; rev 1882 to exclude fantasy stories); The Portent: A Story of the Inner Vision of the Highlanders, Commonly Called the Second Sight (1864; rev as coll vt The Portent and Other Stories 1909; original novel vt Lady of the Mansion 1983 US); Dealings with the Fairies (1867); At the Back of the North Wind (1870), The Princess and the Goblin (1871 US) and The Princess and Curdie (1882 US), a series for children; Works of Fancy and Imagination (10 vols 1871); The Wise Woman: A Parable (1875; vt A Double Story 1876 US; vt Princess Rosamund US; vt The Lost Princess 1895 UK); The Flight of the Shadow (1891); The Fairy Tales of George MacDonald (coll in 5 vols 1904); Fairy Tales (1920); The Light Princess (coll 1961) ed Roger Lancelyn GREEN; Evenor (coll 1972) ed Lin CARTER; Visionary Novels: Lilith; Phantastes (omni 1954 US; vt Phantastes; and Lilith 1962 UK); The Gifts of the Child Christ: Fairy Tales and Stories for the Childlike (coll in 2 vols; 1973 US) ed Glenn Edward Sadler; The Gold Key and The Green Life (anth 1986), the second story being by Fiona Macleod (pseudonym of William Sharp [1824-1905]); The Day Boy and the Night Girl (1988 chap); Little Daylight (1988 chap).About the author: There is a mass of critical work on GM. Of particular genre interest is The Renaissance of Wonder in Children's Literature (1977; vt Renaissance of Wonder: The Fantasy Worlds of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, E. Nesbit and Others 1980 US) by Marion Lochhead (1902-1985).See also: ADAM AND EVE; MUSIC. McDONALD, IAN (1960- ) UK writer, a resident of Northern Ireland, who began publishing sf with "The Islands of the Dead" for Extro in 1982; this, with other short work, was assembled as Empire Dreams (coll 1988 US). He very quickly demonstrated a fascination with garish sf impedimenta and a habit of rococo elaboration which made him both a highly promising writer and potentially a wilfully eccentric one. His first novel, Desolation Road (1988 US), has been described as THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (coll 1950) crossed with One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans 1970), a joke limited in accuracy only by its failure to add Cordwainer SMITH to Ray BRADBURY and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928- ). IM is not so much being influenced or writing pastiche as appropriating deftly from other writers the precise gestures needed to make ideological or emotional points about the human implications of TERRAFORMING or cyborgization ( CYBORGS). Out on Blue Six (1989 US) describes a failed UTOPIA, a standard theme in the UK during the Thatcher years, working both to rehabilitate socialist ideals and to acknowledge legitimate criticism; it combines standard Robert A. HEINLEIN motifs - the Man, or in this case Woman, who Learns Better-some A.E. VAN VOGT mystification about amnesiac Hidden Masters, and a catalogue of DYSTOPIAN and heterotopian fragments, plus chunks of Grail quest and a lot of shooting and running around. King of Morning, Queen of Day (1985 in Empire Dreams; exp 1991 US), which won the PHILIP K. DICK AWARD in 1992, is a fantasy about Irish identity across the generations which manages in its third (contemporary) section to assimilate much of the feel of CYBERPUNK. Hearts, Hands and Voices (1992; vt The Broken Land 1992 US), set in a tropical venue much resembling Asia (though the religious conflicts have an Irish ring), replicates the technique of his first novel; in this case his models are Geoff RYMAN's novels The Unconquered Country (1986) and The Child Garden (1988).Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone (1994 US), which is novella-length, concisely depicts the circular hegira through near-future Japan of an occidental man who is re-sorting his life and attempting to come to terms with the consequences of his invention (or discovery) of reality-controlling computer images. Necroville (1994; vt The Terminal Cafe 1994 US), which is perhaps IM's most concentrated and finest novel yet, constructs an intensely complicated urban NEAR FUTURE world - CYBERPUNK imagery of the world-city is utilized with bravado throughout - in which NANOTECHNOLOGY has accomplished what many - even in 1995 - feel may be its first transformative change, making it possible for cellular creatures - like us - to become immortal. The plot spins this speculation with feverish energy. [RK]Other works:Speaking in Tongues (coll 1992); Kling Klang Klatch (graph 1992) illus David Lyttleton.See also: CITIES; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; GAMES AND SPORTS; INTERZONE; MARS; NEW WORLDS; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION. MACDONALD, JAMES D(OUGLAS) Debra DOYLE. MacDONALD, JOHN D(ANN) (1916-1986) US writer and ex-lieutenant colonel in the US Army, known mainly for such well written thrillers as The Brass Cupcake (1950) and the 21 Travis McGee novels (1964-85), which evolved from escapist tales of derring-do into impassioned laments for the human race and the planet. None of his sf, which began early in his career with "Cosmetics" for ASF in 1948, significantly anticipates JDM's late mood; the best of his 50 or so short stories, nearly all written 1948-53, were assembled in Other Times, Other Worlds (coll 1978). His two early sf novels, Wine of the Dreamers (1951; vt Planet of the Dreamers 1953 UK) and Ballroom of the Skies (1952), were both polished and proficient adventures in PARANOID sf involving extraterrestrial manipulations of humanity, inadvertent in the first book and, in the second, as part of a winnowing process to select good leadership material. A later novel, The Girl, the Gold Watch, & Everything (1962), is a complicated spoof adventure in which a man inherits a watch which, when correctly used, speeds up time for the owner, rendering him invisible to the people in real, apparently frozen, time, and thereby giving him great power. All 3 novels were assembled as Time and Tomorrow (omni 1980). JDM occasionally wrote sf stories under the pseudonyms John Wade Farrell and Peter Reed. [JC/PN]About the author: Bibliography of the Published Works of John D. MacDonald (1980) by Walter and Jean Shine.See also: LEISURE; PULP MAGAZINES. MacDONALD, PHILIP (1899-1980) Scottish-born author of detective novels and screenplays, in California from 1931; he was best known for thrillers like The Rasp (1924) and X v. Rex (1933 as by Martin Porlock), of which at least four, including The List of Adrian Messenger (1959), were filmed. His 23 screenplay credits included Rebecca (1940), The Body Snatcher (1945) and the sf film Tobor the Great (1954). PM published occasional sf stories in FSF and elsewhere in the 1940s and 1950s, and as W.J. Stuart wrote Forbidden Planet * (1956), based on FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), a film novelization of higher quality than usual. [PN/JC] McDONALD, RAYMOND Joint pseudonym of US writers Raymond Leger (1883-? ) and Edward McDonald (1873-? ), whose sf novel, The Mad Scientist: A Tale of the Future (1908), features the increasingly dangerous - or effective - interventions of the said SCIENTIST in the dealings of US businessmen and of the US Government itself. The scientist's inclinations are socialist but, surprisingly for 1908, the authors are ambiguous about whether or not he is a menace pure and simple; and the protagonists of the tale find themselves again and again having to cope with uncomfortable revelations - from fraud to conspiracies with German strikebreakers - brought into the open by the scientist's numerous inventions. [JC] McDONALD, STEVEN E(DWARD) (1956- ) Jamaican writer who began publishing sf with "Empty Barrels" for ASF in 1978, was most noted for "Ideologies" (1980), and whose first novel, The Janus Syndrome (1981 US), put into SPACE-OPERA guise a tale involving racial oppression, romantic exaggerations of material, and masquerades. Unfortunately, he then fell silent. [JC] MacDONELL, A(RCHIBALD) G(ORDON) (1895-1941) Scottish writer who began his career as author with a series of thrillers as Neil Gordon; one of these, The Professor's Poison (1928), was sf. From 1933, AGM wrote under his own name. In Lords and Masters (1936) an industrial struggle between traditional steel manufacturers and the developers of a new metal escalates into a full-blown war involving the whole of Europe; by novel's end, a Patriotic Government is ruling the UK. [JC] McDONOUGH, ALEX (? - ) US writer whose sf is restricted to the Scorpio sequence of tales packaged on a SHARECROP basis by the Byron PREISS enterprise: Scorpio (1990), Scorpio Rising (1990), Scorpio Descending (1991) and Dragon's Blood (1991). Scorpio, an ALIEN on the run with a pilfered superpowered orb, has escaped to 14th-century Earth, where he has many adventures. [JC] McDONOUGH, THOMAS R(EDMOND) (1945- ) US writer and lecturer in engineering at Caltech. He is perhaps best known for his nonfiction and for serving as the coordinator of the SETI programme of the Planetary Society. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1987) argues the case for seeking out First Contact with other races in the Galaxy. Much of his earlier work was also nonfiction, beginning with "They're Trying to Tell Us Something" for ASF in 1969, which likewise concerned SETI matters. He began to publish fiction only in 1979 with "Statues of the Gods" for Starlog. His first novel, The Architects of Hyperspace (1987), features a clearly argued HARD-SF vision of a Galaxy containing at least one artificial toroidal world; there is also sophisticated speculation about the growth of civilizations throughout the Universe. Yet it is narrated in an only intermittently humorous pulp style, and features at least one bibulous Irishman. The Missing Matter (1992) provides a similar mix of intriguingly couched cognition and comic turns. [JC]Other work: Space: The Next 25 Years (1987; rev 1989). MacDOUGAL, JOHN Collaborative pseudonym of James BLISH and Robert A.W. LOWNDES on "Chaos Co-ordinated" (ASF 1946). [PN] MACE, DAVID (1951- ) UK writer whose first novel, Demon-4 (1984), describes with a quite chilling quasilyrical remoteness a post- HOLOCAUST suicide mission undertaken by the eponymous CYBORG probe to dismantle a doomsday device. Most of his later novels, like Nightrider (1985), Fire Lance (1986), The Highest Ground (1988),Shadow Hunters (1991) and Chasing the Sun (1992), rework his territory, which might be defined as the NEAR FUTURE seen in terms of military DISASTERS, threatened or consummated; but Frankenstein's Children (1990), set in what remains of the Amazonian rain forest, gathers this material into a metaphorically rich whole, envisioning the entire diseased enterprise of exploitation and "development" as a collective surrender to the overstepping venture of Victor Frankenstein himself. The MONSTER, in this book, is the torn and galvanized world itself. [JC] McELROY, JOSEPH (1930- ) US writer who has gained attention for a series of intellectually formidable novels, almost all of which may be described as epistemological studies of contemporary life. Most notable among these are Lookout Cartridge (1974) and the extremely long and ambitious Women and Men (1987). All his work may be most fruitfully likened to the FABULATIONS of US writers like Thomas PYNCHON and Don DELILLO. However, Plus (1977), which dramatizes the experience of an artificially nurtured brain aboard a research satellite, is sf. [GF] McENROE, RICHARD S. (? - ) US writer and literary agent who began writing sf with "Wolkenheim Fairday" for IASFM in 1980. His first two novels were BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY ties: Warrior's World * (1981) and Warrior's Blood * (1981), both based on outlines by Larry NIVEN and Jerry POURNELLE; they were not received with enthusiasm. The Far Stars and Future Times sequence - The Shattered Stars (1983), Flight of Honor (1984) and Skinner (1985)-provides some more competently told sf adventures. RSM has also edited an interesting anthology of original stories, Proteus: Voices for the 80's (anth 1981). [JC] McEVOY, SETH (? - ) US writer. His Not Quite Human sequence of young-adult sf tales is about a teenage ANDROID: Not Quite Human #1: Batteries Not Included (1985), #2: All Geared Up (1985), #3: A Bug in the System (1985), #4: Reckless Robot (1986), #5: Terror at Play (1986) and #6: Killer Robot (1986). The Arcade Explorers sequence, all written with Laure Smith, comprises Arcade Explorers #1: Save the Venturians! (1985), #2: Revenge of the Raster Gang (1985), #3: The Electronic Hurricane (1985) and #4: The Magnetic Ghost of Shadow Island (1985). He also wrote two titles for the Explorer sequence: Destination: Brain * (1987) and Escape from Jupiter * (1987). SM has written one nonfiction text of interest, Samuel R. Delany (1985), a bio-critical study of the writer. [JC] McEWAN, IAN (RUSSELL) (1948- ) UK writer who came to instant fame through the stories assembled in First Love, Last Rites (coll 1975), followed by In Between the Sheets (coll 1978), some of which are fantasy or sf - like "Reflections of a Kept Ape" from the second volume ( APES AND CAVEMEN) - but most of which turn an intensely fabulistic eye ( FABULATION) on young persons caught in the hyperboles of a UK depicted as psychically incontinent and in terminal decline. His first novel, The Cement Garden (1978), is a tale of horror. Of the plays assembled in The Imitation Game (coll 1981), "Solid Geometry" (1978) is sf. Or Shall We Die?: Words for an Oratorio Set to Music by Michael Berkeley (1983 chap) deals with the threat and imagined aftermath of nuclear WAR. The Child in Time (1987) is an sf novel set in the same dystopian NEAR-FUTURE UK adumbrated in "Two Fragments: March 199 - ""(in In Between the Sheets); in this desolate, privatized, factory-farmed venue, the protagonist agonizingly loses his child outside a shop, and his search for her becomes a search for meaning and grace in the desert landscape the UK has become. The Daydreamer (1994 chap) recounts the story-like perceptions of its young protagonist in a style of hallucinated clarity. [JC]" MACEY, PETER (? - ) UK research chemist and writer whose routine sf novels are Stationary Orbit (1974), in which the alien intelligence turns out to be a local dolphin, Distant Relations (1975) and Alien Culture (1977), which features invasion by intelligent microbes. [PN] MACFADDEN, BERNARR (1868-1955) US publisher, writer and film producer, born Bernard Adolphus McFadden; much concerned throughout his life with physical culture, and an espouser of nudism and eccentric health routines in various magazines from early in his career. His acknowledged fiction, beginning with The Athlete's Conquest (1892), is neither sf nor fantasy; but he may have published some pseudonymous genre works in his own magazines. From 1904 his journals featured sf stories and novels. The first was "My Bride from the Other World", a HOLLOW-EARTH tale by the Rev. E.C. Atkins (who may have been BM himself) in Physical Culture; it was followed by the book-length serial "Weird and Wonderful Story of Another World" (1905) as by Tyman Currio (probably John Russell Coryell [1848-1924] with BM's assistance), and many other stories followed in BM's other journals, which included Brain Power (ed F. Orlin TREMAINE 1921-4), Dance World, Metropolitan Fiction Lovers' Magazine, Midnight and Red-Blooded Adventures. The most important early sf novel thus published was Milo HASTINGS's remarkable "Children of 'Kultur'", which appeared in True Story in 1919 and which, revised as City of Endless Night (1920), was one of the central - and most politically prescient - US DYSTOPIAS. Ghost Stories, which BM ran 1926-30 (it then soon folded under new management), concentrated on the supernatural, as did True Strange Stories, whose founding editor was Walter B. GIBSON; but Liberty, a later (and very substantial) BM magazine, published Fred ALLHOFF's Lightning in the Night (1940; 1979), which assumes the WWII triumph of Germany in Europe ( HITLER WINS), though as the novel closes a nuclear stand-off maintains an uneasy peace between Germany and the USA. After WWI, BM's Macfadden Pictures released movies for several years, including Zongar (1918), which features Amazons.BM is most important in the HISTORY OF SF for his role - long obscure - in forcing the bankruptcy of Hugo GERNSBACK in 1929 and taking over AMAZING STORIES, events which occasioned a competitive proliferation of sf magazines; according to Sam MOSKOWITZ - in "Bernarr Macfadden", a 7-part study published in FANTASY COMMENTATOR 1986-92 - BM was, therefore, inadvertently instrumental in setting off the chain of events which a decade later would culminate in the GOLDEN AGE OF SF. [JC] MacFARLANE, STEPHEN John Keir CROSS. McGARRY, MARK J. (1958- ) US writer whose two novels are Sun Dogs (1981) and Blank Slate (1984), both sf adventures. [JC] McGIVERN, WILLIAM P. [r] AMAZING STORIES; Alexander BLADE; P.F. COSTELLO; David Wright O'BRIEN; PULP MAGAZINES. McGOWAN, INEZ [s] Rog PHILLIPS. MacGREGOR, LOREN J. (1950- ) US writer who began publishing sf with his first novel, The Net (1987), a Galaxy-spanning sf adventure involving some unremarkable capers and a play-feud between two spacefaring merchant families. It is redeemed by the thought LJM gives to the implications of body-change technology (the book reminded many readers of John VARLEY) and by his inventive use of the Net itself, which creates a sensory field as well as conveying information in space. [JC] MacGREGOR, RICHARD Pseudonym of UK writer Macgregor Urquhardt (? -? ). Under the name RM were published several routine GENRE-SF novels: The Day a Village Died (1963), Taste of the Temptress (1963), Horror in the Night (1963), The Creeping Plague (1963), The Deadly Suns (1964), The Threat (1964) and The First of the Last (1964). [JC/SH] McGUFFIN A term devised by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) to designate an object whose loss - or rumours of whose existence - triggers the cast of a thriller or detective film into searching for it, or fighting for it, or running from it, but which has in fact no intrinsic meaning once the dust has settled. The use of McGuffins to generate chase-the-searcher plots is widespread in 1920s and 1930s thriller sf and in more recent adventure sf; McGuffin spoors are particularly noticeable in the second volumes of trilogies. The term has been variously spelled "McGuffin", "MacGuffin" and "Maguffin"; we have decided to stick with the spelling chosen by John BOWEN for his novel The McGuffin (1984). [JC] McGUIRE, JOHN J(OSEPH) (1917-1981) US author best known for his collaborations with H. Beam PIPER on the sf action novel Crisis in 2140 (1953 ASF as "Null ABC"; 1957) and on A Planet for Texans (1957 Fantastic Universe as "Lone Star Planet"; 1958). These books are not readily distinguishable from Piper's solo efforts. JM wrote 2 other stories with Piper and 4 solo 1957-64. [JC]See also: COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. McGUIRE, PATRICK (LLEWELLYN) (1949- ) US researcher whose Princeton doctoral thesis was revised as a book, Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction (1985), one of the more useful sources on sf in RUSSIA, although carrying the story only as far as 1976. PM translated Vozvrashchenie (Polden'. 22-i vek) (1962; rev as Polden', XXII vek (Vozvraschenie) 1967; the latter trans as Noon: 22nd Century 1978 US) by Arkady and Boris STRUGATSKI, and wrote the chapter on Russian sf in Anatomy of Wonder: Third Edition (1987) ed Neil BARRON. He has published pieces on both Russian and English-language sf in a variety of books and magazines. [PN] MacHARG, WILLIAM [r] Edwin BALMER. MACHEN, ARTHUR (1863-1947) Welsh writer, translator and actor, born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, his parents adding Machen apparently in an attempt to please a rich relative. AM was an isolated, lonely child, and was from a very early age deeply devoted both to romantic literature and to the Welsh landscape that visually dominated his writings all his life. He also imaginatively applied his extensive if somewhat random readings in the occult and metaphysics to his Welsh background. He was in London for long periods from 1880. The death of his father in 1887 provided him with enough money to marry and to write, but by the end of the century he was once again poverty-stricken. He went on the stage for much of the following decade, and for the rest of his life did a great deal of hackwork. By the time he was rediscovered in the 1920s he was near retirement and no longer capable of producing high-calibre material.With influences ranging from William MORRIS to Robert Louis STEVENSON and associations from John Lane's Bodley Head (at the time it was publishing The Yellow Book) to the Order of the Golden Dawn (whose occultist members included Algernon BLACKWOOD, W.B. Yeats [1865-1939] and Aleister Crowley [1875-1947]), and throughout embodying a conviction that DEVOLUTION and racial degeneracy were scientific facts (his Faerie represents a degenerated race in Britain), AM's fiction generally shies clear of sf as practised in the late-Victorian and Edwardian UK; most of his best tales are horror or occult fantasies. They tend to be set in a medievalized England with Welsh tinges, those set in London being irradiated by deeply romantic visions of alternatives to the industrial world which he saw dominating England, and despised: in both his work and his appearance he resembled a malefic G.K. CHESTERTON. "The Great God Pan", the title story of The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light (coll 1894; exp 1926), is typical of Victorian sf/horror at about the time sf was beginning to shed its GOTHIC elements into a separate HORROR/fantasy genre. The story begins with an sf rationale (brain surgery) for a metamorphosis which remains one of the most dramatically horrible and misogynistic in fiction: the evil female offspring of the operated-on idiot girl grows into a malign being, apparently a woman, but actually a half-human horror whose father may have been the horned god of the story's title. The Terror: A Fantasy (1917; rev 1927) is quasi-sf in its story of animals turning against humans. Through work of this sort, AM's influence, via H.P. LOVECRAFT and others, has been strong on 20th-century GOTHIC SF.Volumes in which fantasy predominates include The Chronicle of Clemendy (coll 1888), The Three Impostors, or The Transmutations (coll 1895; vt Black Crusade 1966), The House of Souls (coll 1906), The Hill of Dreams (1907), The Angels of Mons, The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (coll 1915), The Great Return (1915 chap), The Secret Glory (1922), The Shining Pyramid (coll 1923), The Glorious Mystery (coll 1924, partly nonfiction), Ornaments in Jade (coll 1924 US), Dreads and Drolls (coll 1927), The Green Round (1933), The Cosy Room (coll 1936), The Children of the Pool, and Other Stories (coll 1936), Holy Terrors (coll 1946), Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (coll 1948 US) and The Collected Arthur Machen (coll 1988). [JC/PN]About the author: A Bibliography of Arthur Machen (1965) by Adrian Goldstone and Wesley Sweetser. MACHINES Sf is sometimes considered, especially by its detractors, to be a genre in which machines are more important than people. DEFINITIONS OF SF often deny this, but the assumption that only HARD SF, dealing with the future of TECHNOLOGY, can be "real" sf is very common. Various kinds of machine have exerted a powerful fascination upon the sf imagination, and the social impact of technology has been a continual concern in sf.The first major prose work to celebrate the shape of machines to come (although the earlier drawings of Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519] are justly famous) was Francis BACON's prospectus for the Royal Society, The New Atlantis (1627; 1629), which features a catalogue of marvellous inventions. Bacon's contemporary John WILKINS similarly listed inventions - on which he would be prepared to work if someone would finance him - in Mathematicall Magick (1648). These catalogues aimed to be realistic; the metaphorical usefulness of machines was explored for purposes of SATIRE by Daniel DEFOE in The Consolidator (1705), which features a "cogitator" to force rational thoughts into unwilling brains, a "devilscope" to detect and expose political chicanery, and an "elevator" to facilitate communication between minds and with the spirits of the dead. While Bacon and Wilkins extrapolated from contemporary technology to test the limits of practicality, Defoe suggested miraculous purposes and then proposed machines to serve as symbols for the means to those ends; save for the most conscientious hard-sf writers, the modus operandi of modern sf writers has more in common with Defoe than with Bacon. Such staple devices as TIME MACHINES and FASTER-THAN-LIGHT starships, operating in frank defiance of rationality and known science, function as facilitating devices to give writers access to the infinite realms of possibility. As such they are indispensable, and are frequently included in stories otherwise conscientious in their attempts at realism ( IMAGINARY SCIENCE). With the exception of flying machines - a common concern in speculative fiction in the 17th and 18th centuries - few of the machines anticipated by Bacon and Wilkins played a significant part in sf until the late 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution lent historical confirmation to their prospectuses for technology. Some UTOPIAN writers made much of the productive capacity of factory machinery, but the first major literary disciple of the futuristic machine, Jules VERNE, was primarily interested in vehicles for his imaginary voyages. TRANSPORTATION remained the chief function of machines in sf for some time, though the role was augmented by all manner of exotic WEAPONRY as future- WAR stories became popular. Miracle-working facilitating devices played a limited role in 19th-century sf, although some were employed as means of COMMUNICATION and others as forms of amusement. Examples of the latter include the sporting contraptions ( GAMES AND SPORTS) featured in Anthony TROLLOPE's The Fixed Period (1882) and J.A.C.K.'s Golf in the Year 2000 (1892). Further facilitating devices are found in Edward BELLAMY's Dr Heidenhoff's Process (1880), about a machine which erases unpleasant memories, and in Arthur Conan DOYLE's The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891), about a gold-making machine; but the most important exemplar was provided by H.G. WELLS in THE TIME MACHINE (1895). Another kind of fascination with mechanical contrivance is manifest in various baroque tales and allegories, including E.T.A. HOFFMANN's "Automata" (1814) and "The Sandman" (1816), Nathaniel HAWTHORNE's "The Celestial Railroad" (1843) and Herman MELVILLE's "The Bell-Tower" (1855), in which machines play a quasidiabolical role. This respectful suspicion of machinery is marvellously extrapolated in those chapters of Samuel BUTLER's Erewhon (1872) that present a vision of mechanical evolution. Wells's "The Lord of the Dynamos" (1894), too, reflects this sinister aspect; and L. Frank BAUM's children's fantasy The Master Key (1901) is a cautionary allegory. Enthusiasm for technological achievement and suspicion regarding human relationships with the machine are combined in Morrison's Machine (1900) by Joseph Smith FLETCHER, a curiously intense study of technological creativity.In the last few years of the 19th century the potential of technology was drastically transformed by the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum and the development of the new atomic theory. Vulgar mechanical contraptions were suddenly augmented by the magic of rays and radio, and there seemed to be no limits to possibility. A new era of imaginative exuberance began which took means of transportation (especially SPACESHIPS) and weapons out of the realms of extrapolation into those of boundless fantasy. One of the prophets of the new technology, and one whose understanding of its potential was more realistic than is sometimes appreciated, was Hugo GERNSBACK, the would-be inventor who instead became the publisher of Radio News, Modern Electrics, The Electrical Experimenter and SCIENCE AND INVENTION, and who founded AMAZING STORIES as their companion. In Ralph 124C 41+ (1911-12; 1925) Gernsback produced a catalogue of wonders akin to that in Bacon's The New Atlantis; though painfully naive in literary terms, Ralph proved less incompetent as a technological prospectus.It was not unnatural that the early sf PULP MAGAZINES should go to extremes in their use of machines in a way that Verne never had. The pulp writers were the product of an age of extremely rapid technological advance in which science was coming to seem mysterious again. It was an age when it seemed machines might do anything, when even the satirical metaphors of Defoe's Consolidator could seem plausible as actual devices. The limitless scope of the machine was reverently translated into a kind of quasisupernatural awe in such stories as John W. CAMPBELL Jr's "The Last Evolution" (1932) and "The Machine" (1935 as by Don A. Stuart). What was largely missing from all the extravagant accounts of miracle-working machines, however, was a consciousness of the social implications of extravagant technological advance. Writers outside the genre were little better: Gardner HUNTING's The Vicarion (1926) features a machine that can look through time to record any event from the past, but in Hunting's blinkered view it is merely a new entertainment medium which might make cinema obsolete; the device in Andre MAUROIS's La machine a lire les pensees (1937; trans as The Thought-Reading Machine 1938) is represented as a mere fad. These and many other stories conclude that we might well be better off without miraculous machines. E. Charles VIVIAN's Star Dust (1925), Karel CAPEK's The Absolute at Large (1922; trans 1927) and William M. SLOANE's The Edge of Running Water (1939) are other notable examples of the "no good will come of it all" school of thought. Aldous HUXLEY's BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) is an outstanding attempt to consider large-scale social consequences but it, too, is dominated by the conviction that technological opportunities will be abused. A similar suspicion was widespread in the early sf magazines, particularly in the work of David H. KELLER, but was balanced by Gernsbackian optimism.Campbell's prospectus for sf, promoted in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, demanded more conscientious analyses of the social impact of new machines. Robert A. HEINLEIN was one of the first to take up the challenge, in such stories as "The Roads Must Roll" (1940) and BEYOND THIS HORIZON (1942 as by Anson MacDonald; 1948). The 1940s became, in consequence, the era of the gadget: the small machine with considerable implications. "A Logic Named Joe" (1946) by Will F. Jenkins (Murray LEINSTER) is an archetypal gadget story prefiguring the personal COMPUTER. WWII and the bombing of Hiroshima encouraged the notion that machines had become so powerful that humans were simply not up to the task of responsibly administering their use. Several memorable images of the revolt of the machines appeared in this period: Robert BLOCH's "It Happened Tomorrow" (1943), Clifford D. SIMAK's "Bathe Your Bearings in Blood" (1950; vt "Skirmish") and Lord DUNSANY's The Last Revolution (1951). A particularly powerful parable of the power of the machine acting independently of human control is Theodore STURGEON's "Killdozer!" (1944). T.L. SHERRED's "E for Effort" (1947) features a machine similar to Hunting's vicarion, but goes to an opposite extreme in arguing that its mere presence in the world would precipitate all-out war. Jack WILLIAMSON's "The Equalizer" (1947) is an elegant study of the political implications of free power.As the 1950s progressed, GENRE-SF writers became increasingly prone to show machines out of human control, remaking the world while humanity was swept helplessly along - or left helplessly behind. Philip K. DICK's "Second Variety" (1953), in which self-replicating, independently evolving war machines inherit the Earth, is a striking example. Later works embodying similar images include Fred SABERHAGEN's Berserker series, John T. SLADEK's satirical The Reproductive System (1968; vt MECHASM) and Stanislaw LEM's The Invincible (1964; trans 1973). Anxiety about the alienation of people from their mechanical environment seems to have reached its peak during the 1950s, and the 1960s began a new trend towards uneasy reconciliation, perhaps best exemplified by changes in the typical roles assigned to CYBORGS.In contemporary sf, as in contemporary society, suspicion of machines remains deeply entrenched, but the inevitability of our association with machinery is accepted. The distinction between life and mechanism often becomes blurred, as in Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (1968). The intimacy of the man/machine relationship can only increase still further, and sf stories anticipate this increasing intimacy in all kinds of melodramatic ways; sexual relationships are of course included, as in such stories as Harlan ELLISON's "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" (1967) and "Catman" (1967). The trend towards ever-larger machines was decisively halted by the development of microprocessors, and much contemporary speculation about future machinery is concerned with NANOTECHNOLOGY: the development of machines which are no more than large molecules and can do extensive work inside our bodies as well as perform complex manufacturing tasks in huge vats. Sf has not yet really got to grips with the possibilities of nanomachinery, but a beginning has been made in such stories as Ian WATSON's "Nanoware Time" (1989), Greg BEAR's Queen of Angels (1990) and Michael J. FLYNN's The Nanotech Chronicles (fixup 1991). Pat CADIGAN's Mindplayers (1987) brings up to date the older tradition of stories which feature psychologically intrusive machinery.The growth of the awareness that mankind and machine are inextricably bound together in contemporary society has deflected attention away from the miraculous potential of the machine. The naive assumption that all human problems might be solved by appropriate technological innovations, not uncommon in the 1930s, has been replaced by the assumption that human nature is bound to be remade by new machinery in problematic ways. Machines have largely lost their force as symbols of individual freedom and power, and with this loss the potential of high-tech sf to provide simple escapist fantasies and power fantasies has been eroded. Given this, it is not entirely surprising to find so much contemporary sf being set in imaginary pasts ( ALTERNATE WORLDS), in futures returned to primitivism ( HOLOCAUST AND AFTER) or on technologically primitive lost colonies ( COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS). Formerly, speculative fiction's main concern in dealing with machines was the adaptation of machines to pre-existent human purposes (and this is equally true of Baconian extrapolation and Defoesque fantasy); now the main concern is with the challenges facing our descendants as they are forced to adapt, physically and mentally, to their mechanical achievements and environments. [BS]See also: AUTOMATION; CYBERPUNK; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; DYSTOPIAS; STEAMPUNK. McHUGH, MAUREEN F. (1959- ) US writer (her middle initial stands for nothing) who began publishing sf with "All in a Day's Work" for Twilight Zone Magazine in 1988, writing as by Michael Galloglach. Her first novel, CHINA MOUNTAIN ZHANG (1992), which has been criticized for loose plotting, works in fact as a complex and multi-faceted portrayal of a 22nd century world dominated by China, through the eyes of the eponymous gay half-Chinese protagonist, who drifts through the world with a kind heart, an accurate eye, and a constant apprehension of death, for homosexuality is a capital offense. The text includes excursions to Mars, and various episodes which only seem to be longueurs if China Mountain himself were about to change the world: which he is not. MFMcH's second novel, Half the Day is Night (1994), makes similarly acute observations of the ways human beings may cope with a straitened, desperately crowded future, fitting them on this occasion into a more tightly organized plot: a French-Vietnamese recently in Africa comes to a Caribbean undersea city to work as a bodyguard for a woman banker threatened by assassination. It is a world more complicated than he can understand-in both her novels, MFMcH serenely violates any presumption that the protagonists of a genre fiction must eventually understand and control what's happening to them-and for that reason it is a world readers may find alarmingly familiar. [JC] McHUGH, VINCENT (1904-1983) US writer whose comic saga Caleb Catlum's America (1936) is about a family of immortals ( IMMORTALITY) who amusingly represent the high points of US history in the flesh (the family includes Abe Lincoln and Davy Crockett). I Am Thinking of My Darling (1943), in which an inhibition-releasing epidemic hits New York, cuts surprisingly deep in its superficially comic examination of the consequences. [JC]See also: PSYCHOLOGY. McILRAITH, FRANK [r] Roy CONNOLLY. McINNES, GRAHAM (CAMPBELL) (1912-1970) UK-born, Australian-educated Canadian diplomat and novelist, son of the novelist Angela Thirkell (1890-1961) - another son of hers was Colin MacInnes (1914-1976). Most of GM's work is not sf, but Lost Island (1954) is a lost-race story ( LOST WORLDS). [PN] McINTOSH, J.T. Pseudonym (in some earlier work spelled M'Intosh) of Scottish writer and journalist James Murdoch MacGregor (1925- ), used for all his sf writing, though he has written non-sf under his own name. He began publishing sf with "The Curfew Tolls" in ASF in 1950, producing many stories (though no collections) through 1980. With his first novel, World out of Mind (1953 US), he fully entered a career that was, in its early years, notably successful. World out of Mind implausibly but enjoyably sets a disguised ALIEN on an Earth dominated by aptitude tests, where he wins his way to the top and thence prepares the way for INVASION. Born Leader (1954 US; vt Worlds Apart 1958) puts two sets of colonists from a destroyed Earth on nearby planets, where the authoritarian set conflicts with the libertarian set. In One in Three Hundred (1954 US), with Earth doomed again, pilots of the only rocketships available are given the task of selecting those they will save of the planet's billions of inhabitants. The Fittest (1955 US; vt The Rule of the Pagbeasts 1956 US) depicts the harrowing effects of a misfired experiment to increase animal INTELLIGENCE. 200 Years to Christmas (1961 dos US) is a routine but competent variation on the GENERATION-STARSHIP theme.Although some of JTM's novels in the 1960s and 1970s continued to show his professional skill with a plot and his competence at creating identifiable characters, his work began to show some slackening of interest: The Million Cities (1958 Satellite; rev 1963 US) is a bland urban DYSTOPIA; The Noman Way (1952 as "The E.S.P. Worlds"; 1964) uninterestingly repeats the test situation of his first novel, which seems to have been something of a preoccupation of his, for it turns up also in the serial "The Lady and the Bull" (1955 Authentic). Out of Chaos (1965) is a routine post- HOLOCAUST novel; Time for a Change (1967; vt Snow White and the Giants 1968 US) treats a local intrusion of time-travelling aliens as a domestic issue; Flight from Rebirth (1960 as "Immortality - For Some"; much exp 1971 US), a chase tale in an urban setting, again features testing.JTM never lost the vivid narrative skills that made him an interesting figure of 1950s sf, but his failure to challenge himself in his later career led to results that verged on mediocrity. After 1980 he fell silent. [JC]Other works: Six Gates from Limbo (1968); Transmigration (1970 US); The Cosmic Spies (1972); The Space Sorcerers (1972; vt The Suiciders 1973 US); Galactic Takeover Bid (1973); Ruler of the World (cut 1976 Canada; rev vt This is the Way the World Begins 1977 UK); Norman Conquest 2066 (1977); A Planet Called Utopia (1979 US).About the author: J.T. McIntosh: Memoir & Bibliography (1987 chap US) by Ian Covell.See also: ANDROIDS; DISASTER; END OF THE WORLD; GAMES AND SPORTS; IMMORTALITY; SUN. MacINTYRE, F(EARGUS) GWYNPLAINE (?1948- ) UK-born writer, who was raised in Australia, and began his career in the UK with rewrite work-though no complete novels-for paperback publishers of routine sf in the late 1960s; he is now resident in the US. After contributing some material to the Welsh magazine Raven in the 1970s, he began publishing work of sf interest with "For Cheddar or Worse" for IASFM in 1980. As a ghost-writer, he wrote parts of Jerzy KOSINSKI's Pinball (1984), giving a character in the book his own unusual middle name. His first novel was an unremarkable contribution to the fourth Tom Swift series ( TOM SWIFT), The DNA Disaster * (1991) as by Victor APPLETON; but his first novel in his own name was the altogether more interesting The Woman Between the Worlds (1994), a RECURSIVE tale-involving, among others, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and Arthur Conan DOYLE-set in late 19th century England. The ambience is less STEAMPUNK than Gaslight Romance, given an ornate plot involving a PARALLEL WORLD run on lines derived from the work of H.P. LOVECRAFT, and an invisible woman ( INVISIBILITY) escaping from that other world, who fascinates the protagonist by asking him to give her a full-body tattoo, thus making her visible. [JC] McINTYRE, VONDA N(EEL) (1948- ) US writer and geneticist, one of the earliest successful graduates of the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP, which she attended in 1970. So far as the editors can establish, she began to publish sf with "Only at Night" in Clarion (anth 1971) ed Robin Scott WILSON, and gained prominence with "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" (1973), which won a NEBULA for Best Novelette and served as the initial section of DREAMSNAKE (fixup 1978), her best known novel to date, which won her another Nebula as well as a HUGO. The female protagonist of both story and book is a healer in a desolated primitive venue, the violent and destructive superstitions of whose inhabitants lead to her losing her healer snake, with which she was linked through complex imprinting. The book version goes on to recount her quest for a replacement snake, a search through a strongly depicted post- HOLOCAUST environment which includes gruelling experiences in the city that had served as the central venue for VNM's first novel, The Exile Waiting (1975; rev 1976 UK). That book likewise features a female protagonist with singular empathic powers: she is a sneak thief - the plot is complicated - who manages to escape Earth's last city with a Japanese poet from the stars and a virtuous "pseudosib" (the bad "twin" having been killed in the city) and in due course Earth entirely, with the prognosis that she will become a successful starfarer.After Fireflood and Other Stories (coll 1979), which assembled her best short work, VNM became associated with the STAR TREK enterprise, producing the RECURSIVE Star Trek: The Entropy Effect * (1981) and 3 film ties - Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan * (1982), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock * (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home * (1986) - as well as Star Trek: Enterprise: The First Adventure * (1986). Her next independent novel, Superluminal (1977 as "Aztecs" in 2076: The American Tricentennial ed Edward BRYANT; exp 1983), places its female protagonist in a rite-of-passage situation - she must replace her organic heart with an artificial device in order to become a starship pilot, but manages nonetheless to retain her humanity - and is significantly open to a FEMINIST reading. Barbary (1986) is directed to a younger audience. The Starfarers series - comprisingStarfarers (1989),Transition (1991), Metaphase (1992) and Nautilus (1994) - is likewise written with deliberate clarity and ease. VNM's recent work is considerably less demanding than the novels and stories of her first professional decade but it continues to demonstrate her argued, numerate and humane approach - via the instruments of sf - to feminist concerns.Aurora: Beyond Equality (anth 1976) ed with Susan Janice Anderson is a collection of feminist sf stories, not all by women. [JC]Other works: The Bride * (1985), a film tie; Screwtop (1976 in The Crystal Ship ed Robert SILVERBERG; 1989 chap dos); Star Wars: The Crystal Star * (1994).See also: CYBORGS; FASTER THAN LIGHT; SPACE FLIGHT. MacISAAC, FRED(ERICK JOHN) (1886-1940) US writer who appeared frequently in Argosy after WWI with stories in which his sober prophetic intelligence wrestles with his PULP-MAGAZINE instincts, and usually loses. His work remains of interest, however. The Vanishing Professor (1926 Argosy; 1927) complicatedly engages a venal scientist, inventor of an INVISIBILITY machine, with crime czars and detectives. "The Great Commander" (1926 Argosy All-Story) adumbrates Richard CONDON's Emperor of America (1990). "World Brigands" (1928 Argosy All-Story) suggests that the USA will develop an atomic bomb around 1940 in response to threats of war. The Mental Marvel (1930) deals with a boxer whose skills represent an evolutionary leap. The Hothouse World (1931 Argosy; 1965) awakes its protagonist from SUSPENDED ANIMATION into the insanely restrictive post-catastrophe world of AD2051 - its inhabitants pent in a single tower - which he liberates once it is demonstrated that the air outside can again be breathed. [JC]See also: CITIES; ECONOMICS; POLITICS. McIVER, G(EORGE M.) (? -? ) Australian writer, still alive in 1943. His Neuroomia: A New Continent: A Manuscript Delivered from the Deep (1894 UK) routinely uncovers a clement LOST WORLD in the Antarctic inhabited by a long-lived high-tech folk who inform us that Mars is inhabited and spins off her excess population by dumping them on a visiting planet. [JC] MacKAY, (JAMES ALEXANDER) KENNETH (1859-1935) Australian writer and politician whose sf novel, The Yellow Wave: A Romance of the Asiatic Invasion of Australia (1895 UK), describes a Chinese invasion in 1954 under the guidance of Russia, the romance which causes the death of the secret leader of the invaders, and the continuing war which, as the book ends, the Australians seem likely to lose. [JC]See also: AUSTRALIA. MACKAYE, HAROLD STEELE (1866-1928) US writer whose sf novel is The Panchronicon (1904). This TIME-TRAVEL story is whimsically condescending about its provincial characters, who travel in a TIME MACHINE (left by a traveller from the future who died) that operates by repeatedly and very rapidly circumnavigating the north pole (to which it is attached by a chain) in the same direction as the Sun. The romance in Tudor England that follows shows some awareness of TIME PARADOX, but little is done with the idea. [PN] McKEAG, ERNEST L(IONEL) (1896-1974) UK author who began writing boys' fiction in 1921, some of it featuring the occasional sf MCGUFFIN and several LOST WORLDS. In his later career he published many non-sf novels under the house name "GRIFF"Invaded by Mars (1934) and Terror from the Stratosphere (1937), both as by Jack Maxwell, are juvenile sf. The Shuna sequence - Shuna, White Queen of the Jungle (1951) and Shuna and the Lost Tribe (1951), both as by John King - rounds up the usual suspects: lost worlds, PSI POWERS and so forth. The first of these tales has an sf flavour: asteroid-dwelling space beetles invade, kidnap an Inca city and take off with it for the Moon. [JC] McKEAN, DAVE Working name of UK COMIC-strip and GRAPHIC-NOVEL artist David Jeff McKean (1963- ), whose subtle, sophisticated techniques - which include collage, the reworking of photographic negatives, the use of found objects, and a transformative take on most categories of 20th century art - challengingly extend the potential range of the form. He attended Berkshire College of Art and Design 1982-6. His first publication was Violent Cases (graph 1987 in monochrome; 1991 coloured) written by Neil GAIMAN, a short graphic novel about childhood memories of an encounter with Al Capone's osteopath. He provided some haunting covers for DC COMICS's Hellblazer and Sandman comic books, and painted artwork for the 3-part graphic novel Black Orchid (graph 1988 US; omni 1991 US), written by Gaiman, and the bestselling graphic novel Arkham Asylum (graph 1989 US), written by Grant Morrison. His other work has included Signal to Noise (1989 The Face; graph rev 1992), written by Gaiman, about a dying film-maker plotting out his last movie in the knowledge that he will never make it;Cages (1991-2 US), which DM both wrote and drew, a long episodic piece about creativity and cats; and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch (graph 1994), also with Gaiman, also - like Violent Cases - mixing autobiography (Gaiman's) and fantasy, and perhaps the two collaborators' finest work to date. He won the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist in 1991. DM formed the theatre group The Unauthorised Sex Company with Colin GREENLAND, Simon Ings (1965- ) and Geoff RYMAN; debut performances were in 1991 at Mexicon and on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is increasingly active as a cover artist for GOLLANCZ and other publishers. [RT]See also: ARKHAM HOUSE; ILLUSTRATION. MACKELWORTH, R(ONALD) W(ALTER) (1930- ) UK writer and insurance salesman who began publishing sf with "The Statue" for NW in 1963 and produced some above-average sf adventure novels, usually involving complex, sometimes jumbled plotting, and an Earth somehow in danger. They include Firemantle (1968; vt The Diabols 1969 US), Tiltangle (1970 US), Starflight 3000 (1972 US) - which involves some interesting TERRAFORMING of both the Moon and other planets - The Year of the Painted World (1975) and Shakehole (1981), a DYSTOPIAN vision of a NEAR-FUTURE UK. [JC] McKENNA, RICHARD M(ILTON) (1913-1964) US writer who spent most of his adult life, not very happily, in the US Navy, which he joined in 1931. After returning to civilian life in 1953, he took a BA in literature at the University of North Carolina. His first published story was "Casey Agonistes" for FSF in 1958, although the first he wrote was "The Fishdollar Affair" (1958), which appeared in If. His efforts to revise the former story according to the editor's demands are described in his essay "Journey with a Little Man", which was reprinted in Damon KNIGHT's anthology of sf criticism, Turning Points (anth 1977). RMM was to publish only 5 more sf stories during his lifetime; another 6 appeared posthumously. 5 of the strongest were assembled in Casey Agonistes and other Fantasy and Science Fiction Stories (coll 1973). The central theme of these stories is the power of mind over environment - either to adapt the existing one or, ultimately, to create something new. "The Secret Place" (1966), which won a posthumous NEBULA, is about PARALLEL WORLDS which can be reached through the power of the mind, while "Fiddler's Green" (1967), perhaps RMM's most ambitious story, tells of a group of men adrift in a small boat, without food and water, who mentally create an ALTERNATE WORLD into which they may escape. RMM's major work was a successful non-sf novel drawing on his naval experiences, The Sand Pebbles (1962), filmed in 1966. He died soon after writing the book; even had he lived it is unlikely that he would have written more sf. Nonetheless, his existing body of sf was sufficient to secure him a small, sure position in the sf pantheon. [MJE]About the author: "Casey Agonistes" by Peter NICHOLLS in Survey of Science Fiction Literature, Volume One (1979) ed Frank N. Magill.See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ECOLOGY; PARANOIA; PASTORAL; PERCEPTION. MACKENZIE, [Sir] (EDWARD MONTAGUE) COMPTON (1883-1972) Scottish writer, knighted in 1952, best known for his influential Bildungsroman, Sinister Street (2 vols 1913-14). His sf novel, The Lunatic Republic (1959), one of his many comic entertainments, depicts, with considerable slapstick in an easy-going, winning style, the UTOPIAN society that exists at the end of the century on the MOON. Two fantasies, Hunting the Fairies (1949) and The Rival Monster (1952), display the pawkish whimsy which made novels like Whisky Galore (1947) so popular. [JC] McKENZIE, MELINDA Melinda M. SNODGRASS. McKEONE, (DIXIE) LEE (? - ) US author of the Ghoster sequence of sf adventures - Ghoster (1988), Backblast (1989) and Starfire Down (1991). The tales are set in undemanding interstellar venues in which human enterprises flourish. [JC] McKIE, ANGUS (1951- ) UK illustrator. AM studied at Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Art. From the mid-1970s his sf work appeared often on book covers, in picture books like Alien Landscapes (1979) by Robert HOLDSTOCK and Malcolm EDWARDS, and also in his own The Flights of Icarus (1977). At first AM worked mostly in the Chris FOSS style which dominated UK paperback book covers of the 1970s, whether relevant to the content or not: usually air-brushed ILLUSTRATIONS featuring high-tech artefacts, often space hardware, rendered with great detail. As that particular stereotype began to fade, AM's work, among the most proficient of its kind, showed greater variety. AM has an exceptional feel for scale: when he paints an object supposed to be huge it really looks huge. [PN/JG] McKILLIP, PATRICIA A(NNE) (1948- ) US writer whose early books were all fantasy, mostly for children. These showed an increasing assurance (and appeared to be for increasingly older children) from The House on Parchment Street (1973) through The Throme of the Erril of Sherill (1973; exp with "The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath" [1982] as coll 1984) and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974), an assurance which culminated in the Riddle-Master trilogy: The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), Heir of Sea and Fire (1978) and Harpist in the Wind (1979), assembled as Riddle of Stars (omni 1979; vt The Chronicles of Morgon, Prince of Hed 1981 UK). It has been argued, by Peter NICHOLLS in Survey of Modern Fantastic Literature (1983) ed Frank N. Magill, that the trilogy is a work of classic stature: the intricate narrative of its quest story echoes a moral complexity almost unheard-of in fantasy trilogies; PAM's protagonist has a special skill at unravelling riddles and, through a series of strategies (including subliminal hints as little obvious as leaves in a forest) not unlike those adopted by Gene WOLFE in his Book of the New Sun series (1980-83), she forces the reader also to become a decipherer of codes. Thus the book's meaning is enacted by the way it must be read. While in no way resembling sf, the trilogy contains one of the most sophisticated uses of the shapeshifter theme to be found anywhere in sf or fantasy.Her sf proper began with the poignant Kyreol sequence for young adults: Moon-Flash (1984) and The Moon and the Face (1985). Much as in her fantasy books, the central theme is CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH, in this case from an Edenic but primitive POCKET UNIVERSE, Riverworld, which turns out to be an isolated corner of a planet containing the way station of an interstellar civilization, and the protected object of anthropological study. FOOL'S RUN (1987), which is adult sf, retells the Orpheus myth in a story of a woman visionary who has been found guilty of mass murder and is incarcerated in a prison satellite, the Underworld; it is memorable for its evocative sequences about future MUSIC.PAM's sf is unusual and well written, but perhaps she is more at home with fantasy, to which she returned with the haunting The Sorceress and the Cygnet (1991) - and its sequel, The Cygnet and the Firebird (1994) - set in a land where star constellations manifest themselves as gods or people and transform the mutable human world into ageless story. [PN]Other works: The Night Gift (1976), marginal fantasy; Stepping from the Shadows (1982), a possibly autobiographical novel about the growing-up of a fantasy writer; The Changeling Sea (1988), young-adult fantasy; Brian Froud's Faerielands: Something Rich and Strange (1994).See also: ARTS; CHILDREN'S SF; MAGIC; MYTHOLOGY; SPACE HABITATS. McKINNEY, JACK Collaborative pseudonym of Brian C. DALEY and James LUCENO. [JC] MacLAREN, BERNARD (? - ) UK writer whose sf novel Day of Misjudgment (1956) unusually represents the domination of society by COMPUTERS as more of a blessing than a curse. [JC] McLAUGHLIN, DEAN (BENJAMIN Jr) (1931- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "For Those who Follow After" for ASF in 1951. Of his three sf novels - Dome World (1958 ASF; exp 1962), The Fury from Earth (1963) and The Man who Wanted Stars (fixup 1965) - the last is probably the best, though all of these straightforward adventures are densely written. The first is set UNDER THE SEA, the second describes a war between Earth and a liberated VENUS, and the third depicts one man's long, driven quest to force and trick Earth governments into attaining interstellar SPACE FLIGHT. Hawk Among the Sparrows (coll 1976) assembles stories of the 1960s. DM's subject matter and style were fairly typical of those encouraged by John W. CAMPBELL Jr during his editorial domination of ASF. [JC]See also: POLLUTION; STARS. MacLEAN, ALISTAIR (STUART) (1922-1987) Scottish writer whose novels are mostly - like The Guns of Navarone (1957) - well crafted action adventures, usually set at least in part at sea. The Dark Crusader (1961) and The Satan Bug (1962), both as by Ian Stuart, are Cold War thrillers which make use of sf MCGUFFINS. The Golden Gate (1976) features the abduction of a US President. Farewell California (1977) deals with the threat of a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, an event that would sink much of the eponymous state beneath the Pacific. [JC] MacLEAN, KATHERINE (ANNE) (1925- ) US writer who took a BA from Barnard College, New York, did postgraduate study in psychology, became a quality-control lab technician in a food factory, and subsequently served as a college lecturer in creative writing and literature. Much of KM's work has been short stories, most of which, including her first, "Defense Mechanism" in 1949, appeared in ASF. She has generally written under her own name, although some stories were as by Charles Dye (Charles DYE was her husband 1951-3; see his entry for details) and one as by A.G. Morris; she was also married 1956-62 to David MASON. KM was in the vanguard of those sf writers trying to apply to the SOFT SCIENCES the machinery of the hard sciences in a generally optimistic reading of the potentials of that application; her range and competence in dealing with technological matters may in part reflect the wide range of occupations in her extra-literary life. Despite this subject matter her tone was generally that of HARD SF, and her work was unconnected with the later NEW-WAVE uses of the same basic material. KM was one of the earlier WOMEN SF WRITERS, but it would be neither desirable nor possible to read her stories as "women's" sf: in a field which was, in 1950, notoriously male-chauvinist she competed on equal terms, not restricting herself to "feminine" themes or protagonists, and not generally using a male pseudonym. A number of her stories were assembled in The Diploids (coll 1962) and The Trouble with You Earth People (coll 1980).Many of KM's early stories have been anthologized. Perhaps the best-known are "Pictures Don't Lie" (1951), which tells of the arrival of an alien SPACESHIP which seems normal according to advance radio signals but turns out to be little more than microscopic, "The Snowball Effect" (1952), an amusing SATIRE on social engineering in which a ladies' knitting circle expands to become the strongest political pressure group in the USA, and "Unhuman Sacrifice" (1958), an important piece of anthropological sf ( ANTHROPOLOGY) in which a visiting exploration/contact team on another planet misreads a painful initiation ceremony as needless when its purpose is to prevent a damaging biological change. Also notable is the Hills of Space series, dealing with the settling of the ASTEROIDS by refugees, fugitives and the poor; it includes "Incommunicado" (1950), "The Man who Staked the Stars" (1952 as by Charles Dye), "Collision Orbit" (1954), "The Gambling Hell and the Sinful Girl" (1975) and a long-projected novel, provisionally titled The Hills of Space.KM's first novel, Cosmic Checkmate (1958 ASF as "Second Game"; exp 1962 dos; exp vt Second Game 1981), with Charles DE VET, combines SPACE OPERA with interesting speculations on a society whose hierarchy is built around skill at games ( GAMES AND SPORTS). Missing Man (fixup 1975), which contains the 1971 NEBULA-winning story "The Missing Man" (1971), deals with the exploits of an ESPER whose telepathy is a kind of sonar device enabling him to trace people emitting emotional distress signals; he cooperates with New York's Rescue Squad to go to their aid. Unusually for sf, the novel depicts New York with affection. Dark Wing (1979), with Carl West, less convincingly presents a world in which MEDICINE is forbidden: a teenager learns to become an outlaw surgeon by studying a medical kit. [JC/PN]Other work: Trouble with Treaties (1959 Star Science Fiction #5 ed Frederick POHL; 1975 chap).See also: ALIENS; PHYSICS; RELIGION; SOCIOLOGY. MacLENNAN, (JOHN) HUGH (1907-1990) Canadian novelist who early published two DYSTOPIAN tales, "The Finding of the Way" (1955 The Montrealer) and "Remembrance Day, 2010 A.D." (1957 The Montrealer), but almost all of whose works, like his second novel, Two Solitudes (1945), lay outside the field and were shaped by the search for a Canadian national myth. His only sf novel, Voices in Time (1980), whose frame story is set in Montreal in AD2039 after a nuclear HOLOCAUST, reflects the failure of that search in a dour meditation on the cycles of Canadian history. [JC]See also: CANADA. MacLEOD, ANGUS (1906- ) Scottish writer of fiction and plays for RADIO. His sf novels are The Body's Guest (1958), in which a yoga machine built by an Indian physicist switches identities between nine Scots and a bull, with mildly amusing results, and The Eighth Seal (1962). [JC/PN] MacLEOD, SHEILA (1939- ) Scottish writer, married for several years to actor and pop singer Paul Jones ( PRIVILEGE), an experience reflected in her first novel, The Moving Accident (1968). Her second, The Snow-White Soliloquies (1970), is a FABULATION with surprisingly firm sf underpinning, describing in technological terms the SUSPENDED ANIMATION of its eponymous heroine as the search for a Prince continues in a grey world. Xanthe and the Robots (1977), set in an Institute for Advanced Robotic Research, explores the creation of "Philophrenics" ( ROBOTS of near-human capability) and the problems their all-too-human designers face in deciding how far to attempt to exploit their development; it is an intelligent and sophisticated novel. Circuit-Breaker (1978) entertainingly mixes INNER SPACE and outer, describing an astronaut's attempts to use his PSI POWERS to save his ship - assuming the hero is indeed an astronaut and not a mental case or an sf writer: the ending is ambiguous. [MJE/PN/JC] McLOUGHLIN, JOHN C. (1949- ) US writer whose first novel, The Helix and the Sword (1983), is an sf adventure of some competence, and whose second, Toolmaster Koan (1987), more interestingly sets up a Soviet-US tussle - to be the first to meet an ALIEN seemingly arriving from outer space in a GENERATION STARSHIP - as a dramatic representation of the ongoing thematic argument that gives shape to the tale. This argument, extrapolated from evolutionary BIOLOGY, suggests that any species, once it acquires tools, enters an almost certainly fatal period of disequilibrium between that manipulative capacity and its powers of self-control. In the end, the "aliens" turn out to be dinosaurs, relics of Earth's last self-destructive evolutionary surge, and augurs of the failure to come. [JC] McMAHON, PAT [s] Edward D. HOCH. McMULLEN, SEAN (CHRISTOPHER) (1948- ) Australian writer whose first professional sf sale was "The Pharaoh's Airship" for Omega Science Digest in 1986. The best of his craftsmanlike stories appear in Call to the Edge (coll 1992), a notable example being "The Colours of the Masters" (1988), in which a 19th-century device, the clockwork "pianospectrum", is discovered to have recorded the playing of Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt.Voices in the Light (fixup 1994), which begins the Greatwinter sequence, is an exceedingly complex post- HOLOCAUST tale set in a densely imagined Australia broken into many individual states which are linked by heliograph. The main story involves the gradual perfection of a kind of COMPUTER whose components are human calculators, along with an equally gradual movement towards the comprehension of the "Call" - the title story of SM's collection is worked into this novel - which periodically entraps humans and large animals into a fatal trek southwards to the ravening sea. The holocaust had been man-made, and had generated the first Greatwinter; a new freezing-down is threatened. The series is projected to continue with Mirrorsun Rising (1995) and The Miocene Arrow. [PN/JC]See also: MUSIC. McNEILLY, WILFRED GLASSFORD (1921-1983) Scottish author of numerous novels and stories under a variety of names; he achieved some minor notoriety when he claimed in print to have written all the work published under the byline W. Howard BAKER-actually WGM's editor on stories written for the Sexton Blake library and for Press Editorial Syndicate - and various other Baker pseudonyms, a claim since disproved. WGM did write (as Errol Lecale) the Specialist series: Tigerman of Terrahpur (1973), Castledoom (1974), The Severed Hand (1974), The Death Box (1974), Zombie (1975) and Blood of My Blood (1975). As Peter SAXON, another house name, he cowrote with Baker 2 tales in the Guardians sequence: Dark Ways to Death * (1968) and The Haunting of Alan Mais * (1969). Non-series collaborations with Baker include The Darkest Night (1966) and The Torturer (1966). Solo titles as Saxon include Satan's Child (1967) and Corruption (dated 1968 but 1969). WGM is also credited with Drums of the Dark Gods (1966) as by W.A. Ballinger; The Case of the Muckrakers (1966), a Sexton Blake title; and Alpha-Omega (1977) as by Wilfred Glassford. [SH/JC] McNELLY, [Dr] WILLIS E(VERETT) (1920- ) US academic, sf critic and editor long based at California State University at Fullerton, where he gave what were among the earlier sf classes in the USA. His anthologies include Mars, We Love You (anth 1971; vt The Book of Mars 1976 UK) ed with Jane Hipolito, Above the Human Landscape: A Social Science Fiction Anthology (anth 1972) ed with Leon E. STOVER and Science Fiction Novellas (anth 1975) ed with Harry HARRISON; the last title had a companion work, Science Fiction Novellas: Teacher's Guide (1975) by WEM alone. He edited a collection of brief essays about the increasing interest of the academic world in sf ( SF IN THE CLASSROOM), Science Fiction: The Academic Awakening (anth 1974 chap). WEM's strangest work is certainly The Dune Encyclopedia (anth 1984); it purports to have been published about 5000 years after the birth of Paul Atreides, protagonist of Frank HERBERT's DUNE (fixup 1965), and presents data about the history and ecology of the planet Dune. [PN] MacPATTERSON, F. Clark DARLTON. McPHEE, JAMES Laurence JAMES. MacPHERSON, DONALD (? - ) Canadian author, perhaps a pseudonym of George MacTavish. Go Home, Unicorn (1935 UK) is a SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE set in Montreal, in which the life of a research scientist - loved by two women, one jealous - is much confused by projections, into the world of matter, of their (and other people's) mental fantasies, brought into being by the X-ray field he is using to create mutations in guinea-pigs; there is much scientific speculation, rather far-fetched, about the nature of the mind/matter division. The sequel, Men are Like Animals (1937 UK), likewise features research scientist Reggie Brooks, and involves a device that controls thoughts. [PN] McQUAY, MIKE Working name of US writer Michael Dennis McQuay (1949- ), who began to publish sf with his first novel, Life-Keeper (1980), which very competently presents the kind of scenario MM has unrelentingly promulgated in book after book: a world governed by corrupt forces; a tough, anarchic, street-wise male protagonist whose powers - and virtue - are very exceptional indeed; and a plot which gives plenty of opportunities for arena-like conflicts between that protagonist and the corrupt forces he will ultimately defeat. The Mathew Swain sequence - Hot Time in Old Town (1981), When Trouble Beckons (1981), The Deadliest Show in Town (1982) and The Odds are Murder (1983) - makes explicit the generic origins of this hero, who derives from the works of Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) and Chandler's direct successors. As the series develops, Swain fights corruption first on Earth, then on the Moon and then on Earth again, always finding fit targets in the organizations which dominate society. Escape from New York * (1981), a film tie ( ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK), if anything intensifies the seamy clangour of the movie version. Jitterbug (1984) interestingly posits an Arab hegemony over a corruptly DYSTOPIAN 22nd-century world. The Ramon and Morgan series - Pure Blood (1985) and Mother Earth (1985) - exploits similar venues without much innovation. MM's best novel to date is perhaps Memories (1987), in which the Weltschmerz inherent in the Chandler tradition is cleverly re-articulated in the story of a woman who arrives by a form of subjective TIME TRAVEL from a devastated future, and who embroils the psychiatrist hero in further travels backwards into a somewhat sentimentalized understanding on both their parts of the depth of their deracination from the real world. The Nexus (1989) likewise handles material of considerable complexity, in this case a NEAR-FUTURE tale of innocence exploited. It is difficult to be sure that MM's copious energy will eventually control his equally apparent sentimentality; but he remains, without doubt, one of the more interesting professionals in the field. [JC]Other works: My Science Project * (1985), a tie to MY SCIENCE PROJECT (1985); The M.I.A. Ransom (1986); Isaac Asimov's Robot City #2: Suspicion * (1987); Puppetmaster (1991 UK; rev 1991 US), associational thriller; State of Siege (1994), a near-future thriller.As Victor Appleton (house name): Tom Swift: Crater of Mystery * (1983); Tom Swift: Planet of Nightmares * (1984).As Jack Arnett: The Book of Justice sequence of associational thrillers, those of some sf interest being #1: Genocide Express (1989), #2: Zaitech Sting (1990) and #4: Panama Dead (1990).As Laura Lee Hope (house name): Bobbsey Twins: Haunted House * (1985).As Carolyn Keene (house name): Nancy Drew: Ghost Stories * (coll 1985).See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD. McQUEEN, RONALD A. [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. McQUINN, DONALD E. (1930- ) US writer whose first sf novel (his fifth overall), Warrior (1990), packs into its setting - a USA 500 years after the nation's nuclear destruction - almost every CLICHE available to writers of barbarian-warrior novels: a variety of agon-based tribal societies; a woman-run church; a batch of 21st-century warriors freshly resurrected from CRYONIC slumber and ready for a fight; an evil monarch bent on establishing an Empire; and a protagonist who must wander from one enclave to another, gradually accumulating a passel of friends and adherents as he goes. But the book itself, despite its (well handled) military moments, is in effect a PLANETARY ROMANCE, and in its 500 pages slowly and lovingly establishes an extremely complex portrait of a huge, densely populated, intensely variegated land. Several women characters have featured roles (though most of them are oppressed); the sequels, Wanderer (1993) and Witch (1994), do not, perhaps, quite maintain that sense of the multifarious, but it does continue to seem that DEM might be one of the novelists to watch in the 1990s. [JC] MACROCOSM GREAT AND SMALL. MacTYRE, PAUL Pseudonym of Scottish writer R.J. Adam (1924- ). His best-known novel is his first, Midge (1962; vt Doomsday, 1999 1963 US), a literate post- HOLOCAUST story in which a new form of life threatens to take over from the remnants of outmoded, destructive Man. Further novels are the John Buchanesque Fish on a Hook (1963) and Bar Sinister (1964), the bar of the title representing a borderline-sf COMMUNICATIONS technology. [JC] MacVICAR, ANGUS [r] The LOST PLANET ; RADIO. MADACH, IMRE (1823-1864) Hungarian playwright and parliamentarian, chiefly known for his verse play Az ember tragediaja (1862; trans J.C.W. Horne as The Tragedy of Man: A Dramatic Poem in Fifteen Scenes 1963 Hungary; preferred trans by George Szirtes 1988 Hungary). This philosophical, rather pessimistic fantasy about the destiny of mankind focuses on Adam (an optimist), Eve and Lucifer (a materialist), who reappear in each scene in different guises (Adam once as Johannes KEPLER), all this being a dream shown to Adam by Lucifer. The somewhat high-flown narrative begins in biblical times and ends in the future; one of the last scenes is set in space, and another on a Dying Earth in the FAR FUTURE when the Sun is dim and red. [PN] MADARIAGA (Y ROJO), SALVADOR de (1886-1978) Spanish man of letters and diplomat who spent much of his life after 1916 in the UK and Switzerland, where he eventually retired. In his sf novel, The Sacred Giraffe: Being the Second Volume of the Posthumous Works of Julio Arceval (1925 UK), set in AD6922, the Blacks who have survived much history, including the submergence of Europe, argue about the possibility that Whites ever actually existed. Their hierarchical and monogamous state of Ebony - which is in Africa - is ruled by women. The book's various satirical points are generally directed at UK culture. Sir Bob (1930 US) is a fantasy for children, though its mildly satirical implications are clearly intended for the delectation of adults. SdM either wrote both works initially in English or translated them himself. [JC] MADDOCK, LARRY The solo writing name of Jack Owen Jardine (1931- ), a creative director in radio, for his Agent of T.E.R.R.A. series, speedy SPACE OPERAS starring Hannibal Fortune and an alien sidekick on various assignments to save Earth from her enemies. The series comprises The Flying Saucer Gambit (1966), The Golden Goddess Gambit (1967), The Emerald Elephant Gambit (1967) and The Time Trap Gambit (1969). With his then wife, Julie Ann Jardine, he also wrote under the pseudonym Howard L. CORY. [JC]See also: UFOS. MADDOX, CARL E.C. TUBB. MADDOX, TOM Working name of US writer Daniel Thomas Maddox (1945- ) who began publishing polished short stories with "The Mind like a Strange Balloon" for Omni in 1985. His first novel, HALO (1991), moves from a CYBERPUNK Earth to a SPACE HABITAT, engaging en route in an intense contemplation of the nature of artificial intelligence ( AI; CYBERNETICS; ROBOTS) in a VIRTUAL-REALITY environment. The tale is intermittently hectic, but charged with energy. [JC] MADER, FRIEDRICH W(ILHELM) (1866-1947) German writer, mainly of juvenile novels, many set in German East Africa and written somewhat in the style of H. Rider HAGGARD. Wunderwelten (1911; trans Max Shachtman as Distant Worlds: The Story of a Voyage to the Planets 1932 US) is a juvenile which takes its SPACESHIP crew to Mars and finally, at several times the speed of light, to Alpha Centauri, where they explore an Eden-like planet. Its content is quite advanced for 1911, but it is ill written. Other untranslated works include El Dorado ((1919; vt Auf den Spuren der Inkas), Die letzte Atlantide ["The Last Atlantis"] (1923) and Die Messingstadt ["City of Brass"] (1924). [PN/JE]See also: GERMANY. MADLEE, DOROTHY [r] Andre NORTON. MAD LOVE ORLACS HANDE. MAD MAX Film (1979). Mad Max Pty. Dir George MILLER, starring Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Tim Burns. Screenplay James McCausland, Miller, based on a story by Miller. 100 mins, cut to 91 mins. Colour.This low-budget exploitation movie builds up to the vigilante-style revenge of spaced-out policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) - who is almost as disturbed as his antagonists - on the motorcycle gang that killed his wife and child. It proved to be the successful harbinger of a boom in post- HOLOCAUST sf films where a dying civilization is pitted against a growing barbarism. Miller, whose debut feature this was, is extremely economical with data about just what (other than fuel shortages) has happened to create this crumbling of the social structure in Australia. Nonetheless, his vision of anarchy's spread - the atmosphere is reminiscent of John CARPENTER's Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) - is credible and well achieved. The film's instant success was due to the panache (and great skill) with which the chase sequences and spectacular vehicle demolitions were mounted. Prints shown in the USA were dubbed so that audiences there should not be subjected to the brutalities of the Australian accent. [PN]See also: ACE BOOKS; CINEMA; MUSIC. MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME Film (1985). Kennedy Miller Productions. Dir George MILLER with George Ogilvie, starring Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, Bruce Spence, Frank Thring, Paul Larsson, Helen Buday. Screenplay Terry Hayes, Miller. 107 mins. Colour.This Australian film, the second sequel to the post- HOLOCAUST movie MAD MAX (1979), has lots of well directed action but is more rambling and less focused than its predecessors. Max finds a community in the desert, Bartertown, with a female warlord (Tina Turner), gladiatorial games, and a great many extras being noisy, dirty and primitive. This lively stuff is really no more than a rehash of a great many filmic cliches, notably those of Italian sword-and-sandal epics. Far more interesting is a subplot set in a different part of the desert and involving a tribe of children who are now living in an oasis, having many years ago survived a plane crash in which all adults were killed. In perhaps the first attempt in cinema to achieve, albeit less complexly, something of what Russell HOBAN achieved in RIDDLEY WALKER (1980), they speak a devolved language ( LINGUISTICS); they also have a mythology involving a MESSIAH-figure, whom they take Mad Max to be. Their final return to the derelict ghost-city of Sydney is well done, and this whole inventive section about the children - pure sf, and ambitious sf at that - makes an otherwise routinely vivid film well worth watching. The novelization is Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome * (1985) by Joan D. VINGE. [PN] MAD MAX 2 (vt The Road Warrior) Film (1981). Kennedy Miller Entertainment. Dir George MILLER, starring Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Emil Minty, Mike Preston, Kjell Nilsson. Screenplay Terry Hayes, Miller, Brian Hannant. 96 mins. Colour.The success of the first film in this series, MAD MAX (1979), generated a bigger budget for this, the second. It was well used, and this is a more sophisticated film, more purely sf than its predecessor. The oil wars have left a devastated world; petrol is a medium of exchange, and its conspicuous use - by burning it up on the roads - confers status. Ex-policeman Max Rockatansky (Gibson) gives reluctant assistance to a semicivilized group in a desert fortress. Possessing a valuable petrol supply, they are beleaguered by a tribe of marauders (who, in this Westerns replay, are effectively the Indians), designer-barbarians in fetishistic gear on motorbikes and vehicles of war. Made with poker-faced humour, and this time with the US prints allowed to retain Mel Gibson's Australian drawl, the film is enlivened by small details - e.g., the Feral Kid (Minty) with his razor-sharp metal boomerang - and has much to recommend it beyond the tautly directed scenes of vehicular warfare. Poignant use is made of memories when times were better. The name of the sleazy real-world coastal resort Surfer's Paradise is now only half-remembered, as "Paradise", and ironically the place becomes the Promised Land to which the civilized remnant (minus the loner, Max) finally treks. With all its comic-strip energy and vividness, this is exploitation cinema at its most inventive. [PN] MADSEN, SVEND AGE [r] DENMARK. MAEPEN, K.H. [s] Henry KUTTNER. MAGAZINE OF FANTASY, THE The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION . MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, THE US DIGEST-size magazine; published Fall 1949-Feb 1958 by Fantasy House, Inc., a subsidiary of Mercury Press, then by Mercury Press; Lawrence Spivak was credited as Publisher Fall 1949-July 1954, Joseph W. FERMAN Aug 1954-Oct 1970, Edward L. FERMAN from Nov 1970; ed Anthony BOUCHER and J. Francis MCCOMAS Fall 1949-Aug 1954, then by Boucher alone until Aug 1958, by Robert P. MILLS Sep 1958-Mar 1962, by Avram DAVIDSON Apr 1962-Nov 1964, by publisher Joseph W. Ferman Dec 1964-Dec 1965, by Edward L. Ferman Jan 1966-June 1991, and by Kristine Kathryn RUSCH from July 1991. To May 1995FSF had published 528 issues. #1 (Fall 1949) was titled The Magazine of Fantasy. The magazine began as a quarterly, became a bimonthly in Feb 1951, and has maintained a monthly schedule since Aug 1952. A rather short-lived companion magazine was VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION.FSF - the abbreviation, taken from the words "Fantasy and Science Fiction" on the spine, being in almost universal use by its readers - won HUGOS for Best Magazine in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972; after that category was dropped, Edward L. Ferman won the Hugo for Best Editor in 1981, 1982 and 1983. There was then a long gap until Kristine Kathryn Rusch won the same award in 1994. FSF's editorial policy has always placed the main emphasis on short stories. Its editors abandoned the standards of PULP-MAGAZINE fiction and asked for stylish sf/fantasy that was up to the literary standards of the "slick" magazines that had shaped US short-story writing between the wars; they also abandoned interior illustrations. FSF published a great deal of light and humorous material, and used occasional reprints of stories by prestigious writers, including Robert GRAVES, Eric LINKLATER, Robert NATHAN, Robert Louis STEVENSON, James Thurber (1894-1961), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and P.G. WODEHOUSE. It also attracted such writers as Kingsley AMIS, Gerald HEARD and C.S. LEWIS to write for its pages. Despite the various changes of editorship the personality of the magazine has been consistent, although since the 1970s it has been a more orthodox sf magazine than in earlier days. It used serials only occasionally, and most of the novels appearing in it are substantially cut; they have included BRING THE JUBILEE by Ward MOORE (Nov 1952; 1953), ROGUE MOON by Algis BUDRYS (Dec 1960; 1960) and STARSHIP TROOPERS (Oct-Nov 1959 as "Starship Soldier"; exp 1959) by Robert A. HEINLEIN. Several notable series have been associated with the magazine, including Zenna HENDERSON's People, Manly Wade WELLMAN's John the Ballad Singer, Poul ANDERSON's Time Patrol and Reginald BRETNOR's Papa Schimmelhorn. Walter M. MILLER's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz (fixup 1960) was developed from 3 novelettes published in FSF 1955-7.Starship Troopers and A Canticle for Leibowitz were two of FSF's many award-winning stories. Others were Robert BLOCH's "That Hellbound Train" (Sep 1958; Hugo), Daniel KEYES's "Flowers for Algernon" (Apr 1959; Hugo; the novel version, Flowers for Algernon [1966], won a NEBULA), Brian W. ALDISS's Hothouse series (1961; Hugo; fixup as Hothouse 1962; vt The Long Afternoon of Earth) and "The Saliva Tree" (Sep 1965; Nebula), Poul Anderson's "No Truce with Kings" (June 1963; Hugo), "The Queen of Air and Darkness" (Apr 1971; Hugo and Nebula) and "Goat Song" (Feb 1972; Hugo and Nebula), Fritz LEIBER's "Ship of Shadows" (July 1969; Hugo), "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (Apr 1970; Hugo) and "Catch that Zeppelin" (Mar 1975; Hugo and Nebula), Roger ZELAZNY's "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" (Mar 1965; Nebula) and "And Call Me Conrad" (Oct-Nov 1965; Hugo; exp vt This Immortal 1966), Frederik POHL's and C.M. KORNBLUTH's "The Meeting" (Nov 1972; Hugo), Harlan ELLISON's "The Deathbird" (Mar 1973; Hugo), "Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans" (Oct 1974; Hugo) and "Jeffty is Five" (Jul 1977; Hugo and Nebula), "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" (Feb 1973; World Fantasy Award) by Robert Aickman (d1981), Robert SILVERBERG's "Born with the Dead" (Apr 1974; Nebula), Tom REAMY's "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" (Aug 1975; Nebula), Frederik Pohl's MAN PLUS (Apr-June 1976; Nebula), Charles L. Grant's "A Crowd of Shadows" (June 1976; Nebula), Edward BRYANT's "Stone" (Feb 1978; Nebula), John VARLEY's "The Persistence of Vision" (Mar 1978; Hugo and Nebula) and "The Pusher" (Oct 1981; Hugo), C.J. CHERRYH's "Cassandra" (Oct 1978; Hugo), Lisa TUTTLE's "The Bone Flute" (May 1981; Nebula), Joanna RUSS's "Souls" (Jan 1982; Hugo), John KESSEL's "Another Orphan" (Sep 82; Nebula), Kim Stanley ROBINSON's "Black Air" (March 1983; World Fantasy Award), Nancy KRESS's "Out of All Them Bright Stars" (Mar 1985; Nebula), Ursula K. LE GUIN's "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight" (Nov 1987; Hugo), Michael D. RESNICK's "Kirinyaga" (Nov 1988; Hugo), Alan BRENNERT's "Ma Qui" (Feb 1991; Nebula), Mike CONNER's "Guide Dog" (May 1991; Nebula, Joe HALDEMAN's "Graves" (Nov 1992; Nebula) and Jack CADY's "The Night We Buried Road Dog" (Jan 1993; Nebula). Other excellent stories have been contributed by Alfred BESTER, Boucher himself, Samuel R. DELANY, Philip Jose FARMER, Richard MATHESON, James TIPTREE Jr and many others.Under Rusch's editorship many readers claimed to detect a change in the "feel" of the magazine, which is hardly surprising, since she is very much younger than her predecessor had become. Publication settled to 11 issues a year, one of them a double issue. As with most sf magazines, paid circulation dropped between 1986 and 1994, in this case from c56,500 to c51,800, comparatively stable for the period.From Nov 1958 to Feb 1992, 399 issues, every issue of FSF featured a science article by Isaac ASIMOV; he collected these essays, which ceased not long before his death, into many books. His replacements have been Gregory BENFORDand Bruce STERLING. Early book-review editors were Boucher, Damon Knight, Alfred Bester and Avram Davidson; the lead reviewer 1975-92 was Algis Budrys. John Kessel followed, and leaving in 1995 will be followed in turn by Robert Killheffer. Baird Searles has reviewed films. Another feature was the long series (1958-64) of punning shaggy-dog stories known as Feghoots, written by Reginald BRETNOR as Grendel Briarton. In 1968 the magazine sponsored a novel-writing contest won by Piers ANTHONY with Sos the Rope (July-Sep 1968; 1968).FSF has published a "special all-star anniversary issue" every October since the mid-1960s, and a series of special issues celebrating particular authors, each featuring a new story, a checklist of the author's work and articles about the author. The first of these was devoted to Theodore STURGEON (Sep 1962), and subsequent special issues featured Ray BRADBURY (May 1963), Isaac Asimov (Oct 1966), Fritz Leiber (July 1969), Poul Anderson (Apr 1971), James BLISH (Apr 1972), Frederik Pohl (Sep 1973), Robert Silverberg (Apr 1974), Harlan Ellison (July 1977) and Stephen KING (Dec 1990), the Anderson, Leiber and Silverberg stories being among the award winners listed above. The first 6 of these stories, with abridged checklists and biographical articles, were published as The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Special 25th Anniversary Anthology (anth 1974), ed Edward L. Ferman, which, though not so titled, is assumed to be #21 of the Best series, as its successor was #22. The Best series, beginning with The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1952) ed Boucher and McComas, ran 1952-82, amounting to 24 anthologies (counting the 25th-anniversary volume). These at first appeared annually, but none appeared in 1970, 1972, 1974-6, 1978-9 and 1981 (for details Anthony BOUCHER, Robert P. MILLS, Avram DAVIDSON and Edward L. FERMAN). Other book spin-offs from FSF have been A Decade of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1960) ed Robert P. Mills, Once and Future Tales from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1968) ed Edward L. Ferman, Twenty Years of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1970) ed Edward L. Ferman and Robert P. Mills, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Thirty Year Retrospective (anth 1980) ed Edward L. Ferman, reprinting the stories from the Oct 1979 retrospective issue, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1965 (anth 1981) ed Edward L. Ferman and Martin H. GREENBERG, The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1986) ed Edward L. Ferman, The Best Horror Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1988; in 2 vols US 1989; vt The Best of Modern Horror: Twenty-Four Tales from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1989 UK) ed Edward L. Ferman and Anne Jordan, and The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (anth 1989) ed Edward L. Ferman.UK editions of the magazine ran Oct 1953-Sep 1954 (12 issues) from Mellifont Press, and Dec 1959-June 1964 (55 issues) from Atlas Publishing & Distributing Co. These did not reprint whole issues, but selected and recombined stories from the US edition. The UK reprint magazine VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION (1963-5), also from Atlas, carried material from FSF as well as from the US Venture. There was a selective reprint edition of FSF in Australia 1954-8 (14 issues, undated) from Consolidated Press. [BS/PN]See also: GOLDEN AGE OF SF. MAGAZINE OF HORROR, THE US DIGEST-size magazine, 36 issues Aug 1963 (Vol 1 #1)-Apr 1971 (Vol 6 #6). The longest-running and most successful of the reprint magazines ed R.A.W. LOWNDES for Health Knowledge Inc., this chiefly published classic horror tales, some from the early PULP MAGAZINES. Most issues also contained 2-4 original stories, a number being of sf interest by writers including John BRUNNER, R.A. LAFFERTY, Emil PETAJA, Joanna RUSS, Robert SILVERBERG and Roger ZELAZNY. The majority of covers were by Virgil FINLAY. Lowndes's editorials were notably balanced and lively. [PN] MAGAZINES For a statement about which magazines receive entries in this volume, and why, see Magazines in the Introduction; for a general discussion of sf magazines (and some fantasy magazines that occasionally published sf stories) SF MAGAZINES, and also the individual entries for the approximately 240 professional sf magazines and SEMIPROZINES we discuss in detail; for amateur sf periodical publications FANZINES; for a discussion of pulp magazines generally, and a listing of all the pulp entries not listed under the SF MAGAZINES rubric, including the hero/villain pulps, PULP MAGAZINES, which also discusses the relationship between the pulps and their competitors, the "slicks" and tabloids.Many general-fiction magazines other than the pulps have regularly published sf stories, and a selection of the most important have received entries in this encyclopedia: COLLIER'S WEEKLY, The IDLER , MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, The OVERLAND MONTHLY , The PASSING SHOW , PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, PEARSON'S WEEKLY, ST NICHOLAS MAGAZINE and The STRAND MAGAZINE . Other forms of periodical publishing are discussed under BOYS' PAPERS, COMICS, DIME-NOVEL SF and JUVENILE SERIES. The entries for HISTORY OF SF and PUBLISHING include discussion of the importance of the magazines. [PN] MAGIC In the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1884-1928) "magic" is defined as "the pretended art of influencing the course of events . . . by processes supposed to owe their efficacy to their power of compelling the intervention of spiritual beings, or of bringing into operation some occult controlling principle of nature". The lexicographer assumed that there is no difficulty in telling a "pretended" art from a real one, nor in distinguishing the "occult" from the scientific. Many sf authors have felt dissatisfied with such confident categorizations, and have written stories exemplifying alternative relationships between magic and science.One typical attitude is summed up by Arthur C. CLARKE's "Third Law", in Profiles of the Future (coll 1962): "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." This echoes the observation by Roger Bacon (c1214-1292) 700 years before that "many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical"; the irony whereby Bacon, a pioneer of experimental science, gained a posthumous reputation for sorcery goes far to confirm Clarke's "Law", and is at the heart of James BLISH's novel of the history of science, Doctor Mirabilis (1964 UK; rev 1971 US). Stories in which superior technology is treated as magic are common, the most thoroughgoing being Larry NIVEN's and David GERROLD's The Flying Sorcerers (1971). However, the unexpressed converse of Clarke's "Law" has proved even more attractive: if technology looks like magic, could magic not have been misunderstood technology?The possibilities for fiction of this nature were well exemplified by several stories published in UNKNOWN in the 1940s: Fritz LEIBER's Conjure Wife (1943; 1953), Robert A. HEINLEIN's "The Devil Makes the Law" (1940; vt as "Magic, Inc." in Waldo and Magic, Inc. coll 1950), and the Harold Shea stories by L. Sprague DE CAMP and Fletcher PRATT, later collected as The Incomplete Enchanter (1940; 1941) and The Castle of Iron (1941; 1950); the Leiber tale is set in the contemporary USA, the Heinlein in an ALTERNATE WORLD very similar to it, and the Harold Shea stories in PARALLEL WORLDS to which contemporary US citizens are sent. All rely heavily on the juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar, realistic and fantastic; their concern, above all, is to discipline and rationalize notions of magic. Thus in Conjure Wife the hero, a professor of social anthropology, discovers that his wife is a witch and forces her to give up this "superstition". Accumulating catastrophes persuade him that he is wrong. In the end he has to use his academic training to systematize his wife's knowledge and restore stability. The "incomplete enchanters" are likewise academic psychologists, though Heinlein's hero, characteristically, is a small-town businessman.In presenting rationalized forms of magic the Unknown authors were following arguments presented in The Golden Bough (1890 in 2 vols; 3rd edn rev in 12 vols 1911-15) by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941). This extremely influential work had suggested (a) that magic is like science but unlike RELIGION in its assumption that the Universe works according to "immutable laws", and (b) that some of these laws can be codified as Laws of Sympathy, Similarity and Contact. Frazer was probably no more than half serious in this, but the notion of quasi-Newtonian laws proved irresistible. Leiber, de Camp and Pratt include overt references to The Golden Bough, while the hero of "Magic, Inc." is actually called Fraser. At one point this Fraser explains how, for instance, he exploits the laws of "homeopathy" and "contiguity" to erect temporary grandstands: he has a section of seating carefully built, then chops it to pieces, and, "Under the law of contiguity, each piece remained part of the structure it had once been in. Under the law of homeopathy, each piece was potentially the entire structure." So Fraser can send out splinters which, when activated by the proper spells, will temporarily become entire structures. We realize that the world he lives in is controlled entirely by "occult" principles, but that these are not haphazard. Much of the amusement of worlds-where-magic-works stories lies in developing the possibilities of a small number of magical rules.Many authors have followed the lead of the Unknown stories: Poul ANDERSON in Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953 FSF; exp 1961) and Operation Chaos (1956-9 FSF; fixup 1971), John BRUNNER in The Traveler in Black (coll of linked stories 1971; with 1 story added vt The Compleat Traveler in Black 1986 US), James Blish in Black Easter (1968) and James E. GUNN in The Magicians (1954 Beyond as "Sine of the Magus"; exp 1976). The principles of magic as a kind of alternate TECHNOLOGY are also examined in Jack VANCE's THE DYING EARTH (coll of linked stories 1950) and The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), in Mark GESTON's The Siege of Wonder (1976), in Fred SABERHAGEN's Empire of the East trilogy beginning with The Broken Lands (1968), and in Christopher STASHEFF's Warlock series beginning with The Warlock in Spite of Himself (1969). Rachel POLLACK's Unquenchable Fire (1988) envisages an alternate-world USA run by a bureaucracy of shamans whose shamanism actually works. But the purest example of "Frazerian" sf is Randall GARRETT's Lord Darcy series (1964-76 ASF), set in an alternate world where King Richard I founded a stable Plantagenet dynasty, Europe remained feudal and Catholic, and magic was developed in harmony with science. The heroes are a detective pair, Lord Darcy and Master Sean O'Lochlainn, resembling Arthur Conan DOYLE's Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Master Sean is not a doctor, however, but a sorcerer, and he plays a much more significant role than Dr Watson ever did, compensating for the absence of forensic science by a series of carefully described magical tests for murder weapons, times of death, chemical analysis and so on. It is not too much to say that the stories are vehicles for the explanations of Master Sean rather than for the adventures of Lord Darcy. Garrett's distinctive contributions lie in the range of new "laws" added to the old Frazerian ones (Relevance, Synecdoche, Congruency, etc.) and in the rigour with which these are stated and used.In the stories so far mentioned magic is seen not as like science but as a form of science. The theme of magic as a kind of alternate science remains intensely popular. Among the writers who would convince us that magic is as much science as art are Patricia MCKILLIP in her Riddle-Master trilogy, beginning with The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), who does so with gravitas, Phyllis EISENSTEIN with Sorcerer's Son (1979) and its sequel The Crystal Palace (1988), who does so with some frivolity, and Barbara HAMBLY in a variety of works, notably the Sun-Cross sequence beginning with The Rainbow Abyss (1991 UK), which presents magic as culturally disreputable. Though, for really disreputable magic, it would be hard to go past Tim POWERS's splendid The Drawing of the Dark (1979), whose title puns on approaching evil and long-brewed beer, "the dark", which is the fountainhead, literally, of magic in the book's alternate 16th-century Vienna.But, if magic is a form of science, why has it never been systematized in our world? Many different answers have been given to this. Garrett's, for example, is that it is a result of prejudiced inquiry on the part of SCIENTISTS (exactly the charge levelled at scientists in the real world by adherents of the PSEUDO-SCIENCES and researchers into the paranormal), complicated by the fact that the exercise of magic demands a mysterious "talent" which many investigators do not possess: experiments are therefore likely to be unrepeatable. Magic here is being assimilated to PSI POWERS, which sf authors are capable of taking seriously. No matter how serious the treatment, however, the end result can be argued as frivolous, for magic is, if not precisely disproven, regarded by science as actually workable only when both magician and subject are believers (as with faith healing or Australian aborigines "pointing the bone"), when it is susceptible to a psychological or psychosomatic rather than a supernatural explanation.The subgenre of tales about alternate worlds in which magic is subsumed into psi powers is often associated with the names of Andre NORTON and Marion Zimmer BRADLEY. Above-average work in this vein has more recently been produced by Katherine KURTZ with the continuing Chronicles of the Deryni series, beginning with Deryni Rising (1970), by Sheri S. TEPPER with the True Game series - which can be regarded as sf - beginning with King's Blood Four (1983), and most famously by Orson Scott CARD in the Tales of Alvin Maker, to date comprising Seventh Son (1987), Red Prophet (1988) and Prentice Alvin (1989), assembled as Hatrack River (omni 1989).A not uncommon elegiac variant is the idea of a world in which the supply of magic, or its sources, is drying up. Peter DICKINSON's The Blue Hawk (1976) is of this kind, and there never seem to be enough Sipstrassi stones (superscientific sources of magical potency from ATLANTIS) to go around in David GEMMELL's Sipstrassi sequence, which begins with Wolf in Shadow (1987; vt The Jerusalem Man 1988 US). The best known book of this kind may be Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away (1977), which was followed by his two SHARED-WORLD anthologies, The Magic May Return * (anth 1981) and More Magic * (anth 1984).It is striking that one "Frazerian" area has daunted all but the boldest users of magic in sf, this being RELIGION. The position of magic in a Christian universe is especially difficult to define, since its compulsive quality appears to contradict dogmas of divine omnipotence. Most authors accordingly relegate the problem to the background of their stories, C.S. LEWIS going so far, in That Hideous Strength (1945), as to explain how magic has come to be unlawful for Christians in normal circumstances. One author who does not shirk the challenge is James Blish, but his Black Easter ends with the words: "God is dead."The actions of godlike creatures in sf ( GODS AND DEMONS) are seldom distinguishable from magic, much as in Clarke's "Law" quoted above, and John VARLEY's hyperactive Gaean sequence about an artificial world controlled by an intelligence devoted to metamorphic theatricals of a magical kind - Titan (1979), Wizard (1980) and Demon (1984) - though published as sf, has less cognitive consistency than a number of works - including McKillip's Riddle-Master series - which would normally be classified as fantasy.That classification is frequently given also to the only wholly successful resolution of magic, science and religion in sf so far: Ursula K. LE GUIN's Earthsea trilogy (1968-72). This is in a sense a "Frazerian" work, for the magic in it is based on the notion that everything has a true name and can be controlled by knowledge of it: Frazer was familiar with name-taboos. However, the relationship is virtually one of parody, for while the first "golden bough" was Aeneas's talisman of return from the underworld (Virgil's Aeneid Book 6), the Archmage-hero of Earthsea finds himself continually struggling against death without any supporting token. He learns in the first book that the defeat of death is an improper aim for a magician, whose art must depend on respect for the individual qualities (or names) of others, rather than on manipulation of them for one's own self-perpetuation. In the second book he faces an organized religion of sacrifice and propitiation, to demonstrate that this offers no better hope for humanity. In the third he duels with a rival "mage" who appears to have won power over death, though with disastrous consequences for others. Magic is presented continually as an alternative ideology to those with which we are familiar - i.e., those of science and religion - and as a more attractive one. Earthsea is informed, atypically for sf, by an awareness of the discoveries of post-Victorian ANTHROPOLOGY; it exemplifies the serious and powerful argumentative quality which can underline what appear to be only entertaining fantasies.More recently two authors have, perhaps, done something new in the subgenre. The first is Terry PRATCHETT, whose Discworld sequence (from 1983) must have produced a greater (and funnier) variety of riffs on the world-where-magic-works theme, many of them borderline sf, than any other author; it is the sheer variety that constitutes the novelty. The second is John CROWLEY, who has presented one of the most scholarly (and historically accurate) varieties of the magical art yet to appear in genre fiction, borrowed from the neo-platonic scientist/magicians of the Renaissance. Magic of this sort permeates (though seldom obviously) the novel Little, Big (1981), and actually becomes the structural principle of AEGYPT (1987). This latter - first of a projected quartet - may be the only novel by a genre writer whose story, whose structure and whose imagery are wholly isomorphic with an actual historical magical system, gnostic magic. Renaissance magic does, however, also play a prominent role - and is portrayed as rigorous and systematic - in Mary GENTLE's vivid alternate-world novel Rats and Gargoyles (1990). [TS/PN]See also: GOTHIC SF; MONSTERS; MYTHOLOGY; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. MAGIC REALISM A term originally used to describe a form of literature most commonly associated with 20th-century Latin America, most notably in the works of Isabel Allende (1942- ), Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), Jorge Luis BORGES, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928- ) and Juan Rulfo (1918-1986). US and UK practitioners include Donald BARTHELME, Angela CARTER and John Hawkes (1925- ).Contrary to the antirealistic assumptions of high Modernism (Henry James [1843-1916], Ezra Pound [1885-1972] and T.S. Eliot [1888-1965]) or the fable-producing, self-referential texts of metafiction (John BARTH and Italo CALVINO), Magic Realism does not necessarily doubt either the actuality of a real world or the ability of literary language to describe that world. Instead it assumes that the mundane world and its familiar objects are often filled with fabulous secrets. Magic realism explores the real world's unrealities, and does not simply - like FANTASY, Surrealism or fairy tales - invent the dreamlike unrealities of ALTERNATE WORLDS. Magic Realism suggests that the real world can be represented, even when it cannot be believed.For further discussion of the broad tendencies of 20th-century literature from which Magic Realism partially dissents, FABULATION. [SB]See also: POSTMODERNISM AND SF. MAGIDOFF, ROBERT (1905-1970) Russian-born US academic, Professor of Russian Literature at New York University 1961-70. His 3 anthologies are Russian Science Fiction (anth 1964 UK), Russian Science Fiction, 1968 (anth 1968) and Russian Science Fiction, 1969 (anth 1969). [PN] MAGILL, FRANK N. [r] Keith NEILSON. MAGNETIC MONSTER, THE Film (1953). A-Men Productions/United Artists. Dir Curt SIODMAK, starring Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron. Screenplay Siodmak, Ivan Tors. 76 mins. B/w.A new isotope, created in a laboratory, sucks in nearby energy and doubles its size every few hours; eventually it may destroy the Earth. The first part of the film shows it being tracked down by scientific investigators, puzzled at the strange magnetic fields it produces. It emits deadly radiation and is finally destroyed in a giant power plant in the ocean by feeding it with more energy than it can absorb. The film includes much footage at the finale from the German sf classic GOLD (1934). This is a well made, documentary-style, fast-moving thriller, one of Siodmak's better scripts, and the best of the (generally poor) films that he directed. [PN/JB] MAGUIRE, JOHN FRANCIS (1815-1872) Irish nationalist politician and journalist, founder of the Cork Examiner. In his sf novel The Next Generation (1871), set in 1891, the UK has been much improved by steam-powered BALLOONS and the granting of women's suffrage; romance and the explication of other meliorist reforms just this side of UTOPIA take up the remainder of a very long book. "Jack Tubbs, or The Happy Isle", in Young Prince Marigold, and Other Fairy Stories (coll 1873), features an Edenic ISLAND populated by animals with whom the hero has learned to converse. [JC] MAHMUD, MUSTAFA (1927- ) Egyptian writer, known also as Moustaffa Mahmoud, author of short stories, novels and plays dealing with Egypt's social and political development; in the mid-1960s he wrote a number of sf novels. These include Al-khuruj min at-tabut (1965; trans as Raising from the Coffin undated Cairo), Rajul tahta as-sifr ["The Man with a Temperature Below Zero"] (1965) and Al-anqabut (1965; trans as "The Spider", serialized 1965-6 in the magazine Arab Observer). He is well known also for his short-story collections, which contain an sf component, as in Yawmiyat nuss al-layl ["Diaries of Midnight"] (coll 1982). MM is also a propagator of ideas about UFOS. [JO]See also: ARABIC SF. MAIKOWSKI, MIKE [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. MAINE, CHARLES ERIC Pseudonym used by UK writer David McIlwain (1921-1981) for his sf; two other pseudonyms, Richard Rayner and Robert Wade, were not used for sf. CEM was one of the relatively few but extremely active UK fans before WWII, in 1938 publishing his first story, "The Mirror", in his FANZINE The Satellite, which he edited with Jonathan BURKE. His first novel was Spaceways: A Story of the Very Near Future * (1953; vt Spaceways Satellite 1958 US), based on his own 1952 radio play; it was filmed as SPACEWAYS (1953). Also developed from a script, in this case his own screenplay for TIMESLIP (1955; vt The Atomic Man), is CEM's The Isotope Man * (1957), which begins his only series, the Mike Delaney books, the other volumes in which are Subterfuge (1959) and Never Let Up (1964). Like most of his sf, these have a leaning towards thriller-like plots and a disinclination to argue too closely scientific pinnings that are often shaky; the latter tendency is particularly visible in stories featuring HARD-SF themes like space travel, as in High Vacuum (1957). Sometimes lightly, sometimes with gravity, CEM's numerous books touch on a variety of sf themes from ROCKETS to SOCIOLOGY, but generally without more than fitfully illuminating them; he was determinedly an author of middle-of-the-road GENRE SF, and as such was successful. His finest novel is generally thought to be The Mind of Mr Soames (1961), a story of a man who does not reach consciousness until the age of 30, and of the arguments about how best to educate him. The moral issues are dealt with quite sensitively. The book was filmed as The MIND OF MR SOAMES (1969). [JC/PN]Other works: Timeliner: A Story of Time and Space (1955); Crisis 2000 (1955); Escapement (1956; vt The Man who Couldn't Sleep 1958 US), filmed as The Electronic Monster (1957; vt The Dream Machine); World without Men (1958 US; rev vt Alph 1972); The Tide Went Out (1958; rev vt Thirst! 1977); Count-Down (1958 AMZ as "The Big Count-Down"; 1959; vt Fire Past the Future 1959 US); Calculated Risk (1960); He Owned the World (1960 US; vt The Man who Owned the World 1961 UK); The Darkest of Nights (1962; vt Survival Margin 1968 US; rev vt The Big Death 1978 UK); B.E.A.S.T.: Biological Evolutionary Animal Simulation Test (1966); The Random Factor (1971).See also: ANTIGRAVITY; CLONES; DISASTER; MEDICINE; MONEY; MOON. MAINE, DAVID Pierre BARBET. MAINS d'ORLAC, LES ORLACS HANDE. MAINSTREAM WRITERS OF SF This discussion should be read in conjunction with several others as part of a pattern of reasoning that is most clearly presented in DEFINITIONS OF SF, FABULATION, GENRE SF, HISTORY OF SF, MAGIC REALISM, POSTMODERNISM AND SF, PROTO SF and SLIPSTREAM SF.When used of literature, the term "mainstream" refers in its narrowest application to the tradition of the realistic novel of human character; in a wider application commonly employed by the sf community, it denotes all serious prose fiction outside the market genres; in its widest and perhaps most regrettable sense it refers to practically any fiction, serious or otherwise (including Jackie-Collins-style lowbrow bestsellers), outside sf, fantasy, the thriller and the Western. As a piece of jargon, not yet fully accepted into the language, "mainstream" lacks precision; nonetheless, there is a useful distinction to be drawn between writers of GENRE SF, who think of themselves as writing sf and whose books and stories are marketed as sf, and those writers of sf works who think of themselves (or are marketed) as simply writing fiction, without adopting either the protection or the stigma of a genre label. If, however, we are to employ "mainstream sf" primarily in opposition to "genre sf" - which we think is the most useful and desirable use of the former term - there is not much point in using the word "mainstream" retroactively to refer to writers like Aldous HUXLEY in the 1930s, since the term "science fiction" barely existed when he was writing books like BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932). It is, of course, possible to argue that genre sf has existed ever since Hugo GERNSBACK founded AMAZING STORIES in 1926, but at that time it was a tiny genre, not well publicized. It would make better sense to regard mainstream (that is, non-genre) sf as, say, a post-1937 phenomenon (that being the year in which John W. CAMPBELL Jr took over the editorship of ASTOUNDING STORIES, after which genre sf undeniably became established as a known form), though to name any actual year must be arbitrary.Certainly, until the sf label was adopted (in the form of the word SCIENTIFICTION in Gernsback's 1926 usage) it is realistic to argue that all sf was mainstream. Sf did exist, notably in the scientific romances of H.G. WELLS, the Voyages extraordinaires of Jules VERNE, and in much fiction of these and other kinds ( HISTORY OF SF) in the general fiction magazines, pulp or otherwise, but it had not yet hardened into a selfconscious separateness. Indeed Wells's term SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE was a good one, and many tales were so described, whether informally or formally, and did belong to an sf-like tradition. But if we regard the scientific romance as prototypical genre sf, then we run counter to a common usage of "mainstream sf" - to mean sf published in books that are not labelled sf, as opposed to magazines that are - for it was precisely in such books, especially in the UK, that the scientific romance largely appeared. In other words, in many people's usage of the term, the scientific romance is almost by definition mainstream. Any usage which leads to something very like a contradiction in terms is clearly not useful.Especially in the UK, books written in the tradition of the scientific romance and published as straight novels continued well into the 1950s, some of the most popular being by John WYNDHAM. It would clearly be a nonsense to argue that Wyndham was a mainstream writer, especially since, under other pseudonyms, he was also well known in the genre-sf magazines. This example is given only to show that the idea of the presence or absence of genre labels on books as somehow defining their content is unhelpful. Nonetheless, just such judgments as to who is mainstream and who is not have often been made, frequently with the implication that the mainstream writer is thus marginalized. That is why it is more useful to decide who is mainstream and who is not by the presence or absence in the tale of adherence to the protocols of genre sf, rather than the label on the cover.During the period in which sf was beginning to take shape as an identifiably separate genre, in the 1920s and 1930s, the favourite sf themes with non-genre sf writers who published in book format were: DYSTOPIAS; stories imagining life after some sort of HOLOCAUST; stories creating imaginary societies that satirize our own ( SATIRE); and stories of future POLITICS and WAR. (The LOST-WORLDS theme was already in decline by the 1920s.) Some such writers from this period, in addition to Huxley, are Karel CAPEK, John COLLIER, Murray Constantine (Katharine BURDEKIN), Guy DENT, John GLOAG, E. C. LARGE, Sinclair LEWIS, Wyndham LEWIS, Andre MAUROIS, Joseph O'NEILL, J. B. PRIESTLEY, Herbert READ, Upton SINCLAIR, Olaf STAPLEDON, Alexei TOLSTOY and Rex WARNER. Many of these were working in the tradition of the scientific romance. One marginal sf theme whose main development - before, after and during this period - has been more outside the genre than within it is PSYCHOLOGY, under which heading the relation between mainstream and genre sf is further discussed.The distinction between genre sf and mainstream sf becomes more interesting, because more real, in the 1940s and 1950s. As genre sf became better known outside its immediate small circle of devotees, it also began to feed more from mainstream writing. Huxley and Stapledon probably had a stronger influence on genre sf than any non-genre writers since Wells. However, the traffic was by no means one-way. The number of mainstream writers of sf remained very substantial indeed, but a new distinction became apparent: between those writers whose work demonstrates some knowledge of sf motifs as they developed in genre sf or in the scientific romance, and those who rather cumbersomely re-invent the wheel; one could (quite randomly) take Paul THEROUX as a recent example of the latter. But many mainstream sf writers published their work in book format rather than the pulp magazines because it would not have crossed their minds to do otherwise; books were where respectable persons published their fictions. Because sf became a book-marketing category only in the 1950s in the USA (somewhat later in the UK) it would not have occurred to writers like C.S. LEWIS to request that the magic letters "SF" be placed on the covers of their books; if the thought had occurred, it would probably have been dismissed as an irrelevance.The dominant mainstream sf themes of the 1940s continued to be dystopias ( George ORWELL) and tales of the HOLOCAUST AND AFTER ( Pat FRANK, George R. STEWART). But, again, the recitation of names is not very helpful because the phenomenon we speak of was on such a grand scale. Around half the writers discussed in this encyclopedia did not publish their work as genre sf, and often, too, their work does not feel like genre sf. To quote from the GENRE SF entry: ". . . works of fiction which use sf themes in seeming ignorance or contempt of the protocols - these are often works from so-called mainstream writers of sf - frequently go unread by those immersed in genre sf; and, if they are read, tend to be treated as invasive and alien . . . and incompetent." This is one of the sadder results of sf's ghetto mentality, though that mentality is not now nearly so aggressively inflexible as it was during the 1940s-60s, when the use of sf themes by writers outside the genre was considered almost a form of theft in the eyes of an sf community whose love for its genre was often expressed in very proprietorial terms. Even now, similar reservations are occasionally expressed by the sf community about the work of writers like Doris LESSING.Under the heading FABULATION we discuss a further confusion, common in criticism from within the sf community. This is the belief that sf, by escaping from the here-and-now of realist fiction, was to be greatly admired as spearheading a new, less constrictive, more imaginative nonrealist mode. Sf, on the contrary, lies at the heart of the realist mode; its whole creative effort is bent on making its imaginary worlds, its imaginary futures, as real as possible. The experiments in breaking down realist or "mimetic" fiction were taking place elsewhere; fabulations are fictions distrustful both of the very tools with which the world can be made known, words - which, as T.S. Eliot said, "slip, slide, perish, / Decay with imprecision" - and as to whether the world can in fact be known. A quite extraordinary number of fabulators use sf motifs, but in the construction of works whose foregrounding of their own artifice is opposed in style and feeling to the traditional mimesis of genre sf; it is unsurprising that sf's conservatives deeply dislike the suggestion that they in any sense share their genre with such writers as John BARTH, Jorge Luis BORGES, Italo CALVINO, Angela CARTER and Don DELILLO (to penetrate only a short way into the alphabet). But, confusingly, genre sf has produced quite a few fabulators of its own - J.G. BALLARD, John CROWLEY, Thomas M. DISCH, Karen Joy FOWLER, M. John HARRISON, Michael MOORCOCK, Lucius SHEPARD, John T. SLADEK and Gene WOLFE among them - so here, too, the distinctions between genre sf and the mainstream prove elusive.It was probably not, however, the fabulators that Ursula K. LE GUIN had in mind when she said: "If the mainstream definably exists, then I think it is itself a genre; one among many ways of writing fiction - one of the many modes I myself work in." This, too, is an arguable case, though Le Guin was probably thinking of the traditional novel of character - which is certainly a genre - when she said it. We bring this up primarily to make the obvious, but perhaps needful, point that the mainstream (like sf) is undefinable and not homogeneous, and indeed contains many genres within it, of which the fabulation and the novel of character are but two, both at times impinging upon sf.By the 1980s any attempt at protecting the racial purity of genre sf from contamination by the mainstream or by any other genre was more obviously doomed to failure than ever before, for sf was marrying out. The 1980s saw a flood of works ( FANTASY for some examples) where sf was interbred with fantasy, with horror, with MAGIC REALISM, with the thriller, with practically anything available. Postmodernists clasped CYBERPUNKS in their showy, affectless embrace. Sf's furtive affaires (such as the one it consistently conducted with the historical romance, especially in TIME-TRAVEL stories) were now out in the open and legitimate, and so were their progeny.Sf is and has been a great enterprise, many of whose most remarkable achievements have taken place entirely within genre sf; all those who are part of this phenomenon should feel justifiably proud, and perhaps justifiably angry at the literary world's failure to give them their due. It is sad that equally spectacular sf achievements, outside the genre walls and within mainstream fiction, have not always been recognized by those in the "ghetto" (snobberies cut both ways), but by the 1980s the quarrel was of historical interest only, for the walls were tumbling down. Some still shelter behind those shards left standing, but, if they look, they will see that the traffic is moving freely in both directions.A theme anthology collecting sf stories by mainstream writers is The Light Fantastic (anth 1971) ed Harry HARRISON and Theodore J. Gordon. [PN] MAISON d'AILLEURS, LA "The house of elsewhere", subtitled (in French) "the museum of Utopia, of extraordinary voyages and of science fiction". This establishment in Yverdon, Switzerland, contains about 50,000 items relating to sf, maybe half of them books and magazines, the remainder all sorts of ephemera: toys, games, stamps, posters, calendars, etc. Founded in 1975 by Pierre VERSINS, who donated his celebrated private COLLECTION to it, it was given much-needed financial assistance by the town of Yverdon in 1989, shortage of money having for some years previously restricted it to opening only twice a month. It is the most important research centre for sf in the French language. [PN] MAITLAND, DEREK (1943- ) UK writer whose sf novels - T Minus Tower (1971), about a proposed transfer of the eponymous tower into space as a hotel, and The Alpha Experience (1974) - exhibit a certain apocalyptic flippancy but failed to target coming UK trends with any real accuracy. [JC] MAITLAND, EDWARD (1824-1897) UK author and Theosophist whose speculative UTOPIA By and By: An Historical Romance of the Future (3 vols 1873), set several hundred years in the future, takes an unusually optimistic view of the likely effects of technology (irrigating the Sahara), is much interested in social theory, imagines several varieties of marriage and foresees a somewhat limited emancipation of women. This didactic book is the third of a trilogy; the first 2 vols, The Pilgrim and the Shrine (1868) and The Higher Law, were originally published as by Herbert Ainslee and are not sf. [PN] MAITZ, DON (1953- ) US illustrator. DM began his career in sf art in 1974 while still at art school (Paier School of Art), and since then has painted mainly book rather than magazine covers; among his best known ILLUSTRATIONS are the covers for the original editions of Gene WOLFE's Book of the New Sun series (1980-83). He also does advertising work, notably the very popular "Captain Morgan" for a Seagram's rum label. Unlike many of his colleagues, DM departs a little from slickness by allowing the brushstrokes in his work to be seen. He was among the sf artists most popular with fans right through the 1980s, and had many HUGO nominations before, in 1990, winning the Hugo for Best Professional Artist, and in so doing becoming only the second artist, after Jim BURNS, to break the extraordinary run of 11 Hugos (to 1992) in that category by Michael WHELAN - indeed, these three between them were probably the dominant sf book-cover illustrators of the 1980s. DM also won first place in the new non-Hugo category at the Hugo ceremony in 1990 for Best Original Artwork with his cover for the Warner/Questar edition of C.J. CHERRYH's Rimrunners (1989). A collection of his interestingly ornate artwork is First Maitz: Selected Works by Don Maitz (1988). [JG/PN] MAJOR, H.M. Sharon JARVIS. MAJORS, SIMON Gardner F. FOX. MAKAY, ISTVAN [r] HUNGARY. MAKING MR RIGHT Film (1987). Orion. Dir Susan Seidelman, starring Ann Magnuson, John Malkovich. Screenplay Floyd Byars, Laurie Frank. 98 mins. Colour.The cold, rational, shy SCIENTIST played by Malkovich has designed, in his own image, Ulysses the ANDROID (actually in part a ROBOT), also played by Malkovich, for use as a space pilot. Public-relations expert Frankie (Magnuson), whose love affair with an "unreconstructed" politician is coming to an end, has the task of "humanizing" Ulysses's image. The fluffy, screwball SEX comedy that follows makes well observed satirical points, from a FEMINIST perspective, about the men women want and to some extent create. Ulysses, who rapidly evolves into a kind of parodic, sensitive "new man", and Frankie fall in love. His tendency to short-circuit whenever sexually aroused suggests a pessimistic view of women's chance of happiness, even if they've helped design Mr Right themselves. The film was nothing like as popular as Seidelman's previous Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), being too offbeat (and lacking Madonna), but is just as good. [PN] MAKIN, WILLIAM J. (? -? ) UK writer whose confused but inventive sf novel, Murder at Full Moon (1937), features a mad scientist, who believes there is superior life on the Moon, and who has invented a MACHINE capable of harnessing moonlight, with which he causes tidal waves, earthquakes, and other disasters. "The Monster of the Loch," a short novel included in The Exploits of Jonathan Jow (coll circa 1937), features a plesiosaur. [JC] MALABAILA, DAMIANO Primo LEVI. MALAMUD, BERNARD (1914-1986) US writer whose fiction, beginning with The Natural (1952), a mythopoeic tale of US baseball, makes use of techniques and motifs from Russian-Jewish folklore and story-telling traditions, with the result that many of his short stories are technically fantasies. His only novel of strong genre interest, God's Grace (1982), mixes sf and fable - at times uneasily - in the tale of a lone human survivor of a nuclear HOLOCAUST attempting vainly to restart civilization by breeding with a group of intelligent apes ( APES AND CAVEMEN) that have also, rather miraculously, survived the worldwide tsunami responsible for the extirpation of all else. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD; RELIGION. MALCOLM, DAN Robert SILVERBERG. MALCOLM, DONALD (1930- ) Scottish writer of fiction and considerable popular science who began publishing sf with "Lone Voyager" for Nebula in 1958. Two series of stories, the Preliminary Exploration Team tales in NW 1957-64 and the Dream Background tales in NW in 1959 and subsequently in the continuing anthology series NEW WRITINGS IN SF 1965-75 have not reached book form. His sf novels, both routine, are The Unknown Shore (1976 Canada) and The Iron Rain (1976 Canada). [JC]See also: STARS. MALCOLM, GRANT Dennis HUGHES. MALEC, ALEXANDER (1929- ) US writer, variously employed, who began publishing sf with "Project Inhumane" for The Colorado Quarterly in 1966. Extrapolasis (coll 1967) assembles much of his sometimes awkward but frequently sharply pointed work, which was restricted to short stories. [JC] MALEVIL Film (1981). NEF-Diffusion/Stella/Antenne 2/Gibe/Telecip. Dir Christian de Chalonge, starring Michel Serrault, Jacques Dutronc, Robert Dhery, Jacques Villeret, Jean-Louis Trintignant. Screenplay de Chalonge, Pierre Dumayet, based on Malevil (1972; trans 1974) by Robert MERLE. 119 mins. Colour.This moderately lavish Franco-German post- HOLOCAUST movie reinforces the sentimental aspects of its good source novel. The Bomb goes off while the vintage is being tasted deep in the wine cellar of an aristocrat's chateau. The first half is gripping, as the survivors wonder when, if ever, they will be able to leave the well stocked cellar again, and the first glimpses of the devastated landscape outside are powerful. But then a simplistic clash between the aristocrat's lovably feudal paternalism and the totalitarianism of a local boss (he too has a gang of survivors) reduces the film to something more routine, all done with little verve and rather too much symbolism about life reasserting itself. At the end the new society, whose medieval nature is approved by the film, is threatened, ironically, by the somewhat late arrival of a relief helicopter. [PN] MALLETT, DARYL F(URUMI) (1969- ) US bibliographer whose work, beginning in the late 1980s and generally in collaboration with Robert REGINALD, has been of growing significance for sf scholarship. Publications include the much expanded 2nd edn of Reginald's Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards: A Comprehensive Guide to the Awards and their Winners (1981; exp 1991) with Reginald, for which DFM performed the essential updating task; and Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Bibliography, 1975-1991 (1992) with Mary Wickizer Burgess and Reginald, which is the continuation of Reginald's Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist, 1700-1974 (1979). Several further publications are projected. [JC]See also: BIBLIOGRAPHIES. MALLINSON, SUE [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. MALLORY, MARK [s] Mack REYNOLDS. MALONEY, MACK US author, possibly pseudonymous, of the Wingman series of post- HOLOCAUST military-sf novels: Wingman (1987), #2: The Circle War (1987), #3: The Lucifer Crusade (1987), #4: Thunder in the East (1988), #5: The Twisted Cross (1989), #6: The Final Storm (1989), #7: Freedom Express (1990), #8: Skyfire (1990) and #9: Return from the Inferno (1991). War Heaven (1991) is a singleton. [JC] MALZBERG, BARRY N(ATHANIEL) (1939- ) US writer. For about seven years he was extremely prolific in the sf field, producing some 20 sf novels and over 100 short stories; his output slowed dramatically towards the end of the 1970s, when he became disenchanted with the genre for reasons explained in his collection of essays The Engines of the Night: Science Fiction in the Eighties (coll 1982). He has also written numerous non-sf works, including several notable erotic novels, and four excellent thrillers in collaboration with Bill PRONZINI, including Night Screams (1979), which makes use of ESP. His early sf appeared under the name K.M. O'Donnell, apparently derived from the initial letters of the surnames of Henry KUTTNER and C.L. MOORE plus the surname of one of their joint pseudonyms. Other pseudonyms, used on non-sf works, include Mike Barry, Mel Johnson and Gerrold Watkins. His first sf story was "We're Coming through the Window" (1967 Gal), which was quickly followed by the bitter novelette "Final War" (1968 FSF), about an unwilling soldier trapped in a neverending wargame. Books under the O'Donnell name were the short-story collections Final War and Other Fantasies (coll 1969 dos) and In the Pocket and Other Science Fiction Stories (coll 1971 dos), the novels The Empty People (1969) and Universe Day (fixup 1971), and two RECURSIVE farcical SATIRES featuring sf fans and writers in confrontation with ALIENS: Dwellers of the Deep (1970 dos) and Gather in the Hall of the Planets (1971 dos).The first sf novels to appear under BNM's own name were sceptical commentaries on the Apollo programme: The Falling Astronauts (1971), Revelations (1972) and Beyond Apollo (1972). The third caused some controversy when it won the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD despite its sarcastic and negative attitude to SPACE FLIGHT. The three novels feature astronauts as archetypes of alienated contemporary humanity, struggling to make sense of an incomprehensible world and unable to account for their failure. All BNM's central characters are caught in such existential traps, and the measure of his versatility is the large number of such situations which he has been able to construct using the vocabularies of ideas typical of sf and erotic fantasy. In Screen (1968) the protagonist can obtain sexual satisfaction only by projecting himself into fantasies evoked by the cinema, while in Confessions of Westchester County (1971) a prolific seducer obtains satisfaction not from the sexual act but from the confessions of loneliness and desperation which follow it. The situation of the racetrack punter, unable to win against the odds by any conceivable strategy, becomes the model of alienation in Overlay (1972), in which aliens take an actual part in the process of frustration, and in the non-sf novel Underlay (1974). Aliens threaten the Earth, and set absurd tasks to decide its fate, in The Day of the Burning (1974) and Tactics of Conquest (1974). In GALAXIES (1975) the central character is in command of a corpse-laden ship which falls into a BLACK HOLE. The protagonist of Scop (1976) is a time-traveller trying desperately to change the history that has created his intolerable world. Even the situation of the sf writer, struggling to cope with real life and the pressures of the market, becomes in Herovit's World (1973) a metaphor for general alienation. In this novel, GALAXIES and the introductions to some of his collections, BNM offers a scathing critique of the market forces shaping contemporary sf.BNM's writing is unparalleled in its intensity and in its apocalyptic sensibility. His detractors consider him bleakly monotonous and despairing, but he is a master of black HUMOUR, and is one of the few writers to have used sf's vocabulary of ideas extensively as apparatus in psychological landscapes, dramatizing relationships between the human mind and its social environment in an sf theatre of the absurd. The few sf books which he has published since 1976 include three fine novels featuring real historical characters. The hero of the black comedy Chorale (1978) becomes Beethoven, while that of the remarkably intense The Cross of Fire (1982) becomes Jesus; both are in search of a better psychological balance but find their quests frustrating. THE REMAKING OF SIGMUND FREUD (fixup 1985) has the father of psychoanalysis failing miserably to master his own difficulties while trying to assist Emily Dickinson, and subsequently - following his technological REINCARNATION - coming apart while failing to solve the problems involved in COMMUNICATION with aliens. [BS]Other works: In the Enclosure (1973); The Men Inside (1973); Phase IV * (1973 UK), a film tie ( PHASE IV); The Destruction of the Temple (1974); On a Planet Alien (1974); The Sodom and Gomorrah Business (1974); Conversations (1974); Out from Ganymede (coll 1974); Guernica Night (1975); The Gamesman (1975); The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg (coll 1975); Down Here in the Dream Quarter (coll 1976); The Best of Barry Malzberg (coll 1976); The Last Transaction (1977); Malzberg at Large (coll 1979); The Man who Loved the Midnight Lady (coll 1980).As Editor: Final Stage (anth 1974; rev 1975), Arena: Sports SF (anth 1976) and Graven Images: Three Original Novellas of Science Fiction (anth 1977), all with Edward L. FERMAN; Dark Sins, Dark Dreams: Crime in Science Fiction (anth 1977), The End of Summer: Science Fiction in the Fifties (anth 1979; vt The Fifties: The End of Summer 1979) and Shared Tomorrows: Science Fiction in Collaboration (anth 1979), all with Bill PRONZINI; Neglected Visions (anth 1980) with Martin H. GREENBERG and Joseph D. OLANDER; The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton (coll 1980) with Greenberg ( Mark CLIFTON); Bug-Eyed Monsters (anth 1980) with Pronzini; The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (anth 2 vols 1981; cut vt Great Tales of Horror & the Supernatural 1985; text restored, vt Classic Tales of Horror and the Supernatural 1991) with Pronzini and Greenberg; The Science Fiction of Kris Neville (coll 1984) with Greenberg ( Kris NEVILLE).See also: AMAZING STORIES; ARTS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; ENTROPY; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FANTASY; GAMES AND SPORTS; GREAT AND SMALL; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MESSIAHS; MUSIC; PARANOIA; PERCEPTION; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; SEX; TIME PARADOXES; WAR. MAN, EVOLUTION OF ADAM AND EVE; ANTHROPOLOGY; EVOLUTION; ORIGIN OF MAN. MAN AND HIS MATE ONE MILLION B.C. MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE Film (1962). MC/Essex/United Artists. Dir John FRANKENHEIMER, starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, James Gregory. Screenplay George Axelrod, based on The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard CONDON. 126 mins. B/w.A group of US soldiers captured in Korea are subjected to elaborate brainwashing by the Chinese as part of a plot to have a Chinese agent elected President of the USA. One officer is programmed-this is the strongest sf element - to become a killing machine whenever any of the people working for the Chinese gives the right command. The resulting confusions back in the USA, both funny and sinister - especially the climax at the Party convention - are choreographed with great panache by Frankenheimer, whose best film this probably is, though it owes much to the wit and intelligence of Axelrod's screenplay, which is faithful to the novel. Its ominous reverberations became darker when President Kennedy was assassinated a year later. [JB/PN]See also: CINEMA; PARANOIA. MANCUSO, TED (? - ) US writer whose The Granville Hypothesis (1979), set in AD2017, features an unremarkable world- COMPUTER being suborned by an unremarkable madman. [JC] MANDEN DER TAENKTE TING (vt The Man who Thought Life) Film (1969). Asa Film/Palladium. Dir Jens Ravn, starring Preben Neergaard, John Price, Lotte Tarp. Screenplay Henrik Stangerup, based on Manden der Taenkte Ting (1938) by Valdemar Holst. 97 mins. B/w.This Danish fantasy tells of a man who can create objects - even people - by force of will. Anything he brings into existence has only a short life, so he goes to a doctor and asks for a brain operation to perfect his power. The doctor refuses, so the man creates a duplicate doctor who takes over his original's career and wife and ultimately performs the necessary operation, in so doing killing his creator. Interestingly photographed, this comedy, Ravn's first film, presents philosophical points about reality of the kind made familiar by Philip K. DICK. [JB/PN] MANDERS, HARRY Philip Jose FARMER. MAN FROM ATLANTIS, THE US tv series (1977). Solow Productions for NBC TV. Created Lee Katzin (who also dir the 1st episode), starring Patrick Duffy, Belinda J. Montgomery, Victor Buono. Special effects Tom Fisher. The first 4 episodes, 90min telefilms, were followed by 13 50min episodes. Colour.A green-eyed stranger with gills and webbed hands is found nearly dead on a beach. He is revived by an attractive female scientist who, realizing that he is not human, places him in a tank of water. Believed to come from ATLANTIS, he is persuaded to work for the Foundation for Oceanic Research, and is soon off on his first mission, to tackle an overweight villain in his underwater headquarters. Though the settings and special effects were sometimes eye-catching, the general intellectual level of this and subsequent episodes, which featured aliens, monsters, time-warps, etc., was no higher than that of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. The series was cancelled after 1 season.Novelized versions of the first 2 episodes were Man from Atlantis: Sea Kill * (1977) and Man from Atlantis: Death Scouts * (1977), both by Richard Woodley. [JB] MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., THE US tv series (1964-8). Arena Productions/MGM for NBC TV. Executive prod Norman Felton. Writers included Harlan ELLISON, Howard Rodman, Sam Rolfe, Henry SLESAR, David Victor. Dirs included Don Medford, Boris Sagal, Joseph Sargent, Barry Shear. 105 50min episodes. 1st season b/w, subsequent 3 seasons colour.This was one of tv's first reactions to the success of the James Bond films. Robert Vaughn starred as Napoleon Solo, a member of U.N. C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). With the assistance of his Russian colleague Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) he fought to prevent the sinister organization T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity - an acronym chosen, it has been suggested, because of its assonance with "the Russians") from taking over the world. Most of the plots featured futuristic technology (vaporizers, etc.); the style was tongue-in-cheek. TMFU's success led to the creation of a sister series, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., which began in 1966, starring Stefanie Powers; it lasted only 1 season of 29 episodes.8 feature films had theatrical release outside the USA. Each consisted of 2 episodes edited together, sometimes with added footage, to make 90min films: The Spy with My Face (1965), To Trap a Spy (1966), One of Our Spies is Missing (1966), One Spy Too Many (1966), The Spy in the Green Hat (1966), The Helicopter Spies (1967), The Karate Killers (1967) and How to Steal the World (1968). A subsequent telemovie was Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1983).The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series of ties was complex, 23 titles appearing from ACE BOOKS in the USA and 16 from Souvenir Press in the UK. 10 of the 23 Ace books were reprints from books originated by Souvenir, and 6 of the Souvenir books were reprints of books originated by Ace; in the case of #3 in the Ace sequence, the reprint confusingly appeared before its original. None of the books was based directly on the tv scripts; all were original stories. As all the Souvenir editions appeared, either before or after their UK release, in Ace editions, we list only the Ace sequence: #1: The Thousand Coffins Affair * (1965) by Michael AVALLONE, #2: The Doomsday Affair * (1965) by Harry Whittington, #3: The Copenhagen Affair * (1965) by John Oram, #4: The Dagger Affair * (1966) by David MCDANIEL, #5: The Mad Scientist Affair * (1966) by John T. PHILLIFENT, #6: The Vampire Affair * (1966) by McDaniel, #7: The Radioactive Camel Affair * (1966 UK) by Peter LESLIE, #8: The Monster Wheel Affair * (1967) by McDaniel, #9: The Diving Dames Affair * (1967 UK) by Leslie, #10: The Assassination Affair * (1967) by Joan Hunter HOLLY, #11: The Invisibility Affair * (1967) by Thomas Stratton (Robert COULSON and Gene DEWEESE), #12: The Mind Twisters Affair * (1967) by Stratton, #13: The Rainbow Affair * (1967) by McDaniel, #14: The Cross of Gold Affair * (1968) by Fredric Davies (Ron ELLIKand Steve Tolliver), #15: The Utopia Affair * (1968) by McDaniel, #16: The Splintered Sunglasses Affair * (1968 UK) by Leslie, #17: The Hollow Crown Affair * (1969) by McDaniel, #18: The Unfair Fare Affair * (1968 UK) by Leslie, #19: The Power Cube Affair * (1968 UK) by Phillifent, #20: The Corfu Affair * (1967 UK) by Phillifent, #21: The Thinking Machine Affair * (1967 UK) by Joel Bernard, #22: The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair * (1966 UK) by Oram, and #23: The Finger in the Sky Affair * (1966 UK) by Leslie. McDaniel felt A.A. Wyn, publisher at Ace, was not paying him enough; the initial letters of the chapters in #8 spell out AAWYNISATIGHTWAD.Girl from U.N.C.L.E. spin-offs of a similar kind were The Birds of a Feather Affair * (1966) by Michael Avallone; The Blazing Affair * (1966) by Avallone; The Global Globules Affair * (1967 UK) by Simon Latter; The Golden Boats of Taradata Affair * (1967 UK) by Latter; The Cornish Pixie Affair * (1967 UK) by Peter Leslie. [JB/PN] MANHATTAN FICTION PUBLICATIONS STIRRING SCIENCE STORIES. MANIMAL Glen A. LARSON. MAN IN THE STEEL MASK, THE WHO?. MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, THE Film (1951). Ealing Studios. Dir Alexander Mackendrick, starring Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Ernest Thesiger. Screenplay Roger MacDougall, John Dighton, Mackendrick, based on the play The Man in the White Suit by MacDougall. 85 mins, cut to 81 mins. B/w.A SCIENTIST creates an artificial fibre that neither wears out nor gets dirty. To prove it, he makes himself a shining white suit that retains its pristine condition throughout the film. Attempts are made by clothing manufacturers and their workers to suppress the new material. Finally its inventor is cornered in a street where, suddenly and symbolically, his suit begins to disintegrate and is torn to shreds by the angry mob. The film ends with the scientist planning a second attempt. This fine film is a witty and pertinent SATIRE whose success owes more to the traditions of the Ealing comedy than to sf. [JB] MANKIND PUBLISHING VERTEX. MANLOVE, C(OLIN) N(ICHOLAS) (1942- ) UK critic. Most of his work of interest has focused on FANTASY, beginning with Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (coll 1975). The Impulse of Fantasy Literature (1983) concentrates on UK fantasy, and tends not to deal with the more recent popularity of the genre in the USA. C.S. Lewis: His Literary Achievement (1987) competently argues the case for an author who divides critics into acolytes and disbelievers ( C.S. LEWIS); further studies of fantasy interest include Christian Fantasy: from 1200 to the Present (1992) and Scottish Fantasy (1994), a survey. Of direct sf interest is Science Fiction: Ten Explorations (coll 1986), which smoothly (though at times gingerly) engages with the fiction of 10 writers, including some, like Philip Jose FARMER and Gene WOLFE, who have received relatively little academic attention. [JC] MANN, JACK E. Charles VIVIAN. MANN, (ANTHONY) PHILLIP (1942- ) UK-born writer resident in NEW ZEALAND from 1969. His career as a theatre director, translation copy-polisher, drama teacher and university Reader in Drama brings to his writing a strong visual and structural sense. His first sf publication, The Eye of the Queen (1982 UK), is an accomplished novel of First Contact between humans and the enigmatic Pe-Ellians. The Gardener diptych - Master of Paxwax (1986 UK) and The Fall of the Families (1987 UK) - describes a warring human society and the downfall of its hegemony over various planets. In Pioneers (1988 UK), his best novel to date, genetically engineered explorers come to terms with being human. Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (1990 UK) is a character study of a failed starship captain, Wilberfoss, narrated by an autoscribe; and the Land Fit for Heroes sequence - comprising to date Escape to the Wild Wood (1993 UK) and Stand Alone Stan (1994 UK) - is set in an ALTERNATE WORLD version of a 20th century Britain still ruled by the Romans. PM has written 3 fantasy plays for children as well as short stories and a humorous sf RADIO play, "The Gospel According to Mickey Mouse" (broadcast 1990). He consciously uses his skill at portraying ALIEN species and environments to display human vanity and hubris without being didactic and with an underlying respect for life. [MMacL]See also: SOCIOLOGY. MANNES, MARYA (1904-1990) US author, features editor and journalist, often on FEMINIST themes. Her first novel, Message from a Stranger (1948), is an afterlife fantasy. In her sf SATIRE They (1968), the USA is taken over by the under-30s. [JC/PN] MANNHEIM, KARL Pseudonym of unidentified UK author of 2 sf adventures: When the Earth Died (1950) and Vampires of Venus (1950). They are modestly competent but hasty. [JC] MANNING, LAURENCE (EDWARD) (1899-1972) Canadian-born writer, in the USA from 1920, a founder of the American Interplanetary Society and editor of its journal, Astronautics. He is remembered for his numerous contributions to WONDER STORIES and WONDER STORIES QUARTERLY in the 1930s; he also collaborated on some stories with Fletcher PRATT. His best-known series, which appeared in Wonder Stories, was the Man who Awoke sequence, 5 stories later published as The Man who Awoke (1933; fixup 1975), in which a man periodically awakes from SUSPENDED ANIMATION into a pulp- STAPLEDON succession of 5 societies, the last of which is in a world of immortals. Another series was the Stranger Club sequence, again in Wonder Stories: "The Call of the Mech-Men" (1933), "Caverns of Horror" (1934), "Voice of Atlantis" (1934), "The Moth Message" (1934) and "Seeds from Space" (1935). A short series of above-average space stories comprised "The Voyage of the Asteroid" (1932) and "The Wreck of the Asteroid" (1932). LM's style was very much of his time, but he had a more wide-ranging imagination than many of his colleagues. [JC/PN]See also: AUTOMATION; CANADA; DYSTOPIAS; EVOLUTION; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GENERATION STARSHIPS; HISTORY IN SF; IMMORTALITY; LEISURE; LIVING WORLDS; MARS; SPACESHIPS; UTOPIAS. MANO, D. KEITH (1943- ) US writer whose second novel, Horn (1969), is a transcendental fable, and whose third, War is Heaven! (1970), describes with some surreal vividness a WAR in an imaginary - but easily imagined - South American country. The Bridge (1973) is a full-fledged sf DYSTOPIA set in AD2035, with regimentation leading to universal disaster. [JC] MANOLESCU, FLORIN [r] ROMANIA. MANTEGAZZA, PAOLO [r] ITALY. MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG, THE Film (1939). Columbia. Dir Nick Grinde, starring Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox, Roger Pryor. Screenplay Karl Brown, based on a story by Leslie T. White and George W. Sayre. 72 mins. B/w.A kindly SCIENTIST (Karloff) invents a mechanical heart, and one of his students volunteers to undergo clinical death to test it; a police raid at the critical moment prevents this and the student dies. Karloff is executed for murder, but arranges to be revived with the artificial heart. Now vindictive, he lures judge, jury and witnesses to a booby-trapped house where he proceeds to dispose of them in turn. His daughter intervenes and is accidentally killed by one of the lethal devices. He revives her at the cost of his own life. Like most sf films of the period, TMTCNH has little real science; it is, rather, a Gothic melodrama of retribution. [JB/PN] MAN'S BEST FRIEND Film (1993). New Line Cinema/Roven-Cavello Entertainment .Written and directed John Lafia; starring Ally Sheedy, Lance Henriksen, Robert Costanzo,John Cassini, Fredric Lehne. 87 mins. Colour.Routine sf/horror movie, with moments of black humour: Dr Jarret (Henriksen) has been performing animal experiments at the EMAX research lab, and has created a super killer guard dog through DNA splicing, some of the imported genes coming from other species. The mastiff-type dog, temporarily stable until a controlling drug wears off, is accidentally released by tv journalist Lori Tanner (Sheedy, a good performance), who adopts it, thinking it (correctly, in a way) an innocent victim. The high-IQ dog goes on to rape (another dog),multiple murder including killing Tanner's boyfriend by pissing acid onto his face and,implausibly, even camouflaging itself as a toolbox. Events escalate in the traditional manner of an exploitation movie, and the animal rights issue is raised but never really examined.Director/writer Lafia was previously best known for the extremely violent horror flick Child's Play 2 (1990). This is not as good in the horror-dog line as Cujo (1983) which was based on the Stephen KING novel, but MBF did well commercially. [PN] MANTLEY, JOHN (TRUMAN) (1920- ) Canadian-born US screenwriter and producer whose sf novel, The Twenty-Seventh Day (1956 UK; rev 1956 US), features Galactic Federation aliens who give each of five humans from opposing countries an invincible weapon to see what they do with them. The novel was filmed - from the US version, which has a revised ending - as The 27TH DAY (1957). Mantley wrote teleplays for The OUTER LIMITS and The WILD, WILD WEST , and for years worked as a producer on Gunsmoke; he also produced the 2nd season of the 1979-81 tv series BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY. [PN/JC] MANVELL, (ARNOLD) ROGER (1909-1987) UK writer, mostly on the cinema and on aspects of WWII; he had a doctorate in English literature. His sf novel, The Dreamers (1958), is a tale of revenge via a dream transmitted to the intended victim by African tribesmen. A borderline-sf explanation is allowed as an alternative to the supernatural one. [JC] MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE Film (1976). British Lion/A Cinema V Release. Dir Nicolas Roeg, starring David Bowie, Rip Torn, Candy Clark, Buck Henry. Screenplay Paul Mayersberg, based on The Man who Fell to Earth (1963) by Walter TEVIS. 140 mins; first US showing cut to 118 mins. Colour.In this UK film set in the USA, the clear-cut narrative of Tevis's evocative novel - about an ALIEN who comes to Earth to build a spacecraft large enough to transport his native race away from his own dying world - is replaced by a nonlinear structure that, in the familiar Roeg manner, shifts backwards and forwards in time, reflecting the psychic TIME TRAVEL of which the alien is capable. David Bowie as the frail, humanoid alien whose contact with the harsh human world corrupts him is excellent, as is Candy Clarke as the sad, funny woman who befriends him.The film is visually strong (Roeg was earlier a fine cameraman) but has been regarded by some as wilfully obscure, in part because of the rather literary complexity of its allusions (many to the painting of the fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder [c1525-1569], some to the Fall of Man) and the symbolism (occasionally heavy-handed) of its visual juxtapositions and imagery. All becomes much clearer on second viewing. Some sequences, including that showing serried ranks of tv sets with which the lonely alien attempts to barricade himself from direct human experience, are very powerful indeed. The theme of an alien having his identity effectively stolen from him by us - the reverse of the usual - is remorselessly followed through. TMWFTE has worn very well and is regarded as an sf classic. The film should not be confused with a 1988 made-for-tv movie (MGM)of the same book, starring Lewis Smith as the alien, Wil Wheaton as atroubled teenager, David Gerber exec. prod, teleplay by Richard Kletter, dir Robert J. Roth. This soft-centred version alters the plot considerably to give a banal moral, drops all reference to the alien's corruption, and imports much sentimentality. [PN] MAN WHO THOUGHT LIFE, THE MANDEN DER TAENKTE TING. "MAN WHO WAS WARNED, THE" Harold BEGBIE. MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, THE X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES. MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, THE Film (1983). Aspen Film Society. Dir Carl Reiner, starring Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, David Warner. Screenplay Reiner, Steve Martin, George GIPE. 93 mins, cut to 86 mins. Colour.Pastiche is the essence of most Steve Martin comedies; his self-indulgent acting style becomes rapidly tiresome when his performances are not focused by a good director, but Reiner is good, and this is a genuinely funny film spoofing the disembodied-brain GOTHIC tradition of DONOVAN'S BRAIN (1953). Kathleen Turner plays the man-destroying bitch whom brain surgeon Hfuhruhurr (Martin) falls in love with and marries, though she refuses sex. He transfers his affections to a bodiless brain, provided by a mad SCIENTIST (Warner), with which he forms a telepathic relationship. The wife is killed by a serial murderer, Hfuhruhurr grafts the beloved brain into her head, and all ends happily. [PN] MARAS, KARL House name used twice by Kenneth BULMER and once by Peter Hawkins (1923- ) for his novel The Plant from Infinity (1954). [JC] MARCH OF THE MONSTERS, THE GOJIRA; RADON. MAREK, JIRI [r] CZECH AND SLOVAK SF. MARGROFF, ROBERT E(RVIEN) (1930- ) US writer who published his first story, "Monster Tracks", in If in 1964, but who has long been best known for his collaborations with Piers ANTHONY, beginning with The Ring (1968) and The E.S.P. Worm (1970), and continuing with the Dragon series of fantasies: Dragon's Gold (1987), Serpent's Silver (1988), Chimaera's Copper (1990) and Orc's Opal (1990). [JC]See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; PSYCHOLOGY. MARGULIES, LEO (1900-1975) US publisher and editor, born in Brooklyn and educated at Columbia University. He joined the Frank A. MUNSEY chain of PULP MAGAZINES in 1932, later moving to Beacon Magazines and becoming editorial director of THRILLING WONDER STORIES when Beacon began publishing that title in 1936. LM had overall responsibility for the entire output of the chain; this later included the magazines CAPTAIN FUTURE, STARTLING STORIES and STRANGE STORIES. One of the editors who worked with him on these magazines was Oscar J. FRIEND, and the two later collaborated on 3 anthologies: From Off This World (anth 1949), a thematic collection about ALIENS, My Best Science Fiction Story (anth 1949) and The Giant Anthology of Science Fiction (anth 1954). After WWII, LM formed a publishing company, and returned to sf as publisher of FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, of which he was also editorial director for a time. He left that company and formed another, which published SATELLITE SCIENCE FICTION. Of the remaining anthologies bearing his name, four - Three Times Infinity (anth 1958), Three in One (anth 1963), Weird Tales (anth 1964) and Worlds of Weird (anth 1965) - were in fact ghost-edited by Sam MOSKOWITZ; but Three from Out There (anth 1959), Get Out of My Sky (anth 1960), The Ghoul Keepers (anth 1961) and The Unexpected (anth 1961) were LM's work. [MJE] MARINER, DAVID [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. MARINER, SCOTT Pseudonym used by C.M. KORNBLUTH and Frederik POHL in collaboration on the story "An Old Neptunian Custom" (1942). [PN] MARKHAM, ROBERT Kingsley AMIS. MARKOV, GEORGI [r] BULGARIA; David ST GEORGE. MARK V. ZIESING US SMALL PRESS. MVZ is the direct successor to Ziesing Brothers, which booksellers Michael Ziesing (1946- ) and his brother Mark V. Ziesing (1953- ) had founded in Willimantic, Connecticut, initially to produce poetry, but which then produced two books by Gene WOLFE: The Castle of the Otter (coll 1982) and The Wolfe Archipelago (coll 1983). After this Michael became inactive, and the firm became Mark V. Ziesing. Further books by Wolfe followed, plus titles by A.A. ATTANASIO, Iain M. BANKS, Neal BARRETT Jr, James P. BLAYLOCK, Pat CADIGAN,Thomas M. DISCH, Michael MOORCOCK, Lucius SHEPARD, Bruce STERLING, Howard WALDROP and others. Since 1989 the firm has operated from California. Because of its inventive publishing programme, and because most editions are well designed, MVZ has as good a chance of surviving the difficult 1990s as any small press. [JC] MARKWICK, EDWARD Working name of UK lawyer and writer Edward Markwick Johnson (? -? ), active in the last quarter of the 19th century, whose sf novel, The City of Gold: A Tale of Sport, Travel, and Adventure in the Heart of the Dark Continent (1896), direly invades H. Rider HAGGARD territory, taking its protagonists into a scientifically advanced Semitic LOST WORLD run by a Great White Witch whose love for the hero causes her death. [JC] MARLOW, LOUIS Pseudonym of UK writer and lecturer in English studies Louis Umfreville Wilkinson (1881-1966), who also wrote novels under his real name. Of sf interest is The Devil in Crystal (1944) which, in LM's typically pert, dandiacal, somewhat overeager manner, describes the effects of a sort of self-possession. The protagonist finds himself cast 20 years into his own past, where he relives his life while being all the while conscious of his observer status and of his almost total inability to alter reality. [JC]See also: TIME TRAVEL. MARLOWE, STEPHEN Milton LESSER. MARLOWE, WEBB [s] J. Francis MCCOMAS. MARNER, ROBERT [s] Algis BUDRYS. MAROONED Film (1969). Columbia. Dir John Sturges, starring Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman, David Janssen, Richard Crenna, James Franciscus. Screenplay Mayo Simon, based on Marooned (1964) by Martin CAIDIN. 134 mins. Colour.John Sturges is best known for Westerns (e.g., The Magnificent Seven [1960]), though he also directed the borderline sf film The Satan Bug (1965); outer space may be a less suitable setting for his work. The film is a quasidocumentary about the rescue, by a Soviet/US team, of three astronauts trapped in orbit around the Earth. Opinions are divided on whether the slowly built suspense is potent or monotonous; the dialogue is even more banal than real NASA chat. The special effects are low-key and accurate, but not visually memorable; the most impressive sequence in the film is the one containing shots of a genuine Saturn rocket-launch. The film suffered through being released at much the same time as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. However, the friendly treatment given to Russian cosmonauts in M played a part in bringing about the Apollo-Soyuz space rendezvous of 1975. [JB/PN] MARRIOTT-WATSON, H(ENRY) B(RERETON) (1863-1921) Australian-born writer, in UK all his working life; son of Henry Crocker MARRIOTT-WATSON. His first novel, Marahuna (1888), is sf: the eponymous female, extracted from a fiery ring in Antarctica, may well come from the interior of the Earth. Some of the tales assembled in Diogenes of London and Other Fantasies (coll 1893) are indeed fantastic, as are some of the contents of The Heart of Miranda and Other Stories, Being Mostly Winter Tales (coll 1899) and Aftermath: A Garner of Tales (coll 1919). [JC]Other works: The Princess Xenia (1899) and Alise of Astra (1910), both RURITANIAN tales. MARRIOTT-WATSON, HENRY CROCKER (1835-? ) New Zealand writer who spent some years in Australia, and whose surname at birth was almost certainly Watson; father of H.B. MARRIOTT-WATSON. Erchomenon, or The Republic of Materialism (1879 UK), published anon, is a UTOPIA set some years in the future. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, or The Witch's Cavern (1890 UK), published as by H.C.M.W., is a surprisingly adventurous and invention-filled speculation set in the FAR FUTURE. [JC] MARS For a long time Mars seemed to be the most likely abode for life outside the Earth, and for that reason it has always been of cardinal importance in sf. Its surface, unlike that of VENUS, exhibits markings visible (albeit unclearly) with the aid of optical telescopes, and has a distinct red colour. Blue-green tracts interrupting the red were thought to be oceans or vegetation. The polar caps, seen to wax and wane with the seasons, were generally held to be of snow and ice. In 1877 Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) reported an intricate network of canali (channels), a word widely interpreted as "canals". The US astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916), in Mars (1896), built up an image of a cool, arid world with great red deserts and a few areas of arable land, but perfectly capable of sustaining life. The landing of the Viking probes in 1976, however, revealed that Mars is extremely cold and has virtually no atmosphere; although there really are gigantic channels, possibly caused by water in the distant past, the intricate network reported by Schiaparelli does not exist, and nor do the tracts of vegetation.Mars was visited by the usual interplanetary tourists - Athanasius KIRCHER, Emanuel SWEDENBORG, W.S. LACH-SZYRMA, George GRIFFITH et al. - but it became important in the late 19th century as a major target for specific cosmic voyages because the MOON, known to be lifeless, seemed a relatively uninteresting destination. It is the home of an advanced civilization in Percy GREG's Across the Zodiac (1880) and a setting for lost-race-type adventures in Mr Stranger's Sealed Packet (1889) by Hugh MACCOLL. Robert CROMIE's A Plunge into Space (1890) is an interplanetary love story and sociological tract, as is Gustavus W. POPE's A Journey to Mars (1894). Kurd LASSWITZ's Auf Zwei Planeten (1897; cut trans as Two Planets 1971) provides another elaborate description of an advanced civilization and discusses the politics of interplanetary relations. H.G. WELLS published a brief vision of Mars in "The Crystal Egg" (1897) and followed up with the archetypal alien- INVASION story, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898), which cast a long shadow over the sf of the 20th century. Wells's Martians, having exhausted the resources of their dying world, come as predatory Darwinian competitors to stake their claim to Earth. This novel firmly implanted in the popular imagination the image of Martians as MONSTERS, and brought a new sensationalism into interplanetary fiction; when Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre dramatized the novel for US RADIO in 1938 it precipitated a panic, whose seeds had been sown 40 years before and fed ever since by a lurid stream of pulp fiction ( WAR OF THE WORLDS). Garrett P. SERVISS's "sequel", Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898; 1947), which reassuringly describes the obliteration of the decadent Martian civilization, made no impact. Nor was there much imaginative power in romances of Martian REINCARNATION like Camille FLAMMARION's Urania (1889; trans 1891) or Louis Pope GRATACAP's The Certainty of a Future Life on Mars (1903). The only other image which did take hold was something much closer to Lowell's enthusiastic prospectus for exotic Martian life and landscape: an uninhibitedly romantic Mars pioneered by Edwin Lester ARNOLD's Lt Gullivar Jones - His Vacation (1905; vt Gulliver of Mars) and permanently enshrined in modern mythology by the much imitated novels of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, whose Barsoom series, begun with A PRINCESS OF MARS (1912; 1917), was extended to 11 volumes over the next 30 years. Burroughs's John Carter and his kin battle for beautiful, egg-laying princesses against assorted villains and monsters, armed with swords but borne aloft by flying gondolas. Burroughs was co-opted into GENRE SF when The Mastermind of Mars (1928) appeared as the lead story in the 1927 AMAZING STORIES ANNUAL, and his influence within the genre has been as powerful as that of Wells. His principal imitator, Otis Adelbert KLINE, began by setting his works on Venus, but eventually began a Martian series with The Swordsman of Mars (1933; 1960).The early sf pulps were resonant with echoes of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. The first issue of AMAZING STORIES reprinted Austin HALL's "The Man who Saved the Earth" (1923); another early example was Edmond HAMILTON's "Monsters of Mars" (1931). It was not long, however, before a reaction against the CLICHE became manifest. P. Schuyler MILLER's "The Forgotten Man of Space" (1933) features meek, mistreated Martians, and Raymond Z. GALLUN's "Old Faithful" (1934) is an ideological reply to Wells's Darwinian assumptions. Other notable depictions of life on Mars include Laurence MANNING's "The Wreck of the Asteroid" (1932-3), Stanley G. WEINBAUM's "A Martian Odyssey" (1934), Clark Ashton SMITH's "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" (1932), C.L. MOORE's "Shambleau" (1933), P. Schuyler Miller's "The Titan" (1st part 1936; 1952) and Clifford D. SIMAK's "The Hermit of Mars" (1939). Outside the pulps one work stands out from all others as a key contribution to the mythology of Mars: C.S. LEWIS's fantasy OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (1938), in which Mars is a world whose life-system is organized according to Christian ethical principles rather than the logic of Darwinian natural selection. John W. CAMPBELL Jr's editorial insistence on more careful speculative logic suppressed the "traditional" image of Mars in the pulps' primary sf market, ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. Its exotic qualities were played down and replaced by the kind of "realism" encapsulated by P. Schuyler Miller's "The Cave" (1944), an ironic story in which Martian lifeforms kill an Earthman who violates the truce which they all must observe in order to survive the long Martian night. Martian exotica flourished nevertheless, particularly in the work of Leigh BRACKETT, whose "Martian Quest" (1940) was in ASF but who went on to do the bulk of her work for PLANET STORIES. Her gaudy version of the red planet, where decadent alien cultures face the threat of plundering Earthmen, is featured in Shadow over Mars (1944; 1951; vt The Nemesis from Terra 1961 dos), The Sword of Rhiannon (1949 as "Sea-Kings of Mars"; 1953), The Secret of Sinharat (1949 as "Queen of the Martian Catacombs"; exp 1964), The People of the Talisman (1950 as "Black Amazon of Mars"; exp 1964) and "The Last Days of Shandakor" (1952). Ray BRADBURY subsequently brought the romantic image of Mars to a kind of impressionistic perfection in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1946-50; coll 1950; vt The Silver Locusts 1951 UK; the latter and many subsequent edns have variant contents). In these stories Mars is dead but still haunted by the ghosts of an extinct civilization, visited by Earthmen who become doubly haunted by virtue of the echoes of their own Earthly past which follow them. The stories are heavy with nostalgia and extraordinarily seductive. A few other writers have had some success in capturing a similar atmosphere, notably Simak in "Seven Came Back" (1950) and J.G. BALLARD in "The Time-Tombs" (1963).In the 1950s the romance of exotic Mars was mostly left behind as the dominant theme became the problems of COLONIZATION of a planet with barely enough water and barely enough oxygen. Notable stories in this newly realistic vein were The Sands of Mars (1951) by Arthur C. CLARKE, Outpost Mars (1952; rev vt Sin in Space 1961) by Cyril Judd (C.M. KORNBLUTH and Judith MERRIL), "Crucifixus Etiam" (1953) by Walter M. MILLER, Alien Dust (fixup 1955) by E.C. TUBB and Police Your Planet (1956 as by Erik van Lhin) by Lester DEL REY. Among the many juvenile novels of the same species were Red Planet (1949) by Robert A. HEINLEIN and a series by Patrick MOORE begun with Mission to Mars (1955). Martian ROBINSONADES of the same ilk include del Rey's Marooned on Mars (1952), Rex GORDON's No Man Friday (1956; vt First on Mars 1957) and James BLISH's Welcome to Mars (1967). Indigenous lifeforms are frequently featured in these novels, but few are hostile; an exception is in Kenneth F. GANTZ's Not in Solitude (1959). An uninhabited Mars becomes a grim prison colony in Farewell, Earth's Bliss (1966; rev 1971) by D.G. COMPTON. Other memorable stories of the period include Theodore STURGEON's poignant vignette about a dying astronaut, "The Man who Lost the Sea" (1959), and Philip Jose FARMER's pioneering exploration of the possibilities of alien sexuality, "Open to Me, My Sister" (1960; vt "My Sister's Brother"). The mythology of Mars moved into a new phase in the early 1960s as the scenarios of the 1950s began to reappear in a somewhat surrealized form. Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961) features a human raised by Martians who returns to Earth to build a religious philosophy out of the elements of their cultural heritage. Roger ZELAZNY's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (1963) reverses the idea, introducing to a Brackettesque Mars a poet who becomes a preacher and leads the decadent Martians to a cultural revival. Philip K. DICK's Martian Time-Slip (1964) and THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1964) use colony scenarios as backgrounds for reality-shifting plots - the arid, depleted environment was ideal for Dick's psychological landscaping. A more elaborate but equally enigmatic fantasy is Algis BUDRYS's The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn (1967; vt The Iron Thorn 1968). The real possibility that Mars might harbour life was by now on the brink of extinction, and The Earth is Near (1970; trans 1974) by Ludek PESEK provides a vivid requiem in which the myth-driven members of the first Martian expedition undertake an obsessive search for life in an environment which cannot sustain it.In more recent times Lin CARTER has written pastiches of Brackett - The Man who Loved Mars (1973) and The Valley where Time Stood Still (1974) - but they are blatant fakes; Brackett herself had moved on to new worlds beyond the Solar System. Christopher PRIEST went back to a more remote image in his Wellsian romp, The Space Machine (1975), but other writers remained determined to do what they had to in order to sustain the planet's future viability as a potential home for life. Frederik POHL's MAN PLUS (1976) is a grimly realistic account of the making of a CYBORG colonist, while Ian WATSON's The Martian Inca (1976) and John VARLEY's "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" (1977) stubbornly credit the seemingly unpromising Martian soil with miraculous adaptive qualities. Some sf writers cling to the conviction that, no matter how arid Mars might be, near-future colonization remains a viable project, as in Lewis SHINER's stubbornly realistic Frontera (1984); frontier Mars is featured also in Sterling LANIER's Menace under Marswood (1983). Other writers have taken new heart from the idea that it might be a promising world for TERRAFORMING. The possibility that terraforming might help resuscitate, at least for a brief while, a neo-romantic Mars is eloquently expressed in Ian MCDONALD's fabulous Desolation Road (1988). In Green Mars (1985 IASFM; 1988 chap dos) Kim Stanley ROBINSON looks forward ironically to the days when conservationists are champions of the old red world against the nascent fertile version; a version of their case provides one of several strands of argument about terraforming in the ambitions Red Mars (1992 UK), which begins a projected trilogy on the planet, with Green Mars (no connection to the novella) and Blue Mars to follow. This project promises to be a key work in the realistic school. (Robert L. FORWARD) Robert L. FORWARD's Martian Rainbow (1991) and Jack WILLIAMSON's Beachhead (1992) are other recent additions to this school. Invasions from Mars now seem completely obsolete, but the idea still has a certain satirical mileage, as revealed in Frederik Pohl's The Day the Martians Came (fixup 1988); the epic journey to Mars receives similar satirical treatment in Terry BISSON's Voyage to the Red Planet (1990). Magical echoes of romantic Mars still insinuate themselves into all these works, as they will undoubtedly do when and if the first manned mission to Mars takes place.A theme anthology is Mars, We Love You (anth 1971; vt The Book of Mars 1976 UK) ed Willis E. MCNELLY with Jane Hipolito. [BS]See also: SCIENTIFIC ERRORS. MARSH, GEOFFREY Charles L. GRANT. MARSHAK, SONDRA (? - ) US writer who has been associated with STAR TREK from the early 1970s, moving from fan activities into Star Trek ties and commentaries. SM began with Star Trek Lives! (1975) with Jacqueline LICHTENBERG and Joan Winston, moving on to Star Trek: The New Voyages * (coll 1976) with Myrna CULBREATH and its direct sequel, Star Trek: The New Voyages 2 * (anth 1978), also with Culbreath, two enthusiastic but patchy compilations of short fiction. Subsequent ties written with Culbreath include The Price of the Phoenix * (1977) and its direct sequel The Fate of the Phoenix * (1979), The Prometheus Design * (1982) and Triangle * (1983). With William SHATNER, SM and Culbreath wrote Shatner: "Where No Man . . .": The Authorized Biography of William Shatner (1979). [JC/CAJ]Other work: The Star Trek Puzzle Manual (1976) with James Razzi. MARSHALL, ARCHIBALD Working name of UK novelist Arthur Hammond Marshall (1866-1934), who was prolific and popular in the early decades of this century. His Erewhonian sf SATIRE Upsidonia (1915) amusingly places a young man in a PARALLEL WORLD, somehow linked with ours, where all values, in particular ECONOMIC ones, suffer a reversal; many comic points are lightly made. [JC]Other work: Simple People (1928). MARSHALL, BRUCE (1899-1987) Scottish writer whose sequence about a NEAR FUTURE world in which the USSR controls the Vatican begins with The Bishop (1970), set in what is recognizeably our own world, and continues with Urban the Ninth (1973), Operation Iscariot (1974), Marx the First (1975) and Peter the Second (1976). By the last volume the Pope is English, and allows priests to marry. [JC] MARSHALL, EDISON (TESLA) (1894-1967) US writer and big-game hunter, best known for his work outside the sf field, especially his many historical novels. He began publishing sf with "Who is Charles Avison?" (1916). The narrator of Ogden's Strange Story (1928 Popular Magazine; 1934), which is also sf, suffers a head-injury and timeslips into the deep past, becoming a proto-man named Og Dian of the Lost Land (1935; vt The Lost Land 1972) is a romantically told tale of a lost race ( LOST WORLDS) of Cro-Magnons in Antarctica. Earth Giant (1960) is about Hercules. [JC/PN]Other works: The Death Bell (1924), Sam Campbell, Gentleman (1934), The Stolen God (1936), Darzee, Girl of India (1937), The White Brigand (1937) and The Jewel of Mahabar (1938), all primarily adventure but with some fantastic elements. MARSTEN, RICHARD Evan HUNTER. MARTENS, PAUL Neil BELL. MARTIAN CHRONICLES, THE US tv miniseries (1980). NBC TV. Dir Michael Anderson, starring Rock Hudson, Gayle Hunnicutt, Darren McGavin, Roddy McDowall, Joyce van Patten, Fritz Weaver, Nyree Dawn Porter, Bernadette Peters. Teleplay Richard MATHESON, based on THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (coll of linked stories 1950; rev vt The Silver Locusts 1951 UK) by Ray BRADBURY. 3 110min episodes. Colour.The problems with this disappointing, expensive ($8 million) adaptation cannot be blamed entirely on Anderson's sluggish direction (see also LOGAN'S RUN) or Matheson's script (which establishes somewhat artificial continuities between the 11 stories he adapts), or even the inflexible performance of Rock Hudson as Colonel Wilder, the main linking character. Bradbury's own words, which for many readers work poetically on the page, tend to sound stilted when spoken, and clash with the realism that tv seems to demand. The answer might have been to make the words more austere and find a visual poetry to substitute, but in this the production mostly fails, though some aspects (the Martians and their strange masks) are authentically otherworldly. The insistent moralizing (not untrue to the book) comes over as hackneyed and sentimental. Another director might have done better than Anderson, but the book is intractably literary and probably inappropriate for film or tv. Bradbury was reported to be unhappy with the production. [PN] MARTIN, CARL [r] John DALMAS. MARTIN, GEORGE R(AYMOND) R(ICHARD) (1948- ) US writer and editor whose first published sf story was "The Hero" for Gal in 1971. His success was thereafter rapid. "A Song for Lya" (1974), a novella about a human convert to an alien RELIGION whose ESCHATOLOGY is based in BIOLOGY, won the first of his 3 HUGOS to date; 2 others followed for "Sandkings" (1979), which also won a NEBULA, and "The Way of Cross and Dragon" (1979); he won a second Nebula in 1986 for "Portraits of his Children" (1985), and a Bram Stoker Award for The Pear-Shaped Man (1987 Omni; 1991 chap). Other notable early stories include a short series about an unusual form of interstellar TRANSPORTATION begun with "The Second Kind of Loneliness" (1972) and another begun with "Override" (1973), about the commercial exploitation of zombies. A novella which he wrote in collaboration with Lisa TUTTLE, "The Storms of Windhaven" (1975), was eventually extended into Windhaven (fixup 1981) as by GRRM and Lisa Tuttle. His first solo (and only sf) novel, Dying of the Light (1977), is a vivid romance set on a drifting planet which, while passing close by a sun, has been the site of a huge festival; some short stories are set in the same universe. Fevre Dream (1982) is a tale of vampires and Mississippi steamboats whose realistic treatment owes as much to sf as to supernatural fiction. The Armageddon Rag (1983) is a thriller in which the kind of apocalypse imagined in Norman SPINRAD's "The Big Flash" (1969) is aborted in the nick of time. His most substantial sf project is the series collected in Tuf Voyaging (coll of linked stories 1986) about the problem-solving exploits of an ecological engineer in a declining GALACTIC EMPIRE. Perhaps because of his training as a journalist and his employment in the mid-1970s as a teacher of journalism, GRRM seems most comfortable with stories which are fast-paced and economical. "Nightflyers" (1980), a horror story set aboard a spaceship and involving a COMPUTER impressed with human PSI POWERS, is another outstanding novella, very unevenly filmed as Nightflyers (1987).In the late 1980s GRRM moved into tv, first writing for the new The TWILIGHT ZONE series (1985-7) and then becoming heavily involved with the development of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. In parallel with these enterprises he launched Wild Cards, a set of BRAIDED tales placed in an ALTERNATE WORLD - whose premise is rather more sophisticated than most such in COMICS - starring SUPERHEROES; the possibility of trademark infringement forced the substitution of the term "Ace" for "Superhero". This SHARED-WORLD anthology series (GRRM prefers the label "mosaic novels", on the grounds that individual volumes are more coherently organized than in most such anthologies) currently (early 1992) extends to 9 vols ( WILD CARDS for listing). GRRM earlier edited the notable NEW VOICES series of ANTHOLOGIES of novellas by the nominees for the JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for Best New Writer (of which he was himself one): New Voices in Science Fiction (anth 1977; vt New Voices I: The Campbell Award Nominees 1978), New Voices II (anth 1979), New Voices III (anth 1980), New Voices 4 (anth 1981) and The John W. Campbell Awards Volume 5 (anth 1984).GRRM is a vigorous storyteller with a flair for vivid imagery. All of his collections - A SONG FOR LYA AND OTHER STORIES (coll 1976), Songs of Stars and Shadows (coll 1977), Sandkings (coll 1981), Songs the Dead Men Sing (coll 1983; cut 1985 UK), Nightflyers (coll 1985) and Portraits of his Children (coll 1987) - contain striking work. His own output has declined as he has become increasingly active as an editor. [BS]Other works as editor: The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book (anth 1983) with Isaac ASIMOV and Martin H. GREENBERG; Night Visions 3 (anth 1986; vt Night Visions 1987 UK).About the author: George R.R. Martin, the Ace from New Jersey: A Working Bibliography (last rev 1989 chap) by Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ALIENS; ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; BLACK HOLES; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; FANTASY; GOTHIC SF; HEROES; HYPERSPACE; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; MUSIC; OMNI; SUPERMAN; TELEVISION. MARTIN, GRAHAM DUNSTAN (1932- ) Scottish writer who began publishing work of genre interest with the Giftwish children's fantasy sequence: Giftwish (1978) and Catchfire (1981), both as Graham Martin. With The Soul Master (1984), as GDM, he moved sf-wards, though the godling-dominated land of Tethesta is described in terms of fantasy. Time-Slip (1986), a bleak post- HOLOCAUST tale set in nether Scotland, is fully sf, as is The Dream Wall (1987), a dreadful-warning story of the UK under the Soviets in the early 21st century. GDM's strengths - a dogged insistence on what he clearly feels to be home truths - are fully on view in this narrative, as are certain weaknesses, mainly a grim humourlessness which greys out any attempts at SATIRE or novelistic ambiguity. Half a Glass of Moonshine (1988), a study in PERCEPTION, suggests that the human sensorium blocks off certain features of our environment for good Darwinian reasons. [JC]See also: PARALLEL WORLDS. MARTIN, PETER Working name of UK writer Peter Martin Leckie (1890-? ) for his sf novel, Summer in 3,000: Not a Prophecy - A Parable (1946), in which a progressive World Island state is contrasted with a war-torn conservative one. [JC] MARTIN, ROD [r] John DALMAS. MARTIN, THOMAS [r] Martin THOMAS. MARTIN, WEBBER Robert SILVERBERG. MARTINSEN, MARTIN Ken FOLLETT. MARTINSON, HARRY (EDMUND) (1904-1978) Swedish author and poet, member of the Swedish Academy, recipient of the 1974 Nobel Literature Prize. A prolific writer, HM's one contribution to sf is Aniara (1953 Cikada; exp 1956; trans Hugh MacDiarmid and E. Harley Schubert as Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space 1963 UK), a 103-canto epic poem ( POETRY) eloquently defending humane values against the inhumanity of TECHNOLOGY within the story of the irreversible voyage of a GENERATION STARSHIP, Aniara, towards outer space. Despite or possibly because of the participation of Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), arguably Scotland's most important 20th-century poet, the English translation ill serves the resonant, melodic and quotable original. Karl-Birger Blomdahl's opera ( MUSIC) based on the poem, Aniara (1959), features some pioneering electronic effects and has achieved international success. Some of the poems in the untranslated Doriderna (coll 1980) belong to the Aniara cycle. [J-HH/JC] MARTYN, WYNDHAM (1875-? ) UK thriller writer who occasionally tacked on sf devices. His Stones of Enchantment (1948) details the discovery of a lost race ( LOST WORLDS) possessing the secret of longevity. [JE]Other work: Nightmare Castle (1935). MARVEL COMICS Eventually named for its first COMIC - much as DC COMICS was named after Detective Comics - MC was founded by Martin Goodman (1910-1992) as Timely Comics before, in the 1950s, being renamed Atlas Comics after its distribution company; it became MC in 1963. Marvel Comics #1 (Nov 1939) featured two of the company's three early mainstays. The Human Torch was an ANDROID who could become a figure of living flame; he was created and drawn by Carl Burgos. Prince Namor, the Sub Mariner - a warlike undersea monarch who had an ambivalent relationship with the surface world - was chronicled by William Blake (Bill) Everett. Throughout the 1940s both The Human Torch and Prince Namor had their own comics (The Human Torch from Fall 1940, Sub Mariner Comics from Spring 1941). Running alongside them were Marvel Mystery Comics (Marvel Comics retitled) and the third of those mainstays: Captain America (Mar 1941-Jan 1950). The original masked superpatriot was created by artist Jack KIRBY and writer Joe Simon.In the 1950s Marvel Mystery Comics became Marvel Tales, and was indistinguishable from dozens of other horror, war, sf, Western, gag and romance anthology titles; Stan LEE was credited with writing most of the contents. Not quite lost among the chaff were strips by many fine illustrators, including Bill Benulis, Gene Colan, Richard Doxsee, Bernie Krigstein, Joe Maneely, Gray MORROW and Al Williamson. The mid-1950s slump in comics sales saw the disappearance of Atlas but not of all of its titles. Stan Lee retrenched in 1958, giving more of an sf/horror/ MONSTER-MOVIE flavour to his titles. With the help of a returned Jack Kirby (who had worked elsewhere through most of the 1950s) plus regular artists Dick Ayers, Steve Ditko and Don Heck, editor Lee and his "Bullpen" were soon eager to re-enter the SUPERHERO genre, starting with Nov 1961's Fantastic Four. Lee allowed his heroes to be fallible: they could be bad-tempered, immature, repressed . . . The motif would establish MC at the vanguard of comics publishing.At the dawn of the "Marvel Age" MC experimented with an sf-anthology title. Produced by Lee and Ditko and complete with contents and letters pages, Amazing Adult Fantasy ran for 8 issues Dec 1961-July 1962 before being retitled Amazing Fantasy for 1 final issue, which featured the debut of MC's most popular character ever: Spider-Man.Most of Marvel's superheroes had various kinds of run-ins with PSEUDO-SCIENCE, especially The Fantastic Four, a group of superpowered troubleshooters. Kirby and Lee elegantly plundered Norse mythology for their Thor series (Journey into Mystery #83 [Aug 1962] to present; renamed Thor in 1966) while Lee and Ditko produced the definitive interdimensional magic strip in Doctor Strange (Strange Tales #114-#134 [Nov 1963-1965]; then his own title #169-#183 [June 1968-Nov 1969]; then in a relaunched Strange Tales #1-#19 [Apr 1987-Oct 1988]). Marvel Super-Heroes #12 (Dec 1967) saw the arrival of MC's space-born superhero Captain Marvel; it was not long before he had the red-yellow-blue costume and a teenage alter ego full of wisecracks and buzzwords like his 1940s namesake. (For the full tortuous story of CAPTAIN MARVEL, see his entry.) During 1968-71 MC's finest sf character, The Silver Surfer, was given his own title, drawn by John Buscema and with the writing credit going, inevitably, to Lee. In 1970 MC began publishing its own version of Robert E. HOWARD's Conan, adapted by Roy Thomas with artists John Buscema, Gil Kane and Barry Smith.MC currently (1992) dominates the US comics marketplace, most notably with the bestselling X-MEN titles. Since 1987 MC has been reprinting many of its sought-after 1960s comics in the Masterworks series: Spider-Man (4 vols to date), The Fantastic Four (3 vols), X-Men (4 vols), The Avengers (2 vols) - no relation to the tv series - The Silver Surfer (2 vols) and, each with 1 vol to date, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Daredevil and Captain America.An authorized and therefore somewhat uncritical account of the company's history is Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics (1991) by Les Daniels. [SW]See also: ILLUSTRATION. MARVELL, ANDREW Pseudonym of UK editor and writer Howell Davies (1896-1985); between the Wars he worked as a theatre critic for the Manchester Evening News and as literary editor of the Star and News Chronicle, later serving as editor of the South American Handbook (1938-69). During the brief time he wrote as AM he published 3 novels. Minimum Man, or Time to be Gone (1938) combines sf and thriller ingredients in its depiction of a 1950 fascist coup in the UK, and of its overthrow by a new race of tiny but very powerful telepaths whose parthenogenetic births were caused by poison gas. Three Men Make a World (1939) is a kind of DISASTER story, though the turning of the UK into a rural land by petroleum-destroying bacteria may strike modern readers as a catastrophe with a silver lining. Congratulate the Devil (1939), in which a happiness drug is found to be intolerable to society at large, describes the process by which its disseminators are hounded to death. AM's novels were professional and engrossing. [JC/BS]See also: POLITICS; PSI POWERS; SUPERMAN. MARVELMAN CAPTAIN MARVEL; Alan MOORE. MARVEL SCIENCE FICTION MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES. MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES US PULP MAGAZINE. 9 issues 1938-41; 6 further issues 1950-52; published by Postal Publications (#1 and #2), then by Western Fiction Publishing Co. for the remainder of the 1st series, finally by Stadium Publishing Co.; ed Robert O. Erisman (uncredited in 1st series).An sf pulp magazine from a chain which included such fringe-sf titles as UNCANNY TALES, MSS was the first of the many new sf magazines of the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was notorious for the mildly erotic approach of its early issues, to which Henry KUTTNER contributed several stories, including "The Time Trap" (Nov 1938). The Feb 1939 issue featured Jack WILLIAMSON's After World's End (1961). After 5 issues the title changed in Dec 1939 to Marvel Tales, and for 2 issues the magazine leaned more heavily towards titillating sex and sadism, like "Lust Rides the Roller Coaster" (Dec 1939) by Ray King and "World without Sex" (May 1940) by Robert Wentworth (Edmond HAMILTON). The title then changed again in Nov 1940 to Marvel Stories, and the magazine returned to straightforward sf. Although initially successful enough to generate a companion, DYNAMIC SCIENCE STORIES, MSS, which began as a quarterly, became less and less frequent through 1939-40, ceasing with the Mar 1941 issue. It was revived in Nov 1950 under its original title, switched to DIGEST size after 2 issues, appeared 3 times in that format, and reverted to pulp size for its final issue; it was Marvel Science Fiction for the last 3 issues. Daniel KEYES was an assistant editor for some of these later numbers, which were generally unmemorable. The Feb 1951 issue was published in a UK reprint May 1951. [MJE] MARVEL STORIES MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES. MARVEL TALES 1. US SEMIPROZINE (the first 3 issues small- DIGEST-size, #4 digest-size and #5 BEDSHEET-size), 5 issues May 1934-Summer 1935. Published by Fantasy Publishers; ed William L. CRAWFORD, who was not only the publisher but also set the type himself. Some issues were distributed with several different covers. Distribution was very limited; MT was never generally available. Its fiction included works by Robert E. HOWARD, H.P. LOVECRAFT, Robert BLOCH's first story, "Lilies" (Winter 1934), and Clifford D. SIMAK's The Creator (Mar 1935; 1946 chap). The Winter 1934 issue commenced serialization of P. Schuyler MILLER's short novel "The Titan"; the magazine died before the serialization was completed, and the work was finally published as the title novella of Miller's The Titan (coll 1952). An even shorter-lived companion title was UNUSUAL STORIES.2. Variant title used for 2 issues of MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES. [MJE] MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN Film (1994). American Zoetrope/TriStar Pictures/Japan Satellite Broadcasting, Inc./The IndieProd Company. Dir Kenneth Branagh; prods include Francis Ford Coppola; co-prods Branagh and David Parfitt; screenplay Seph Lady, Frank Darabont, based on Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831) by Mary SHELLEY; starring Branagh, Robert De Niro, Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter,Aidan Quinn, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, John Cleese, Robert Hardy, Cherie Lunghi, Celia Imrie. 123 mins. Colour.Branagh directs this as full-blooded (and extremely bloody) GOTHIC melodrama,truer to the original plot than almost all previous adaptations, but with thoughtful twists of his own. Much is made of birthing imagery, both literal and in the case of the monster's creation,metaphorical, perhaps showing an awareness of those readings of the original that emphasize the relevance of Mary Shelley's miscarriage shortly before writing the book, and her mother's death from blood poisoning shortly after giving birth to her. Indeed, when the obsessive Victor Frankenstein (Branagh) creates a bride for the monster, he does so out of body parts of Justine, an innocent accused of a murder committed by the monster, and Elizabeth (Bonham Carter), his fiancee murdered by the monster in revenge for his isolation. The Creature,played by De Niro in make-up a long way removed from the familiar nuts-and-bolts square-headed Karloff version, is good at grief, rage and despair. The odd post-modern touch decorates what is generally a rollicking historical costume drama. The film is, in its eccentric and uneven way, quite distinguished, and certainly sensitive to the issues raised by the book and the circumstances of its writing. It is more a film about death (and reversing it) than creating life, and much is made of a grim cholera epidemic. [PN] MASK OF FU MANCHU, THE Film (1932). Cosmopolitan/MGM. Dir Charles Brabin, Charles Vidor, starring Boris Karloff, Lewis Stone, Karen Morley, Jean Hersholt, Myrna Loy. Screenplay Irene Kuhn, Edgar Allen Woolf, John Willard, based on The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) by Sax ROHMER. 72 mins, cut to 67 mins. B/w.Rohmer's Oriental supervillain has since been brought to the screen many times ( FU MANCHU) but this first, visually lavish version, produced by Irving Thalberg, is the most memorable. It is based on the 6th book in Sax Rohmer's intensely popular, racy and racist Fu Manchu series. Malign scientific genius, torturer and murderer Fu Manchu (Karloff), pitted against his old nemesis Nayland Smith (Stone), lisps his way poisonously through the film with the assistance of his sadistic daughter (Loy), who has a wonderfully fetishistic scene (assisted by Nubians) where she whips and then caresses one of their heroic enemies. Fu Manchu seeks Genghis Khan's death-mask and sword, which he intends to use as symbols to arouse the Oriental races in a war against the White nations; tarantulas and a zombie serum play roles in an eclectic plot which mixes sf and occult devices. In a spectacular climax Fu's electrical DEATH-RAY machine is turned against Fu's generals by Nayland Smith. The bizarrely stylized sets were by Cedric Gibbons and the electrical effects were by Ken Strickfaden. This is the sort of pulp adventure classic later imitated enjoyably by Steven SPIELBERG's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). [PN/JB] MASON, ANITA (1942- ) UK writer. Her second novel, The Illusionist (1983), is a literary fantasy centred on Simon Magus. AM's sf novel, The War against Chaos (1988), also intensely literary in demeanour, posits a NEAR-FUTURE UK of surreal bleakness dominated by thought-control and savage divisions between precarious Haves and Goyaesque Have-Nots, who live in something very much like Hell. [JC] MASON, DAVID (1924-1974) US writer who began publishing with "Placebo" for Infinity in 1955; he was married 1956-62 to Katherine MACLEAN. Most of his novels - such as his first, Kavin's World (1969), and its sequel, The Return of Kavin (1972) - were routine SWORD AND SORCERY. However, his final book, The Deep Gods (1973), more impressively implants a 20th-century mentality into the brain of a prehistoric man who must deal with the insanity of a whale (one of the "deep gods" of the title) that threatens to destroy Eden. [JC]Other works: Devil's Food (1969); The Sorcerer's Skull (1970); The Shores of Tomorrow (1971); three erotic novels - Degrees of Pleasure (1969), Jellyroll (1969) and Devil's Food (1969). MASON, DOUGLAS R(ANKINE) (1918- ) UK junior-school headmaster and prolific writer after 1964, both under his own name and as John Rankine; he has been silent since about 1980. His first story was "Two's Company", as by Rankine, in John CARNELL's New Writings in SF 1 (1964), and he was soon publishing 2-3 books a year, generally routine SPACE OPERAS and other adventures as Rankine. Occasionally, under his own name - as with From Carthage then I Came (1966 US; vt Eight Against Utopia 1967) and Matrix (1970 US) - he would attempt more ambitious novels containing some social comment. Generally speaking, however, he was content to produce rather low-pressure work.The Dag Fletcher series of space operas, as by Rankine, was initiated in his first book, The Blockage of Sinitron: Four Adventures of Dag Fletcher (coll of linked stories 1966), and continued with Interstellar Two-Five (1966), One is One (1968), The Plantos Affair (1971), The Ring of Garamas (1972) and The Bromius Phenomenon (1973 US). The series is set in a galactic environment shared by other Rankine titles including The Fingalnan Conspiracy (1973) and The Thorburn Enterprise (1977). [JC]Other works:As John Rankine: The Space Corporation series, comprising Never the Same Door (1968) and Moons of Triopus (1968); Binary Z (1969); The Weisman Experiment (1969); Operation Umanaq (1973 US); 4 novelizations of episodes from the tv series SPACE 1999, being #2: Moon Odyssey * (1975), #6: Astral Quest * (1975), #8: Android Planet * (1976) and #10: Phoenix of Megaron * (1976 US); The Vort Programme (1978); The Star of Hesiock (1980); Last Shuttle to Planet Earth (1980).As DRM: Landfall is a State of Mind (1968); Ring of Violence (1968); The Tower of Rizwan (1968); The Janus Syndrome (1969); Dilation Effect (1971 US); Horizon Alpha (1971 US); Satellite 54-Zero (1971 US); The Resurrection of Roger Diment (1972 US); The End Bringers (1973 US); The Phaeton Condition (1973 US); Pitman's Progress (1976); The Omega Worm (1976); Euphor Unfree (1977); Mission to Pactolus R (1978); The Typhon Intervention (1981).See also: CITIES; MATHEMATICS; NEW WRITINGS IN SF. MASON, ERNST [r] Frederik POHL. MASON, GREGORY (1889-1968) US writer whose sf DYSTOPIA, The Golden Archer: A Satirical Novel of 1975 (1956), depicts a USA suffering under regimented, McCarthy-like bigotry. [JC] MASON, LISA (1953- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Arachne" for Omni in 1987, a tale she expanded into her first novel, Arachne (1990), a tightly composed kitchen-sink narrative set in a post-earthquake San Francisco, in CYBERSPACE, and in the heart of a complex corporate world, with a tough female lawyer as protagonist, a maimed AI personality as trickster and dubious colleague, and cyberspace-haunting human personas everywhere at risk from AIs longing to acquire unprogrammed human virtues. As yet LM is still writing in a rather crowded Californian grotto, and does not shift very far in her second novel, Summer of Love (1994), which is fantasy; she gives, therefore, the impression of being an author it is far too early to attempt to define. [JC] MASON, MARY [r] Stephen GOLDIN. MASON, ROBERT C(AVERLY) (1942- ) US writer who became known for Chickenhawk (1983), a memoir of his stint as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Weapon (1989), ostensibly a TECHNOTHRILLER, avoids the more restrictive implications of that term by concentrating on an AI; Solo, the ROBOT referred to in the title, learns more about being human than about being a superior killing machine. The sequel, Solo (1992), sees the sensitive robot forced to fight off an even more dangerous successor robot. The generic closeness of these novels to the films The TERMINATOR (1984) and TERMINATOR 2 (1991) was noted in reviews, but there is certainly little resemblance between either film and Weapon. [JC] MASON, TALLY [s] August W. DERLETH. MASSON, DAVID I(RVINE) (1915- ) Scottish writer, long resident in England, with an MA in English language and literature. He began publishing sf with "Traveller's Rest" for NEW WORLDS in 1965; his fiction, including this extraordinarily intense study in the distortion of PERCEPTION, was assembled in The Caltraps of Time (coll 1968), which single volume established his strong reputation as a writer of vigorously experimental, vivid, often scientifically sound stories. Notable among them, and reflecting his close and informed interest in LINGUISTICS, were "Not so Certain" (1967) and the brilliant TIME-TRAVEL story "A Two-Timer" (1966), told entirely in language appropriate to 1683, the year from which the inadvertent time traveller is whisked into the future. Each of DIM's stories seems to be a solution to some cognitive or creative problem or challenge, and he appeared little inclined to repeat any of his effects. He has published almost no fiction since 1968, though "Doctor Fausta" in George HAY's Stopwatch (anth 1974) is an interesting SATIRE. DIM also reviewed sf fairly frequently during the 1970s in FOUNDATION. [JC]See also: DIMENSIONS; MATHEMATICS. MASTER OF TERROR 4D MAN. MASTER OF THE WORLD Film (1961). AIP. Dir William Witney, starring Vincent Price, Charles Bronson, Henry Hull, Mary Webster. Screenplay Richard MATHESON, based (not very closely) on Robur le conquerant (1886; trans as The Clipper of the Clouds 1887; vt Robur the Conqueror 1887) and Maitre du monde (1904; trans as Master of the World 1914) by Jules VERNE. 104 mins. Colour.MOTW owes more to the Disney version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) - which it clearly imitates - than to the two Verne novels, with the Albatross, a very light clipper ship with propellers on the masts, substituting for a submarine. Robur (Price), a warped idealist, uses his invention to enforce peace by making war on war, bombarding opposing armies from the air; he kidnaps as witnesses a US special agent (Bronson), an arms manufacturer (Hull) and a young couple. The film was more lavish than most AIP productions (usually very-low-budget exploitation movies), but most of the money went on the elaborate flying ship. The travelogue aspect of the film is achieved largely through library footage, some of it wildly anachronistic: a supposed aerial shot of 1860s London is from the 1944 film of Shakespeare's Henry V. A melodramatic, one-note script by Matheson (usually better than this) and flat direction weaken the film, but it remains watchable if silly. [JB/PN] MASTERS, DEXTER (1908-1989) US writer whose only sf work was The Cloud Chamber (1971). [JC] MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE Film (1987). Cannon. Dir Gary Goddard, starring Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster, Billy Barty. Screenplay David Odell. 106 mins. Colour.Goddard's unfortunate film debut announced itself as the first live-action film to be based on toys ( GAMES AND TOYS) - the He-Man toys made by Mattel; its obvious predecessor was an animated tv series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, begun 1983. The SWORD-AND-SORCERY story pits the muscle-bound He-Man (Lundgren) of Planet Eternia against Skeletor (Langella), a demon figure from another DIMENSION and leader of the malign Masters of the Universe. A MATTER-TRANSMITTER key takes He-Man to contemporary California, where he finds the help necessary for defeating Skeletor in a final showdown. The film lacks the vigour it requires. The marketing phenomenon it exemplifies has concerned many parents, and some countries ban films and tv series which, in the guise of entertainment, are designed to sell commercial products by brainwashing very young children. A further example is the much better (animated) film The TRANSFORMERS - THE MOVIE (1986). [PN] MASTIN, JOHN (1865-1932) UK writer, clergyman and science popularizer, author of 3 sf novels. The Stolen Planet (1906) features the picaresque adventures of two Earthmen through the Solar System and beyond, as narrated by Jervis Meredith, codeveloper of a space-conquering "aerostat"; centuries later, in Through the Sun in an Airship (1909), Meredith's last descendant again tours a number of planets. Through his various FANTASTIC VOYAGES, JM tried to exploit the romance of science in stories which have an attractive (though thin) patina of verisimilitude and are told in the uplifting manner typical of too many UK boys' books; they are permeated with religiosity, at times attempting a reconciliation of science and RELIGION. The Immortal Light (1907) is a LOST-WORLDS novel set in the Antarctic among an underground, Latin-speaking race. The Autobiography of a Picture (1910) is fantasy. [JC/EFB]See also: HISTORY OF SF; SPACESHIPS; SUN. MATHEMATICS The imaginations of pure mathematicians have provided sf writers with important motifs. For example, the notions taken from geometry and topology of a fourth and other DIMENSIONS (which see for a listing of relevant sf stories) have the essential qualities of strangeness and mystery, making them an enjoyable struggle for the untrained intuition to accept. A surprising number of sf writers have been mathematicians, or at least have trained in mathematics; among them have been Lewis CARROLL, Arthur C. CLARKE, Paul DAVIES, Ralph Milne FARLEY, Martin GARDNER, Norman KAGAN, Johannes KEPLER, Donald KINGSBURY, Homer NEARING, Larry NIVEN, Esther ROCHON, Rudy RUCKER, Bertrand RUSSELL, Boris STRUGATSKI, John TAINE, Vernor VINGE and David ZINDELL.In discussing the use of mathematical ideas in sf, the boundary between sf and fantasy must be drawn according to somewhat different principles from those used in the case of the natural sciences. Since many mathematical ideas derive their piquancy from the fact that they are definitely incompatible with the world we live in, a story illustrating such an idea cannot claim any credence as a record of possible events, and should perhaps be classed as a fantasy. Yet an important consideration in judging a story of this type is its fidelity to mathematical truth, in which respect it belongs not just to sf but to sf at the furthest remove from fantasy, to that subgenre comprising stories which turn on a point of established science.In the field of geometry these points are illustrated by the prototype of all stories which use the idea of space having other than three dimensions, E. A. ABBOTT's Flatland (1884 as by A Square). Written in a period when there was great interest among mathematicians in n-dimensional geometry, this fantasy offers an indirect approach to the problems we, as three-dimensional creatures, have in understanding four-dimensional space by examining the difficulties two-dimensional beings would have in understanding three-dimensional space - an explanatory device which was to become a standard feature of sf invoking a fourth dimension. With sentient lines, triangles and polygons as its inhabitants, the book's only three-dimensional character being a visiting sphere, Flatland makes no pretence of being related to the real world. The book has been made into a short animated film, Flatland (1965), dir Eric Martin, with narration by Peter Cook. C.H. HINTON developed Abbott's speculations, adding some of his own, in several pieces in Scientific Romances (coll 1886) and Scientific Romances: Second Series (coll 1902), and in his sequel An Episode of Flatland (1907). In Bolland (1957; trans as Sphereland 1965 US) Dionys BURGER wrote another sequel designed to explain in the same way Einstein's theories about curved space. Greg BEAR's stylish story "Tangents" (1986) imagines the intrusion of higher-dimensional beings into our three-dimensional space, in a sophisticated reworking of the theme of Miles J. BREUER's "The Captured Cross-Section" (1929).Among the many stories using fourth and other dimensions, two deserve mention here for their emphasis on particular mathematical points. H.G. WELLS's "The Plattner Story" (1896) turns on the fact that a three-dimensional object, if rotated through half a turn in a fourth dimension, becomes its mirror image (in the story this happens to Gottfried Plattner, who afterwards finds his heart is on the right). The reception of this point by literary readers amusingly illustrates how, if science can lend credibility to sf, sf removes credibility from science: one critic (Allan Rodway, in Science and Modern Writing [1964]) told his readers that this was "neither scientific nor mathematical". In fact it is excellent mathematics. In "And He Built a Crooked House" (1940) Robert A. HEINLEIN describes a house of eight cubical rooms which fit together like the eight three-dimensional "faces" of a four-dimensional cube (a tesseract). The story ostensibly takes place in the real world, but Heinlein's main concern is not to persuade the reader that his house is physically possible but to show us something which is mathematically feasible though seemingly paradoxical. He is therefore careful to be mathematically correct in describing the structure of his house, while emphasizing its startling features. His one slip, as it happens, offends against both requirements; the mathematical truth is even stranger than he realizes.Other writers have set stories in frankly imaginary worlds for the sake of unusual topological structures of space, but few have been so careful to define the structures as Heinlein was. It is common for the topological oddity to be revealed only at the last, as a shock ending, as in David I. MASSON's "Traveller's Rest" (1965) - though this is only one element of a subtle and complex story in which the structures of time and language undergo variations related to that of the structure of space - and Arthur C. CLARKE's "Wall of Darkness" (1949), which uses a similar idea. Christopher PRIEST's INVERTED WORLD (1974) features (or appears to, for the whole thing could be a trick of perception) a hyperboloid world where variations of subjective experience take place according to one's position in the world. (Several mathematical stories, including Priest's, are discussed under PERCEPTION.) Topology is also likely to be abused as a catch-all explanation for any weird happening: in "A Subway Named Mobius" (1950) by A.J. Deutsch, for example, it is supposed that a subway network has become so complex that trains mysteriously disappear and reappear, although no proper topological explanation is presented.This careless attitude to topology is comparable with the numerology ( PSEUDO-SCIENCE) of such stories as "Six Cubed Plus One" (1966) by John Rankine (Douglas R. MASON), in which magical properties are attributed to special numbers. (A sardonic comment on cavalier attitudes to mathematics was made by L. Sprague DE CAMP and Fletcher PRATT in The Incomplete Enchanter [1942], in which a series of propositions in mathematical logic is used as a magic talisman.)Transfinite arithmetic shares with topology the appeal of the unfamiliar and the smack of paradox, and infinity has its own sensational connotations. For these reasons transfinite numbers are often called upon to establish an atmosphere of mathematical mysticism, but few authors have found it possible to do more with them. They appealed to the quirkiness of James BLISH, who in "FYI" (1953) seized on the fact that they do not and cannot count material objects and contemplated the Universe being reconstructed to accommodate them.The two other areas of mathematics which have provided material for sf stories are statistics and logic. The concepts of statistics and probability theory are easy to misunderstand, as has been demonstrated in many sf stories; also, being abstractions which can masquerade as concrete instances, they are easy to ridicule, and this can be seen in Russell Maloney's "Inflexible Logic" (1940), which shows us monkeys typing famous works of literature, William TENN's "Null-P" (1951), in which an exactly average man is discovered, and Jack C. HALDEMAN's "A Very Good Year" (1984) in which the absence of death for a whole year is statistically compensated for in the next. A rather more serious point about statistics was made by Robert M. COATES in "The Law" (1974), which describes the "Law of Averages" breaking down and so prompts consideration of why human beings in large numbers normally do behave in predictable ways.The perennial fascination of logical paradoxes was exploited by Gordon R. DICKSON in "The Monkey Wrench" (1951). This story uses the paradox of Epimenides the Cretan ("this statement is false") to deflate a computer engineer's pride in the perfection of his machine, thus giving a reassuring reminder of the insufficiency of logic. An opposite effect was achieved by Frederik POHL in a number of stories, notably "The Schematic Man" (1968), which describes a man coding himself as a computer programme, and so raises the question of what makes the real world more than a mathematical model. Logical paradoxes in fictional form were a speciality of Lewis Carroll, whose A Tangled Tale (1886) and The Game of Logic (1887) are devoted to them as, in part, are the Alice books. Closer to our own time, Martin GARDNER, whose mathematical-puzzle column appeared in Scientific American 1957-81 and in ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE from 1977, has written many fictionalized mathematical diversions, such as those collected in Science Fiction Puzzle Tales (coll 1981) and Puzzles from Other Worlds (coll 1984).Mathematics whose point is not primarily mathematical can also appear in sf; the use of an occasional mathematical formula is seen by some sf writers, as by some scientists, as conferring intellectual respectability. A rare example of a genuine mathematical argument occurs in a footnote to Fred HOYLE's The Black Cloud (1957): it is a nice calculation, and has probably added to a number of readers' enjoyment of the book. Hoyle also gave a mathematical explanation of an sf speculation in the preface to Fifth Planet (1963).Examples of popular exposition of mathematical ideas in sf are the explanation of the calculus of variations in David DUNCAN's Occam's Razor (1957) and that of coordinate systems and relativity in Miles J. Breuer's "The Gostak and the Doshes" (1930). Both authors proceed to tell stories which have only tenuous connections with the mathematical ideas they have expounded.Though the mathematical genius Libby in Robert Heinlein's "Misfit" (1939) proves resourceful, mathematicians as characters in GENRE SF have often been stereotyped as absent-minded, ineffectual and unworldly; they are clearly descended from the inhabitants of Jonathan SWIFT's Laputa in Gulliver's Travels (1726; rev 1735). Sf is popular among mathematicians, however, and it is not surprising that there should have been some attempts to adjust this image. This can be seen particularly in the stories of Norman KAGAN, whose portrayals of zany, hyperactive maths students, although they sometimes appear self-congratulatory, may be rather closer to reality. Kagan's stories make witty use of many parts of mathematics; while ostensibly concerned with sf speculations - in "Four Brands of Impossible" (1964) the use of a different logic to describe the world, in "The Mathenauts" (1964) a journey into various mathematical spaces - they are really about the experience of doing mathematics. An important mathematical sf protagonist is Shevek, in Ursula K. LE GUIN's The Dispossessed (1974), whose new mathematics is the basis for building the ANSIBLE, a FASTER-THAN-LIGHT communications device. A particularly interesting mathematician is the elderly protagonist of "Euclid Alone" (1975) by William F. Orr, himself a mathematician. A student successfully proves one of Euclid's axioms to be wrong. His teacher is left with the moral quandary of whether or not to suppress the discovery, which may, ultimately, destroy the serenity of everyone in the world. Orr's story can be found in Mathenauts (anth 1987) ed Rudy RUCKER, the only anthology of sf mathematical stories since Fantasia Mathematica (anth 1958) and The Mathematical Magpie (anth 1962), both ed Clifton Fadiman.Mathematics has entered fiction in strange ways. Some of the oddest are discussed in the terminology entry OULIPO. Certainly stories of COMMUNICATIONS can feature mathematics, through the idea of mathematics as a universal language. Some notable mathematical incursions into sf during the 1980s are the mathematical harmonies in Kim Stanley ROBINSON's The Memory of Whiteness (1985), the cosmic message concealed in the endless series of numbers following pi's decimal point in Contact (1985) by Carl SAGAN, and the disquisition on the Mandelbrot set in Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990), one of the few sf stories to use the mathematics of fractals. But the most important mathematical sf writers of the past decade have been Rudy Rucker and David Zindell, both mathematicians. Rucker's stories do not merely turn on mathematical points; they are often set in worlds generated by mathematical ideas, whose exploration is itself an act of mathematical intellection, in which the author delights, as he does in raunchy humour. Such tales include much of his work, notably White Light, or What is Cantor's Continuum Problem? (1980) - a crazed fantasia moving in physical (though afterlife) analogues of Hilbertian space, transfinite numbers and a lot else - The Sex Sphere (1983) and The Secret of Life (1985). Zindell's Neverness (1988) is one of the few successful books whose assumption is that mathematics is romantic. In this novel, to win an ice-race is to solve a theorem. The sequence where the protagonist can map the space windows only through mathematics - fountains and arpeggios of mathematics - is sustained and moving, and conveys with great conviction even to the nonmathematical reader what the high delight of mathematical thought must feel like. [TSu/PN] MATHESON, RICHARD (BURTON) (1926- ) US author of stories, novels and filmscripts, initially thought of as primarily an sf writer but from the 1960s increasingly recognized as one of the most significant modern creators of terror and fantasy in both fiction and film. He began publishing sf with "Born of Man and Woman" for The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION in 1950. He had regarded this as a simple terror story but, on finding it praised as sf, decided to cash in on the then-current sf boom. He included most of his best early work in Born of Man and Woman (coll 1954; with 4 stories cut vt Third from the Sun 1955). The famous title story tells in affecting pidgin English of a terrifying MUTANT child and of his break towards a kind of freedom ( CHILDREN IN SF). The element of terror in the tale nearly overrides a perfunctory sf base, as in his first sf novel, I Am Legend (1954; vt The Omega Man: I Am Legend 1971), a post- HOLOCAUST story in which only one man remains unaffected by a bacterium that induces vampirism ( SUPERNATURAL CREATURES). RM scripted the first film version of this, L' ULTIMO UOMO DELLA TERRA (1964; vt The Last Man on Earth) but, angered by the rewrite of his script, used the pseudonym Logan Swanson for his screenplay credit; he was not responsible for the script of the second film version, The OMEGA MAN (1971). He did, however, adapt The Shrinking Man (1956), his second sf novel, as The INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), which won a 1958 HUGO; indeed, he sold it to Universal only on condition that he could write the screenplay, thus gaining an entry into the film business. This novel uses an sf component to shape the story of a man who, after exposure to radiation and insecticide, begins to shrink inexorably to microscopic size ( GREAT AND SMALL). RM's next major commission was for the tv series The TWILIGHT ZONE in 1959; all told, 14 of his scripts appeared in the series.In 1960 he wrote the screenplay for the first of Roger CORMAN's adaptations of horror stories by Edgar Allan POE, The House of Usher (1960; vt The Fall of the House of Usher UK), and subsequently he scripted a number of fantasy/horror films, once in collaboration with Charles BEAUMONT, for Corman and other directors: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), Night of the Eagle (1962; vt Burn Witch Burn) - based on Conjure Wife (1953; vt Burn Witch Burn 1962) by Fritz LEIBER, screenplay written with Beaumont - The Raven (1963), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), Fanatic (1965), The Devil Rides Out (1968) and De Sade (1969). His tv work has included several scripts for STAR TREK and later for ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY. He also scripted a number of made-for-tv feature films, by far the best being Duel (1971), from his own story; the film was Stephen SPIELBERG's first significant work as a director, and was given theatrical release in the UK. Others included The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973) ( KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER), Dying Room Only (1973), Dracula (1973), Scream of the Wolf (1974), The STRANGER WITHIN (1974) and The MARTIAN CHRONICLES (1979). His script with William F. NOLAN for the tv movie Trilogy of Terror (1975) was based on three of his own stories. Of his feature-film scripts, that for MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961) is the most obviously sciencefictional. His psychological-cum-supernatural melodrama Hell House (1971) was filmed as The Legend of Hell House (1973), again with his own screenplay. Here, too, there are borderline sf elements; indeed, RM's entire career has cross-fertilized sf with HORROR.Further volumes of stories with some sf interest are The Shores of Space (coll 1957) and Shock! (coll 1961; vt Shock I: Thirteen Tales to Thrill and Terrify 1979), though the latter volume's successors, Shock II (coll 1964), Shock III (coll 1966), Shock Waves (coll 1970) and Shock 4 (coll 1980 UK), are primarily assemblages of fantasy stories. The 86 stories assembled in Richard Matheson: Collected Stories (coll 1989) cover his career 1950-71. A fantasy, Bid Time Return (1975; vt Somewhere in Time 1980), once again powerfully utilizes devices from sf (in this case TIME TRAVEL) in a story whose emotional satisfactions are not dependent on a successful sf resolution of the problems that arise; it was filmed as Somewhere in Time (1980) from his own script, and was later assembled with What Dreams May Come (1978) as Somewhere in Time/What Dreams May Come: Two Novels of Love and Fantasy (both texts rev, omni 1991). The latter novel, an afterlife fantasy, shares with its predecessor a carefully controlled pathos occasionally reminiscent of Robert NATHAN. Earthbound (1982 as by Logan Swanson; text restored as by RM 1989 UK) is a ghost story. RM has also written some short fiction - including "Where There's a Will" (1980) - in collaboration with his son Richard Christian MATHESON. Though RM cannot be considered as in any primary sense an sf writer, his influence as one of the "liberators" of magazine sf in the early 1950s keeps his name vividly in mind.The dominant theme in RM's work has always been PARANOIA, whether imagined in GOTHIC or in sf terms. In Duel a truck inexplicably attacks a car; in Dying Room Only a woman's husband disappears in a motel toilet but no one will believe her; though the pregnancy in The Stranger Within did not result from infidelity, that is the way it seems to the woman's sterile husband. I Am Legend (one man against a world of vampires) is, in its obsessive images of persecution, perhaps the very peak of all paranoid sf. [JC/JB/PN]Other works: A Stir of Echoes (1958); Through Channels (1989 chap); Journal of the Gun Years (1992), The Gunfight (1993), By the Gun (coll 1994) and Shadow in the Sun (1994), all Westerns; 7 Steps to Midnight (1993), a thriller.As Editor: The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories * (anth 1985), with Martin H. GREENBERG and Charles G. WAUGH.About the author: Richard Matheson: He is Legend: An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography (1984 chap) by Mark Rathbun and Graeme Flanagan.See also: BIOLOGY; DISASTER; EC COMICS; END OF THE WORLD; MONSTERS; RELIGION; ROBOTS. MATHESON, RICHARD CHRISTIAN (1953- ) US author and (primarily) writer for film and tv, and tv producer. RCM's work has been at most only fringe sf; he is not to be confused with his father, Richard MATHESON, nor with his younger brother Chris Matheson, cowriter of the witty screenplay for BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989) and its sequel Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991). RCM's tv work includes scripts for The INCREDIBLE HULK and AMAZING STORIES. His first published story was "Graduation" (1977 Whispers). A collection of his short fiction, predominantly fantasy and horror, is Scars, and Other Distinguishing Marks (coll 1987; rev with teleplay "Magic Saturday" added 1988). [PN]Other works: Holiday (1988 chap); Created By (1993). MATINEE Film (1993). Universal. Dir Joe DANTE, screenplay Charlie Haas from a story by Jerico and Charlie Haas, starring John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz and Lisa Jakub. 99 mins. Colour.Not so much an sf movie as a movie giving a cultural critique of sf movies. The setting is Key West, Florida, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear war for a time seemed imminent. Teenager Gene Loomis (Fenton) is new in town, and the son of a naval officer who has been posted to a Cuban blockade ship. A MONSTER MOVIE buff, Gene is excited by the arrival in town of exploitation movie director Lawrence Woolsey, played with tacky, genial charisma by John Goodman; Woolsey appears largely modelled on real-life film producer William Castle, and perhaps to a degree on Roger CORMAN also. Woolsey's new movie, premiering here, is Mant ("Half man! Half ant! All terror!"). The film deftly explores the paranoias and sociopolitical fears of real-life 1962, and their relationship to the paranoias of the monster movies of that time, with a lot of sharpness though no great profundity, and is intelligent and amusing throughout. We see almost twenty minutes of Mant, the film within a film, an extraordinarily accurate parody of early 1970s monster movies made by JD with great affection. The film's subject is partly the cultural cusp that was 1962, with the greater openness to experience and liberality we associate with the 1960s slowly coming into view. But the film is slightly weakened by the conservatism on display being so exaggerated as to seem more mid-1950s than 1962. [PN] MATSON, NORMAN (HAGHEJM) (1893-1965) US writer now best known for his completion, after the death of Thorne Smith (1893-1934), of the latter's The Passionate Witch (1941), capturing Smith's melancholy, mildly madcap, sentimentally erotic style very neatly. NM also wrote a sequel, Bats in the Belfry (1943). A film, I Married a Witch (1942), and the tv series Bewitched (1964-72) were based on the books. Earlier NM wrote a fantasy, Flecker's Magic (1926; vt Enchanted Beggar 1959), also concerning a witch, and an sf novel, Doctor Fogg (1929). Fogg, having constructed a radio receiver capable of listening in on other worlds and attracted the interest of a young woman who has (perhaps coincidentally) been sent via MATTER TRANSMISSION to Earth from a distant planet, falls in love with the girl while extracting messages and information from space. But, when the US Government decides it must control all these scientific findings for security reasons, he destroys his device. [JC] MATTER TRANSMISSION The matter transmitter is one of sf's many facilitating devices: a hypothetical machine which is not rationally plausible in terms of known science but which is very convenient for certain narrative purposes ( IMAGINARY SCIENCE). By virtue of an obvious play on words, matter transmitters were sometimes called "transmats" - as in Lan WRIGHT's "Transmat" (1960) - but the contraction never really caught on. Essentially, a matter transmitter is a teleportation machine ( PSI POWERS) whose plausibility is usually secured by analogies with radio. The best illustration of its narrative utility is in the tv series STAR TREK, in which the "transporter" not only transfers people from the Enterprise to this week's stage-set with a minimum of fuss but serves as an ever-ready deus ex machina to come to the rescue when our heroes are in a tight situation. As with other facilitating devices like the TIME MACHINE and the FASTER-THAN-LIGHT starship, however, there is a flourishing subgenre of "what if . . . ?" stories exploring the logical corollaries of the supposition that such devices might one day exist, ranging from elementary questions like "what happens to the matter occupying the space into which you are transmitting?" to questions about the way in which routine transportation of this kind would transform society. Three Trips in Time and Space (anth 1973) ed Robert SILVERBERG presents three original novellas on this theme by Larry NIVEN, John BRUNNER and Jack VANCE; the commission for the volume intrigued Brunner sufficiently that he went on to publish two novels further exploring the possibilities - Web of Everywhere (1974) and The Infinitive of Go (1980) - while in 1973-4 Niven wrote four other stories elaborating the background of his "Flash Crowd", carrying forward ideas first broached in RINGWORLD (1970).Early stories of matter transmission include "The Man without a Body" (1877) by Edward Page MITCHELL and "Professor Vehr's Electrical Experiment" (1885) by Robert Duncan MILNE, in both of which the process is interrupted with dire consequences; a later variant of the same theme, with an additional horrific twist, is George LANGELAAN's twice-filmed "The Fly" (1957) (The FLY ). Matter transmitters feature as a method of interplanetary travel in Fred T. JANE's tongue-in-cheek To Venus in Five Seconds (1897) and as a method of ore-shipping in Garrett P. SERVISS's The Moon Metal (1900), but few other authors could bring themselves to deploy the notion until the advent of the sf PULP MAGAZINES, when it was quickly added to the standard vocabulary of symbols, featuring in such stories as "The Secret of Electrical Transmission" (1922) by Clement FEZANDIE, The Radio Man (1924; 1948) by Ralph Milne FARLEY, "The Moon Menace" (1927) by Edmond HAMILTON and "The Cosmic Express" (1930) by Jack WILLIAMSON. Matter transmitters are rarely featured in work done outside the genre, although Norman MATSON's Doctor Fogg (1929) is an interesting comedy about an unexpected arrival by such means.More sophisticated versions of the Star Trek transporter can be found in various HARD-SF stories, including Poul ANDERSON's THE ENEMY STARS (1959), Harry HARRISON's One Step from Earth (fixup 1970) and Joe HALDEMAN's Mindbridge (1976). Melodramas cunningly deploying them as plot-elements include Lloyd BIGGLE's All the Colours of Darkness (1963), Philip K. DICK's The Unteleported Man (1964; 1966; exp 1982; vt Lies, Inc) and David LANGFORD's The Space Eater (1982); Langford and John Grant (Paul BARNETT) cruelly parody several aspects of matter transmission in Earthdoom! (1987). Matter transmitters function as devices facilitating the COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS in Eric Frank RUSSELL's "U-Turn" (1950) and Joseph L. GREEN's The Loafers of Refuge (fixup 1965). "Buildings" whose doorways are matter transmitters and whose "rooms" are on different worlds are featured in Bob SHAW's "Aspect" (1954), Roger ZELAZNY's Today we Choose Faces (1973) and Dan SIMMONS's HYPERION (1989). The idea of a galactic culture linked by matter transmitters is soberly and memorably displayed in Clifford D. SIMAK's WAY STATION (1963).Matter transmitters which malfunction occasionally result in embarrassing duplications, as in Clifford Simak's Goblin Reservation (1968), and stories about matter duplication - classic examples include the later stories in George O. SMITH's Venus Equilateral (coll of linked stories 1947) and Damon Knight's "A for Anything" (1957; exp as The People Maker 1959; vt A for Anything UK) - may be regarded as an extension of the theme; indeed, scrupulous attempts to rationalize matter transmission (like Niven's and Brunner's) assume that what is actually transmitted is information regarding the exact duplication of the object to be reconstituted, not actual matter, so that much so-called matter transmission is really matter duplication. In Algis BUDRYS's ROGUE MOON (1960) the duplication is calculated, the transmitted "clones" being continually sacrificed to the task of exploring a hazardous alien artifact. In Thomas M. DISCH's Echo Round his Bones (1967) ghostly duplicates, perceptible only to one another, are an unintended consequence of the use of matter transmitters. Both of these last-named stories sensitively exploit the bearing which the imaginary device has on the philosophical problem of identity. [BS/MJE] MATTHEWS, RODNEY (1945- ) UK illustrator. RM's artwork first became popular in the mid-1970s - a period of great vigour in UK sf/fantasy illustration - when it began appearing on book covers and on the first 3 covers of the short-lived magazine VORTEX (1977). Bizarre, whimsical, often spiky, weirdly coloured, his art "feels" more like fantasy than sf, though it has often been used on sf books - including some from Avon in the USA - and is closely associated with the work of Michael MOORCOCK, notably in his many illustrations to Moorcock's Elric at the End of Time (1987). RM's fantastic animals and monsters are especially good, and his thorny cities are another trademark. He works in various media, mostly watercolour, gouache and ink; much of his work has been in the form of posters, record sleeves (several winning awards) and calendars. In the 1980s a series of RM fantasy calendars, some in very large format, featured mostly new rather than recycled paintings. Books of his work include a very complete and beautifully produced retrospective collection, In Search of Forever (1985) with text by Nigel Suckling, Last Ship Home (1989) and The Rodney Matthews Portfolio (1991). [PN] MATTOTTI, LORENZO (1954- ) Italian COMIC-strip artist whose work combines Futurist and Vorticist forms with Expressionist colour. Born in Brescia, he studied architecture before turning to comics in the late 1970s, with Jose Munoz (1942- ) as his mentor. With other like-minded young artists, he formed the Valvoline group to "explore the frontiers of progressive fumetti [comic strips]". His first success came with Il signore Spartaco ["Mr Spartaco"] (graph 1982), about a man whose dreams of his childhood fears and anxieties affect his hold on reality. LM's masterpiece is Fuochi ["Fires"] (1985 Alter; trans as Feux 1986 France; trans as Fires 1988 US), about a battleship visiting a magical island. The story climaxes in a furious Expressionist inferno. Other works include: Labyrinthi ["Labyrinths"] (graph 1989); L'uomo alla finestra ["The Man at the Window"] (1992), a long GRAPHIC NOVEL done in black-and-white line, written with Lilia Ambrosini; and Murmur (graph 1992 UK), written by Jerry Kransky. [RT] MATURIN, CHARLES R(OBERT) (1782-1824) Irish novelist, playwright and clergyman, the son of French Protestants in exile, who wrote several GOTHIC romances and sensational plays with intermittent success - most notably The Fatal Revenge, or The Family of Montorio (1807) as by Dennis Jasper Murphy-before the publication of his definitive terror-romance, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). The eponymous hero, who is reminiscent of figures from the Wandering Jew to Faust, has sold his soul to the Devil in return for IMMORTALITY. The novel is made up of a series of complexly linked stories concerning people in various extremities to whom Melmoth appears as tempter in his desperate attempts to find someone to accept his curse; but all refuse him, regardless of the perils under which they labour, and after a century or so Melmoth returns to Ireland, where he disappears over the edge of a cliff. Honore de BALZAC wrote a sequel, "Melmoth Reconcile" (1835; trans in coll The Unknown Masterpiece 1896 UK). The Penguin edition of CRM's novel (1977), ed and introduced by Alethea Hayter, is convenient and scholarly. [JC]Other work: The Albigenses (1824).About the author: Charles Robert Maturin: His Life and Works (1923) by Niilo Idman. MAURICE, MICHAEL Pseudonym of UK writer and clergyman Conrad Arthur Skinner (1889-? ), whose sf novel Not in Our Stars (1923) can be forgiven its confused science - giant meteorites are supposed to cause perturbations in spacetime sufficient to reverse time's arrow for the protagonist - because of the odd intensity of the tale. Awakening in a death cell after a meteor strike, the protagonist is executed and then begins to relive his life (each day passing normally, but with him awakening each morning a day earlier) with foreknowledge of the murder he has committed/will commit in error. The end of the story is ambiguous, with some hint that, on re-entering the normal flow of time, he will be able to avoid the deed. A later novel, Marooned (1932), is an afterlife fantasy. [JC] MAUROIS, ANDRE Pseudonym of prolific French novelist and man of letters Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog (1885-1967), in the USA during WWII. He was best known for his romantic biographies and other nonfiction, though his first work, "La derniere histoire du monde" ["The Final History of the World"] (1903) as by Emile Herzog, was sf; later included in Premiers contes ["First Stories"] (coll 1935) as by AM, it was the first of his several future histories. The most interesting of these is Le chapitre suivant (1927 chap; trans anon as The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon 1928 chap UK), which describes a war against the ostensibly uninhabited Moon concocted by a cabal of newspaper barons to provide bored mankind with an external enemy; unfortunately the Moon is indeed occupied, and retaliates. This fragment was collected in Deux fragments d'une histoire universelle 1992 (coll 1928) with its sequel, "Chapitre CXVIII: La vie des hommes", which appeared in English as the second of the two title stories of The Weigher of Souls and The Earth Dwellers (coll 1963 US); it deals with inhabitants of Uranus who fail to understand the supposedly inferior inhabitants of Earth; this appeared in the collection Relativisme (coll 1930; trans Hamish Miles as A Private Universe 1932 UK). An interesting ALTERNATE-WORLDS essay, "If Louis XVI had had an Atom of Firmness", appeared in J.C. Squire's If, or History Rewritten (anth 1931).AM also wrote more conventional sf narratives. Voyage aux pays des Articoles (1927 chap; trans David GARNETT as A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles 1928 chap UK) carries a man and woman to an ISLAND in whose UTOPIAN society the dominant Articole caste is made up of artists who provide the other castes with their raisons d'etre; the tale is ironic. In Le peseur d'ames (1931; trans Hamish Miles as The Weigher of Souls 1931 UK) a doctor discovers that the elan vital is a gas which escapes the body at death; his attempts to mingle in posthumous harmony with his wife are, however, frustrated. This short novel reappeared in The Weigher of Souls and The Earth Dwellers. The sf device in La machine a lire les pensees (1937; trans James Whitehall as The Thought-Reading Machine 1938 UK) is a "camera" capable of registering thoughts on photographic film.Though amiability tends to soften the bite of his morality-like tales and his reputation has faded, AM's work is nicely representative of the idiomatic ease with which sf ideas have been used in this century by MAINSTREAM WRITERS, especially in the UK and mainland Europe, as vehicles for the conveyance of satirical material. [JC/PN]Other works: Patapoufs et filifers (1930 chap; trans Norman Denny as Fattypuffs and Thinifers 1941 chap UK; vt Patapoufs and Filifers 1948 chap US), a juvenile parable set in an underground land, illustrated by Jean Bruller ( VERCORS); Nouveaux discours du Docteur O'Grady (1950; trans Gerard Hopkins as The Return of Dr O'Grady 1951 UK); Illusions (1968), a speculative essay.See also: ARTS; ESCHATOLOGY; ESP; HISTORY OF SF; MACHINES; RELIGION; SATIRE. MAVITY, HUBERT [s] Nelson S. BOND. MAVOR, ELINOR [r] AMAZING STORIES; FANTASTIC. MAX HEADROOM UK made-for-tv film (1985); US tv series (1987-8). Chrysalis/Channel 4 (UK); Chrysalis/Lakeside-Lorimar Telepictures (US). Created by Steve Roberts (screenplay) and George Stone, Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton (story). Prod Peter Wagg, Brian Frankish, Roberts. Writers included Roberts, Philip DeGuere, Michael CASSUTT. Dirs included Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel (UK teleplay), Farhad Mann, Tommy Lee Wallace, Thomas J. Wright, Victor Lobl, Janet Greek. Teleplay 70 mins; series ran 2 seasons, 14 50min episodes in all. Colour.There are two distinct branches of the MH tv saga, first in the UK, then in the USA. Originally the computer-generated stuttering head - played by an image-processed Matt Frewer - was created as a state-of-the-art link man for rock videos in a tv music programme, but a fictional origin had to be devised for him. Hence the 1985 made-for-tv film (originally titled A Rebus), in which investigative newsman Carter (Frewer) digs into a conspiracy revolving around compressed tv ads ("blipverts") that can cause sedentary viewers to explode. After an accident Carter's brain patterns are electronically duplicated to create his computerized alter ego.While this led in the UK to the planned rock-video series - plus a talkshow, advertising contracts, spin-off books and merchandise - US production company Lorimar was more impressed by the teleplay explaining Max Headroom's origin, and remade it (with small changes) as Blipverts, the first episode of a series. Frewer continued to play Carter and Headroom, and Amanda Pays also transferred from the UK production as Theora, Carter's computer-genius colleague. Roberts likewise crossed the Atlantic.Although the MEDIA-dominated future world of the pilot suggested many possibilities for a CYBERPUNK-style sf thriller series, subsequent episodes were hindered by a reliance on tired ideas (gladiatorial combat, test-tube babies) that could have easily been used on LOGAN'S RUN or any other future- DYSTOPIA series, and MH lasted only 2 short seasons. In its image-dense style and media-fuelled cynicism, however, MH did introduce the trappings of cyberpunk to tv. [KN] MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE Stephen KING. MAXWELL, ANN (ELIZABETH) (1944- ) US writer, also of detective thrillers as A.E. Maxwell. She began publishing work of genre interest with Change (1975) and The Singer Enigma (1976), novels which combine a somewhat overready sensitivity with sf-adventure instincts. Her Dancer Trilogy - Fire Dancer (1982), Dancer's Luck (1983) and Dancer's Illusion (1983) - is a SPACE OPERA featuring a passel of escaped slaves and a very fast starship. In Timeshadow Rider (1986) two superpowered siblings must join together to save the Universe. [JC]Other works: A Dead God Dancing (1979); Name of a Shadow (1980); The Jaws of Menx (1981).See also: SUPERMAN. MAXWELL, JACK Ernest L. MCKEAG. MAXWELL, JOHN C. John S. GLASBY. MAY, JULIAN (1931- ) US editor and writer; married to T.E. DIKTY from 1953 to his death in 1991, founding with him Publication Associates in 1957 (see his entry for this and later enterprises); he also served as editor and agent for all her mature work. She began publishing sf with "Dune Roller" for ASF in 1951 but, except for some fan interests, became inactive in the field for many years, during which time, under a number of pseudonyms, she wrote something over 290 books, most of them nonfiction juveniles: many were efficient presentations of science and nature topics, others biographies. Pseudonyms of sf interest included Ian Thorne (see listing below) and Lee N. Falconer, under which name she wrote A Gazeteer of the Hyborian World of Conan (1977).In the 1980s JM turned her attention once again to sf, making an immediate and very substantial impact with her Saga of Pliocene Exile: The Many-Colored Land (1981) and The Golden Torc (1982), both assembled as The Many-Colored Land & The Golden Torc (omni 1982), plus The Nonborn King (1983) and The Adversary (1984), both assembled as The Nonborn King & The Adversary (omni 1984), and supplemented by The Pliocene Companion (1984), a guide to the sequence. A second, closely linked, sequence, the Galactic Milieu books, began with Intervention (1987; vt in 2 vols The Surveillance 1988 and The Metaconcert 1988),Jack the Bodiless (1992) and Diamond Mask (1994), with further volumes projected. Underlying the increasingly complicated storyline of the former sequence is what might be called a romance of vista: the protagonists have fled via TIME TRAVEL from a 22nd century where they have lived as internal exiles into deep prehistory, where at the bottom of time they discover not only a land rich in potential but two apparently ALIEN species in a state of deadly conflict over the young world. Much additional material, from Celtic myths to intimations of HARD SF, is fed into this vision, with an effect of romance and high purpose, leavened intermittently by a Trickster protagonist or two. With Intervention the overall sequence moves into contemporary times, the narrative being charged by this point with dramatic irons in the fire and ironies galore, as well as a sustaining concern with the attractive theme of psychic evolution, as concentrated in a family of special folk and expressed in a manner sometimes evocative of the work of Doris LESSING. [JC]Other works: Black Trillium (1990) with Marion Zimmer BRADLEY and Andre NORTON.Juveniles as Ian Thorne: Frankenstein * (1977 chap), film tie; Godzilla (1977 chap), nonfiction; Dracula * (1977 chap), film tie; King Kong (1977 chap), nonfiction; Mad Scientists (1977 chap), nonfiction; The Wolf Man * (1977 chap), film tie; The Mummy * (1981 chap), film tie; Frankenstein Meets Wolfman * (1981 chap), film tie; Creature from the Black Lagoon * (1981 chap), film tie; The Blob * (1982 chap), film tie; The Deadly Mantis * (1982 chap), film tie; It Came from Outer Space * (1982 chap), film tie.About the author: The Work of Julian May: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1985 chap) by Thaddeus DIKTY and Robert REGINALD. MAYAKOVSKY, VLADIMIR (VLADIMIROVICH) (1893-1930) Russian poet and playwright, a revolutionary from early years, a Futurist poet whose verse radically shocked post-Revolution RUSSIA. Of particular sf interest is his first fully fledged prose SATIRICAL play, Klop (1929; trans Guy Daniels as The Bedbug in The Complete Plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky [coll 1968 US]), in which, some generations hence, a Soviet bureaucrat is kept in a zoo as a curious example. Banya (1930; trans Guy Daniels in the same 1968 volume), set in the contemporary USSR, employs a similar array of satirical tools. These two plays were sufficiently sharp in their criticism of the blandness of Soviet ideas that a good deal of official criticism descended on VM's head. [JC]See also: THEATRE. MAYHAR, ARDATH (1930- ) US writer who began publishing poetry in the 1940s and who wrote historicals and Westerns as Frank Cannon and other non-sf/fantasy books as John Killdeer and Sarah MacWilliams. She began publishing sf/fantasy with "The Cat with the Sapphire Eyes" for Weirdbook #8 in 1973; she integrated this tale into the second volume of her Kyrannon sequence, which comprises her first novel, How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon (1979), and The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn (1980). Like much of her work, this sequence makes use of the instruments of SCIENCE FANTASY - specifically, magical devices and powers which are justified by recourse to "scientific" explanations, generally rooted in the past - to heighten tales whose protagonists, often adolescent girls, exhibit a goodness which is sometimes shining. In the Kyrannon books, folk of transparent decency must resist a tyrant whose disruptive influence threatens to sour the harmony between human beings and Nature. The most sf-like of her subsequent novels are Khi to Freedom (1983), Golden Dream (1983), Exile on Vlahil (1984), which elaborately and effectively describes life upon the eponymous planet, The World Ends in Hickory Hollow (1985), Trail of the Seahawks * (1987) with Ron Fortier, a game tie, A Place of Silver Silence (1988), a First-Contact tale for a younger audience, and Monkey Station * (1989) with Fortier ( APES AND CAVEMEN). This last novel, in which monkeys are dubiously granted INTELLIGENCE and the power of speech as the by-product of a plague, is the first of a projected series of game tie-ins. AM's work has been compared to that of Andre NORTON, with which it shares transparent story-telling and a sense of moral certainty. [JC]Other works: The Tyrnos fantasies, being Soul-Singer of Tyrnos (1981) and The Runes of the Lyre (1982); Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey * (1982), continuing the H. Beam PIPER series; Warlock's Gift (1982); Lords of the Triple Moons (1983); The Saga of Grittel Sundotha (1985); Makra Choria (1987); BattleTech: The Sword and the Dagger * (1987), a game tie; The Wall (1987), horror; People of the Mesa (1992), prehistoric fantasy. MAYNARD, RICHARD (JOHN) (1926- ) UK-born writer, resident in Australia, whose The Coconut Book (1985) is of some interest. The Quiet Place (1988; vt The Return 1988 US) rather overcomplicatedly describes the return to Earth of a group of astronauts long years after the planet has mysteriously reverted to savagery. There is some SEX between the descending males and the females who need them. [JC] MAYNE, WILLIAM (JAMES CARTER) (1928- ) UK author of nearly 100 children's books. These are sometimes realistic, sometimes - especially his later work - fantastic; the fantasies, however, are treated in so down-to-earth a manner that more often than not they naturalize the supernatural. His style, which is sophisticated and sometimes oblique, is found difficult by some children; others love him, as do the many critics who see WM as perhaps the most distinguished living UK writer of children's fiction, regardless of genre. His first book was Follow the Footprints (1953), the earliest of the many treasure-hunt stories he was to write.WM has written very little pure sf, and even Earthfasts (1966), his book most commonly spoken of in an sf context, is as much FANTASY as sf in its fine tale of an 18th-century drummer boy emerging from a present-day mound and being befriended by a sceptical youth who feels impelled to interpret this and other fantastic intrusions in scientific terms. The actual sf story Skiffy (1972) and its sequel Skiffy and the Twin Planets (1982), for rather younger children, while interesting - especially the latter - are not the equal of his best work. WM's fiction typically (in a great variety of ways) depicts the past impinging on the present, often as a kind of mystery to be decoded; his work tends to climax in epiphanies where a chaotic present day is suddenly illuminated in this way; some of his books feature psychic TIME TRAVEL and ESP. His young-adult fiction is adult in every sense except the youthful consciousnesses of its protagonists, and deserves wider currency among the adult readership.Among WM's most highly regarded books, mostly for older children, all of them containing fantastic elements (some very obviously, some crucially but near-invisibly) are A Grass Rope (1957), The Glass Ball (1961), Over the Hills and Far Away (1968; vt The Hill Road 1969 US), A Game of Dark (1971), The Jersey Shore (1973), A Year and a Day (1976), IT (1977), All the King's Men (coll 1982), Gideon Ahoy (1987),Antar and the Eagles (1989), The Farm That Ran Out of Names (1990 chap) and Low Tide (1992). Some books written ostensibly for younger children - like The Book of Hob Stories (omni 1991), which assembles four earlier pamphlets: The Blue Book of Hob Stories (coll 1984 chap), The Green Book of Hob Stories (coll 1984 chap), The Red Book of Hob Stories (coll 1984 chap) and The Yellow Book of Hob Stories (coll 1984 chap), followed by Hob and the Goblins (1993); and The Blemyah Stories (coll 1987) - are no more conventional children's literature than is the late work of Alan GARNER. [PN]See also: CHILDREN'S SF. MAYUMURA, TAKU [r] JAPAN. MEACHAM, BETH (1951- ) US writer and editor who worked first as an sf bookseller before joining ACE BOOKS in 1981, where she developed the careers of Greg BEAR, Orson Scott CARD and Tim POWERS, among others; she also discovered James P. BLAYLOCK and oversaw the revived Ace SF Specials. She left Ace for TOR BOOKS in 1984, where as head of sf and fantasy she supervised the company's unusually large sf editorial staff and worked with authors like Card, Kim Stanley ROBINSON and Walter Jon WILLIAMS. In 1989 she resigned as editor-in-chief to become executive editor with a general acquisition brief.With her husband, Tappan King (1950- ), she wrote Nightshade * (1976), a novel in the Weird Heroes sequence. She collaborated with Wayne BARLOWE and Ian Summers on Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (1979; rev 1987), and with Summers and Vincent DI FATE on Di Fate's Catalog of Science Fiction Hardware (1980). With Baird SEARLES, Martin Last and Michael Franklin she wrote A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction (1979), and with Searles and Franklin A Reader's Guide to Fantasy (1982). She is perhaps best known to the reading public for editing Terry's Universe (anth 1988), an original anthology in memory of Terry CARR. [PNH] MEAD, HAROLD (CHARLES HUGH) (1910- ) UK writer. The first and better known of his sf novels, The Bright Phoenix (1955), is a sombrely told post- HOLOCAUST tale in which a reestablished but overregimented human culture tries unsuccessfully to reinhabit abandoned parts of the Earth; it ends a little sentimentally with a Second Coming. The other, Mary's Country (1957), tells of the quest of a group of children - most of whose social peers have been killed by plague - for a perfect society. [JC] MEAD, SHEPHERD Working name of US author (resident in Switzerland) Edward Mead (1914- ), who has been active in various genres. SATIRE and comedy combine in most of his works, including his sf and fantasy novels: The Magnificent MacInnes (1949; vt The Sex Machine 1950), in which consumer society is satirized through the story of an electronic device that can predict personal preferences; The Big Ball of Wax (1954), in which Madison Avenue techniques are applied to corrupt a device that permits people to enter vicariously into the lives of others, a technique whose potential for good is subverted into a kind of feelie; and The Carefully Considered Rape of the World (1966), in which ALIENS artificially inseminate Earth females.SM worked in advertising before turning to writing, and his experience was put to good use not only in The Big Ball of Wax, the most interesting of his sf novels, but also in his best-known work (not sf), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1952), for the staged version of which he shared a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony. [JC/PN]See also: LEISURE; MEDIA LANDSCAPE. MEDIA LANDSCAPE The degree to which COMMUNICATIONS technology (and foreseeable future extensions of it) was replacing the natural world with a "media landscape" was scarcely noticed until the 1950s. Coined to denote a world dominated by the images of advertising and the popular arts (among which sf images, especially the iconography of movies and magazine covers, loomed large), the phrase was initially used to describe the obsessions of Pop artists and media critics such as Eduardo Paolozzi (1924- ), Andy Warhol (1930-1987), Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) and Rayner Banham (1922-1988). The phrase, and indeed the idea underlying it, may seem quaint today; but with the benefit of hindsight we can see how the notion of the media landscape so popular in the 1960s and 1970s progressed naturally, through both developments in technology and the expansion of what human beings were prepared to conceive as feasible, to the VIRTUAL REALITY of the 1980s (in speculation) and 1990s (in fact).Of course, the media landscape was there before the 1950s, and sf had reflected it in various ways. The idea that the media can be used to manipulate people had long been extant. In George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) this theme takes a directly political form: the media are represented not only by the ubiquitous posters of "Big Brother" but also by the "telescreens" which act as two-way channels for propaganda and surveillance. Similar political use of the media has featured frequently in sf; examples are in Ray BRADBURY's FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953), Kurt VONNEGUT's "Harrison Bergeron" (1961) and Philip K. DICK's The Penultimate Truth (1964). More often, sf has portrayed future societies controlled by the media in more oblique ways. McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride (1951), a book about the psychological subtleties of advertising, contains a passing tribute to Fritz LEIBER, whose "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" (1949) is about exploitation of the female image by ad-men. Leiber returned to the theme of advertising - a major theme in 1950s sf - in The Green Millennium (1953), set in a future when the walls of private apartments are lined with ads. Frederik POHL's and C.M. KORNBLUTH's THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953) is a more extended satire on the all-powerful admen; Pohl's much later solo sequel, The Merchants' War (1984), seemed an anachronism. Other 1950s stories about advertising include Pohl's "The Tunnel Under the World" (1954), Shepherd MEAD's The Big Ball of Wax (1954) and (in part) Dick's The Simulacra (1964). Daniel F. GALOUYE's Counterfeit World (1964 UK; vt Simulacron-3 1964 US) is about a society which turns out to be a computer simulation generated for purposes of market research; many of Ron GOULART's stories satirize advertising techniques.Manipulation to the extent that one suspects that one's very reality is a fiction ( PARANOIA) can give rise to a belief in the "new demonology" - the idea that the artificial landscape has alien inhabitants with evil powers. Literal treatments of "demons" taking over the media include "Ether Breather" (1939) by Theodore STURGEON and "The Waveries" (1945) by Fredric BROWN, both stories about creatures which inhabit the airwaves, tampering with our communications. The writer who took the new demonology most seriously was William S. BURROUGHS; in The Ticket that Exploded (1962; rev 1967) and Nova Express (1964) he showed the human race at the mercy of the "Nova Mob" and other alien parasites who used the media (and drugs) as their means of control. Burroughs asserted that life was "a biologic film" and that the purpose of his writing was to help us break out of the "stale movie" into the "gray room" of silence. This is not entirely different from the wishful conservatism of Brown's "The Waveries", in which the USA abandons electricity and reverts to a rural economy. Barrington J. BAYLEY's "An Overload" (1973) is about computer-generated demons who adopt the personage of gangster-movie stars.Not all media-men are demons, however, and some stories deal with those who attempt to use their power to good effect. Norman SPINRAD's BUG JACK BARRON (1969) concerns the compere of a phone-in chat-show in the 1980s who finds himself in a position to challenge the political and industrial powers that be. Most of the action actually takes place "on the air", before an audience of millions, making this a novel set almost entirely within the media landscape. Spinrad returns to this area in several of the stories in No Direction Home (coll 1975), and, much later, in Little Heroes (1987), an sf novel about the music business in a dystopian urban world. Several of Dick's novels deal with media-men, such as Dr Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1965), in which a post- HOLOCAUST world is held together by a disc-jockey's broadcasts from an orbital satellite, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974), in which a famous tv personality is thrust into a world where nobody recognizes him. Algis BUDRYS's Michaelmas (1977) concerns a roving newsman who, through a secret COMPUTER link-up, is in fact the benevolent dictator of the world.One of the ways in which the media create news is by invading the privacy of individuals in order to gratify the curiosity of others. D. G. COMPTON's The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974; rev vt The Unsleeping Eye 1974 US; vt Death Watch 1981 UK) is about a tv-man with "camera eyes" who follows a dying woman in order to record her last indignities for the entertainment of a mass audience; at the climax the ethically awakened reporter elects to become blind. The story is continued in Windows (1979 US). Many other tales deal with pornography, violence and vicarious suffering; e.g., Arthur C. CLARKE's "I Remember Babylon" (1960), Robert SILVERBERG's "The Pain Peddlers" (1963) and Thorns (1967), Robert SHECKLEY's "The Prize of Peril" (1958), Dan MORGAN's The Richest Corpse in Show Business (1966) and Brian STABLEFORD's The Mind-Riders (1976). A particularly gruesome example is Christopher PRIEST's "The Head and the Hand" (1972), in which a tv entertainer has his limbs amputated and climaxes his "act" with his decapitation. Anything is grist to the media mill, from violence to TIME TRAVEL: McLuhan's "global village" extending through time as well as space. This has been dramatized in sf stories in which the media literally invade the past in search of material. Isaac ASIMOV's "The Dead Past" (1956) features a woman obsessed with watching her dead child on the "chronoscope", Harry HARRISON's The Technicolor Time Machine (1967) is a humorous treatment of a film crew's adventures in history, and J.G. BALLARD's "The Greatest Television Show on Earth" (1972) is a satire on the tv companies' attempts to film such events as the parting of the Red Sea "live". These sf exaggerations point up the extent to which the media have brought about la societe du spectacle.In such stories as Ballard's "The Subliminal Man" (1963), in which vast hoardings are erected alongside motorways to flash subliminal messages into drivers' brains, even the unconscious is annexed by the media landscape. Of course, manipulation of the desires of the unconscious has long been recognized as part of advertising, and the media use a complex language of signs in order to speak to it. Semiotics, as applied to popular culture by Roland Barthes (1915-1980) in his Mythologies (1957; trans 1972), testifies to this. All human creations are, in a sense, media of communication, since they are coded with latent "messages"-particularly such everyday things as architecture, furniture, clothing and vehicles. This is the conceptual territory that Ballard has made very much his own, particularly in the "condensed novels" collected in THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION (1970; vt Love and Napalm: Export USA 1972 US; rev 1990 US). In these nonlinear stories he juxtaposes elements of the media landscape of the 1960s, from the architecture of motorways and multistorey carparks to the bodies of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, from the styling of cars and kitchen gadgets to the televised violence of Vietnam and President Kennedy's assassination. He blends these external "facts" with the private memories and fantasies of his characters, and with the neutral language of medical reports and astronomical data. THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION is a selfconscious book (Ballard has been much influenced by the Pop artists) but it is the most sustained attempt in sf to deal with the media landscape and its massive influence on all our lives. Later Ballard stories have also dealt with the media, such as "The Intensive Care Unit" (1977), which concerns a society in which marriage and family life are conducted entirely by tv: nobody ever meets anyone else in the flesh.Other sf works which have to some extent been influenced by McLuhan and the ideas about the media which became fashionable in the 1960s include John BRUNNER's Stand on Zanzibar (1968), Dean R. KOONTZ's The Fall of the Dream Machine (1969), Michael MOORCOCK's Jerry Cornelius novels, John T. SLADEK's The Muller-Fokker Effect (1970), J-M. LE CLEZIO's Les Geants (1973; trans as The Giants 1975) and Barry N. MALZBERG's The Destruction of the Temple (1974). "The Girl who was Plugged In" (1973) by James TIPTREE Jr is a savage story about the creation of a jet-set member of "the beautiful people" for purposes of advertising; in reality the woman is an ANDROID with no independent intelligence, controlled through the nervous system of a horribly exploited "ugly duckling". The language of the story cleverly reflects the chill of a society whose cruelties are largely unconscious and affectless.About the end of the 1970s traditional sf about the media seemed to wither away almost overnight: during the 1980s harsh satires about the world of admen, once almost commonplace, became scarce (although some of sf's satirical spleen transferred itself to the closely related field of rock MUSIC in search of new media targets). One or two films - such as Le PRIX DU DANGER (1983), based on Sheckley's "The Prize of Peril", and the very similar The RUNNING MAN (1987), based on The Running Man (1982) by Richard Bachman (Stephen KING) - focused on the theme of social violence institutionalized by tv game-shows, but they looked curiously old-fashioned. The best sf media (or anti-media) films of the 1980s were John CARPENTER's THEY LIVE (1988) and David CRONENBERG's VIDEODROME (1982), especially the latter - but perhaps more typical of the new attitude towards the media was BLADE RUNNER (1982), where the vast, seductively moving advertising hoardings form a ubiquitous and insinuating backdrop - but nevertheless a backdrop, against which the story proper is played.In general, what happened in the 1980s was that sf about the media became more fascinated with potential real futures than with satirical ones. Stories like The Space Merchants were never intended to be serious predictions of a possible tomorrow: they exaggerated aspects of the present in order to comment upon, not the future, but that present itself. By the 1980s sf writers were becoming aware that the communications of the future would be qualitatively quite different from those of the present, and they threw themselves into the virgin speculative territory with abandon. The theme of the media became absorbed into the broader theme of a wired-up world, with the media being seen as only a part of a vision of vast communications networks of such complexity as to be almost autonomous, out of control - a vision of a world in which humans could (perilously) swim but which they could not repudiate. In short, the media-landscape story was supplanted by CYBERPUNK, with its focus on VIRTUAL REALITY (further relevant stories are discussed under both those headings). This was a logical development, for the entertainment industry has always been hell-bent (as many of the earlier sf writers realized) on creating virtual realities - if primitive ones - for its captive audiences to occupy, and the cyberpunk writers simply envisaged the technologies that would develop from, at least in part, this very phenomenon. Of course, many such stories contain direct comments on the media world, as in William GIBSON's Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), one of whose four protagonists is a "stim" star for Sense-Net, the giant entertainment corporation which prepares virtual-reality scenarios of impossible glamour into which the proletariat can tune and which, for a time, they can inhabit. It is this kind of engulfing media future that now preoccupies sf. [DP/PN] MEDICINE Medical applications of TECHNOLOGY comprise one of the few areas where the cutting edge of scientific research impinges directly and intimately upon ordinary human life. New medicines are so rapidly brought into everyday use that it is easy to forget how rapid progress has been, and that barely 100 years separates us from the crucial CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGHS associated with the development of organic chemistry and the germ theory enunciated by Louis Pasteur (1822-1895). Even people who can find little else to say in favour of science and technology ( ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF) are usually grateful for the benefits of scientific medicine, although the rapid recent growth of "alternative medicine" has shown that even this gratitude has its limits. So urgent is the human need for better medicine that the field has always been home to legions of quacks and charlatans offering hopeful panaceas for all ills ( PSEUDO-SCIENCE); the literary imagination has inevitably reflected and magnified these hopes in fantasies of resurrection, rejuvenation and IMMORTALITY - usually couched, of course, as cautionary tales - and the ideative apparatus of sf has been promiscuously deployed in stories of these types. Medical researchers and their endeavours have been objects of central concern in sf ever since Mary SHELLEY's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831). Because of the urgency with which medical matters concern us, plots involving new cures (and, of course, new diseases) have an inbuilt dramatic quality which readily recommends them to speculative writers inside and outside the genre. Thanks to writers like Robin COOK one can today recognize a subgenre of "medical thrillers" whose products very often stray over the sf borderline. Several notable sf writers have been MDs, including Michael BLUMLEIN, Miles J. BREUER, Michael CRICHTON, Arthur Conan DOYLE, David H. KELLER and Alan E. NOURSE. M.P. SHIEL and J.G. BALLARD both studied medicine for a while; although neither graduated, the influence of their studies is indelibly marked on much of their work.Early US sf is replete with what one might call, after the example of Oliver Wendell Holmes, "medicated novels", mostly dealing with mental aberration ( PSYCHOLOGY) or the increasingly problematic question of the precise relationship between body and soul. Bizarre medical experiments are described in such early works as Nathaniel HAWTHORNE's "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844) and Edgar Allan POE's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845). It was, however, UK writers who took up such themes more boldly in the latter half of the 19th century, in such novels as Robert Louis STEVENSON's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and H.G. WELLS's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896). In keeping with the traditions of the day, these experiments almost always go wrong, usually horribly. Even techniques which have since become realized, to the evident betterment of the human condition - organ transplantation, chemical contraception and medical cyborgization ( CYBORGS) - were frequently deployed by early sf writers in vivid horror stories or contes cruels. Brain surgery offered considerable melodramatic scope to the writer of medical horror stories, exploited to the full in W.C. Morrow's "The Monster-Maker" (1887) and S. Fowler WRIGHT's "Brain" (1932), as did stories of radiation-treatment gone awry ( MUTANTS). Even Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932), who received the Nobel Prize for his work on malaria, deployed his expert knowledge thus in his only sf story, "The Vivisector Vivisected" (written c1889; 1932). One can also identify a small-scale subgenre of "medical nightmare" stories involving hallucinations - usually vividly gruesome ones-suffered under anaesthetic; these run from Wells's "Under the Knife" (1897) to Neil BELL's Death Rocks the Cradle (1933 as by Paul Martens).Much modern sf continues this pessimistic tradition. C.M. KORNBLUTH's tale of the use and abuse of medical equipment timeslipped from the future, "The Little Black Bag" (1950), is one of the most famous sf contes cruels, and Daniel KEYES's classic FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (1957; exp 1966) is a tragedy of unparalleled poignancy. Bernard WOLFE's LIMBO (1952) recruits medical technology to put an ironic twist on the idea of disarmament. Walter M. MILLER's "Blood Bank" (1952), William TENN's "Down Among the Dead Men" (1954), Cordwainer SMITH's "A Planet Named Shayol" (1961) and Larry NIVEN's "The Organleggers" (1969) are other stories in a vividly dark vein. Caduceus Wild (1959; 1978) by Ward MOORE and Robert Bradford, in which doctors run the world, is as DYSTOPIAN as other contemporary stories in which some special-interest group has become dominant; James E. GUNN's The Immortals (1955-60; fixup 1962) is similarly but more thoughtfully downbeat, while such Alan E. Nourse novels as The Mercy Men (1968; rev from A Man Obsessed 1955) and The Bladerunner (1974) deploy dystopian imagery in a carefully ambivalent fashion. The tradition continues into recent times in such novels as Dr Adder (1984) by K.W. JETER, Resurrection, Inc. (1988) by Kevin J. ANDERSON, The Child Garden (1989) by Geoff RYMAN, Body Mortgage (1989) by Richard ENGLING and Crygender (1992) by Thomas T. THOMAS.Linked to the horror-story tradition of accounts of misfired medical experiments is a much less prolific comic tradition, in which things go wrong with rather less awful consequences; Wells' "The Stolen Bacillus" (1895) is an early example. The proposal by the Russian physiologist Serge Voronoff (1866-1951) that testosterone generated by transplanted monkey-testicles might "rejuvenate" ageing men inspired some sf black comedies, including Bertram GAYTON's The Gland Stealers (1922); a farcical film on a similar theme was MONKEY BUSINESS (1952). A modern black comedy of medical chicanery is Joe HALDEMAN's Buying Time (1989; vt The Long Habit of Living 1989 UK). Like Raymond Hawkey's thriller Side-Effect (1979), the latter assumes that medical miracles might well be reserved by their creators for the favoured few, extrapolating the old medical adage that the best specialism is diseases of the very rich.The Great Plague Story, memorably featured in Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) and Jack LONDON's The Scarlet Plague (1912; 1915), remains a melodramatic staple of the DISASTER story. Notable examples of stories whose main focus is on the medical effort to counter or control such plagues include Cry Plague! (1953 dos) by Theodore S. Drachman MD, The Darkest of Nights (1962; vt Survival Margin US) by Charles Eric MAINE, Plague from Space (1965; vt The Jupiter Legacy) by Harry HARRISON, The Andromeda Strain (1969) by Michael Crichton, Time of the Fourth Horseman (1976) by Chelsea Quinn YARBRO and Disposable People (1980) by Marshall Goldberg MD and Kenneth Kay. Interesting stories of plagues which bring ambiguous benefits as well as posing threats include Walter M. Miller's "Dark Benediction" (1951), Octavia E. BUTLER's Clay's Ark (1984) and Greg BEAR's BLOOD MUSIC (1985). The newest real-world plague, AIDS, has called forth a rapid response in the sf field; Dan SIMMONS's Children of the Night (1992) features the notion that a cure might be found in vampires' blood. Extravagant stories of medical responses to AIDS include F.M. BUSBY's The Breeds of Man (1988), Thomas M. DISCH's The MD: A Horror Story (1991) and Norman SPINRAD's "Journals of the Plague Years" (1988).A much more positive image of medical science is seen in stories in which doctors struggle to understand and solve exotic problems which arise with respect to the interaction between humans and ALIENS. There are two particularly notable sf series of this kind: Murray LEINSTER's Med Service series (1957-66) and James WHITE's ongoing Sector General series (begun 1957). L. Ron HUBBARD's earlier Ole Doc Methuselah series (1947-50; coll 1970) is unfortunately weakened by the eponymous hero's interest in eccentric theories. White's series is especially interesting by virtue of the warmly liberal humanism of its attitude towards aliens - gracefully making a point which is much more laboured in Piers ANTHONY's sitcom-like series about an interplanetary dentist, Prostho Plus (fixup 1971) - although White can also function effectively in the medical horror/thriller vein, as in Underkill (1979). Alan E. Nourse's Star Surgeon (1960) is a notable juvenile sf novel cast in the earnest and constructive mould. These stories of fairly ordinary people tackling localized problems tend to be more interesting than tales in which the discovery of a panacea promises an instant end to all ills, although some such stories can be effective; examples include S. Fowler Wright's "The Rat" (1929), Charles L. HARNESS's The Catalyst (1980) and Kate WILHELM's rather ambivalent Welcome, Chaos (1983).A theme anthology is Great Science Fiction about Doctors (anth 1963) ed Groff CONKLIN and Noah D. Fabricant MD. [BS/JSc] MEDIEVAL SOCIETIES CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; HOLOCAUST AND AFTER; MAGIC; POLITICS; SWORD AND SORCERY. MEEK, [Colonel] S(TERNER St) P(AUL) (1894-1972) US Army ordnance officer and writer, active for about a decade in the US PULP MAGAZINES after the publication of his first story, "The Murgatroyd Experiments" for AMZ Quarterly in 1929. Many of his stories are in a series featuring Doctor Bird and Operative Carnes, running from "The Cave of Horror" (1930) to "Vanishing Gold" (1932); they have not been collected in book form. The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga (coll 1935) assembles a series of sf tall tales; some are amusing. Of several novels published in magazine form, only two LOST-WORLD tales about survivors of ATLANTIS, The Drums of Tapajos (1930 AMZ; 1961) and its sequel Troyana (1932 AMZ; rev 1961), reached book form. [JC]Other work: Arctic Bride (coll 1944 chap UK).See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; GREAT AND SMALL. MEET THE APPLEGATES Film (1990). New World/Cinemarque. Dir Michael Lehmann, starring Ed Begley Jr, Stockard Channing, Bobby Jacoby, Cami Cooper, Dabney Coleman. Screenplay Redbeard Simmons, Lehmann. 89 mins. Colour.In this sf/fantasy SATIRE, a group of shapeshifting giant insects from the South American rainforest, disturbed at humanity's destruction of their domain, disguise themselves as human and infiltrate a small US town, where they plan to get revenge by causing a nuclear meltdown at the local power plant. Their knowledge of human life being gleaned largely from Dick and Jane books, they begin as apparently stereotyped upright citizens, but are soon corrupted by US society, becoming a secretary-screwing husband, a consumer-product-obsessed shoplifting wife, a pregnant radical lesbian feminist daughter and a dope-smoking son. MTA is witty and pointed, but stops this side of hilarious because its affability dilutes the savagery to which it appears to aspire. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. MEGAVILLE Film (1990). White Noise/Heritage. Dir Peter Lehner, starring Billy Zane, J.C. Quinn, Grace Zabriskie, Kristen Cloke, Daniel J. Travanti, Stefan Gierasch. Screenplay Lehner, Gordon Chavis. 95 mins. Colour.An impressive but very low-budget picture, updating some of the feel of Jean-Luc Godard's ALPHAVILLE (1965) in its vision of a transformed future USA (played oddly but effectively by present-day Switzerland) divided into independent zones. The disguised hero (Zane) is sent from his puritanical homeland, where the electronic MEDIA are outlawed, by a dying "Big Brother" figure (Travanti) into the wide open city of Megaville, where corrupting entertainments like tv are still available, to search for a device that enables the user to experience the recorded consciousness of another person. As in TOTAL RECALL (1990) the hero is gradually led to question his own identity, in this case coming to wonder whether he is indeed the criminal he is supposed to be impersonating. M is a bleak and cynical film, with a supporting cast of well played sinister characters. [KN] MEGAVORE: THE JOURNAL OF POPULAR FICTION The SCIENCE-FICTION COLLECTOR . MEIER, SHIRLEY [r] S.M. STIRLING. MEKAGOJIRA NO GYAKUSHU GOJIRA. MELAMED, DAVID [r] ISRAEL. MELCHIOR, IB [r] The OUTER LIMITS ; REPTILICUS; ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS; The TIME TRAVELERS . MELDE, G.R. Dennis HUGHES. MELIES, GEORGES (1861-1938) French film pioneer. A natural showman, GM began his theatrical career as a conjurer, designing his own trick gadgets. In 1888 his wealthy family provided him with the finances to buy the Theatre Robert-Houdin, and his magic shows there became famous. In 1896, inspired by the Lumiere brothers, he acquired a motion-picture camera and began making his own short films. He realized the medium's potential for creating illusions, and was soon producing many films utilizing trick photography as well as the stage effects built into his theatre.His most successful period was 1897-1902. It was in 1902 that he made Le VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE , which is regarded as the first sf movie epic (21 mins long, at a time when 5min movies were the norm). His work was popular in many countries, but even by 1904, when he made Le VOYAGE A TRAVERS L'IMPOSSIBLE , audiences were requiring more than just trick films. By 1913 he was forced out of business. During WWI many of the negatives of his films were destroyed, and much of his work was lost forever. He enjoyed a comeback in the late 1920s when his surviving films were rediscovered by the French intellectuals of the period. He died with the satisfaction of being recognized as one of the CINEMA's true innovators; he had pioneered many of the techniques on which all subsequent sf cinema has been based.He has also been claimed, retrospectively, as a Surrealist pioneer, but the truth is that his emphasis on mere trickery (and also his use of what was in effect a proscenium arch, so that all action is seen as if it is stage action witnessed from the seats of a theatre) is a long way removed from art; not only does it seem crude now but, after the novelty had worn off, it quickly came to seem crude then. [JB/PN] MELLA, JOHN (? - ) US writer whose Transformations (fixup 1975) is an ALTERNATE-WORLD tale about the quest for a transvestite actor; it is set in a 19th-and 20th-century USA and Europe transfigured by time (the narrator, WS or William Shakespeare, does not die until a movable 1916) and geography (the two continents have been arbitrarily merged, and are haunted by Hollywood). A FABULATION dense with quotations - from authors extending from Shakespeare himself through Jonathan SWIFT, VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM and W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) down to the Vladimir NABOKOV of Pale Fire (1962) and Ada(1969)-Transformations also has clear affinities to the 1970s Jerry Cornelius novels by Michael MOORCOCK, and JM's tale presages 1980s literary sf by writers like Angela CARTER, Steve ERICKSON and David THOMSON. Most significantly for sf, perhaps, is the similarity between JM's vision of the UK - a dark, labyrinth-riddled land, half antique, half transformed by extraordinary inventions - and that typically presented by the writers of STEAMPUNK. [JC] MELTZER, DAVID (1937- ) US poet and novelist whose sf is almost entirely restricted to two sequences of erotic novels published by ESSEX HOUSE at the end of the 1960s, though he published a very few stories earlier. The first sequence, the Agency series - The Agency (1968), The Agent (1968) and How Many Blocks in the Pile? (1969) - is a remarkably savage SATIRE of a NEAR-FUTURE USA through a plot whose erotic nature (a young man is indoctrinated by the eponymous organization into sexual slavery, and himself becomes an agent for his masters) can readily be seen as a metaphor illustrating the nature of post-industrial society.This vision is even more sharply focused in the Brain Plant sequence - comprising Brain Plant #1: Lovely (1969), #2: Healer (1969), #3: Out (1969) and #4: Glue Factory (1969) - in which cartoonlike characters ricochet surreally through a disjointed USA in a pre-programmed search for theme-park SEX, while the secret masters - in this case the military-industrial complex - rule on.Most of DM's work, from his first book, Poems (coll 1957 chap), has been poetry, and he can be seen as a very late member of the Beat Generation; his roots in that tradition help make clear the intersection of erotic excess and political protest in his work. [JC] MELUCH, R(EBECCA) M. (1956- ) US writer whose first novel, Sovereign (1979), shows a competent grasp of the conventions and venues of sf adventure while at the same time refracting traditional material through an unusually complex protagonist, who is the genetically precarious culmination of a breeding programme haunted by the continuing image of his first enemy: his own father. There are, perhaps, too many additional enemies for plausibility - as the protagonist defeats them all, whether on Earth, on his own planet or in space - but the relative inwardness of the tale is convincing throughout. The Wind series - Wind Dancers (1981) and Wind Child (1982) - comes close to sentimentality in its depiction of a shapeshifting species oppressed by an evil corporation intent on exploiting their planet. Jerusalem Fire (1985) more bracingly depicts a space-born Arab culture, but War Birds (1989) again veers towards sentiment. Chicago Red (1990), which returns to RMM's somewhat high-blown but energetically conceived best, is a tale of a USA which has reverted to 18th-century models of kingship, with revolution inevitable, and the eponymous leader in rousing fettle; and The Queen's Squadron (1992) opposes - in the foregrounded manner which has become a stylistic feature of her work - free mortals and their immortal oppressors. [JC] MELVILLE, HERMAN (1819-1891) US writer best known for such radically symbolic novels as The Whale (1851 UK; vt Moby-Dick 1851 US); the great whale of this novel is an archetype of the more METAPHYSICAL variety of sf MONSTER, and the spirit of the book has permeated much sf, notably Roger ZELAZNY's "The Doors of his Face, the Lamps of his Mouth" (1965) and, rather superficially, Philip Jose FARMER's "sequel" to HM's original, The Wind Whales of Ishmael (1971). HM's blending, in Moby-Dick, of rational explanation and romantic openness with the inexplicable was later to become typical of sf. In The Confidence-Man, His Masquerade (1857), HM's violent conflict with the dictates (or concept) of a manipulative destiny may well have provided some sf writers with inspiration for contemporary sf tales of justified PARANOIA.Of more direct sf interest is HM's short story "The Bell-Tower" (1855), which appears in The Piazza Tales (coll 1856); rather reminiscent of the work of his friend Nathaniel HAWTHORNE, it is the story, set in Renaissance Italy, of the construction of a MACHINE-man whose function it will be to strike the hour on a large bell, but which in the event kills its maker. The story can be read as allegorical of mankind's hubris, and a comment on the implications of the new era of mechanical invention and science that HM was beginning to witness. [JC/PN]See also: HISTORY OF SF; ROBOTS. MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN Film (1992). Warner Bros. Dir John CARPENTER, starring Chevy Chase, Daryl Hannah, Sam Neill, Michael McKean, Stephen Tobolowsky. Screenplay Robert Collector, Dana Olson, William Goldman, based on Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1987) by H.F. SAINT. 99 mins. Colour.Nick Halloway (Chase), a feckless businessman, is turned invisible by an industrial accident. The Government, represented by a CIA psycho (Neill), tries to capture Halloway to use him for its own nefarious purposes, and he falls for a glamorously unbelievable anthropologist (Hannah) between escapes, disguises, stunts and tricks. After a good opening the film slips into a standard romantic comedy/thriller vein, with Carpenter reprising the facelessly efficient approach he used on STARMAN (1984). Several of its best images are lifted directly from James Whale's The INVISIBLE MAN (1932), but the film hardly uses its ambitious source novel, raising but then abandoning a central point - that Halloway was such an average loser as to be invisible even before he became literally so. The well achieved effects (Chase smoking a cigarette whose smoke outlines his lungs, and many others) keep the film interesting. [KN] MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR Film (1981). Memorial Films/National Film Finance Corporation/EMI. Dir David Gladwell, starring Julie Christie, Christopher Guard, Leonie Mellinger, Debbie Hutchings. Screenplay Kerry Crabbe, Gladwell, based on The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) by Doris LESSING. 115 mins. Colour.Amid NEAR-FUTURE scenes of urban squalor in Western London a middle-aged woman (Christie) observes (mostly peering round a lace curtain) increasing dereliction and social breakdown in the wake of some unexplained catastrophe. She sometimes seems to penetrate a wall at which she often stares, finding herself invisible amid the life of a late-Victorian family in comfortable circumstances. Given a teenage girl (Mellinger) to care for in the real world, she watches her mature into the efficient partner and mistress of an idealistic young man who runs a community centre for abandoned children. When urban life becomes almost intolerable, she leads these people through the wall into the ALTERNATE WORLD of her dreaming. In the source novel, the inner life of the protagonist, permeated by Sufistic meditation, is central, but here, through a savage reductionism, its visual equivalent is given by mere cameos of stable but emotionally disabling Victorian life. Christie's fine performance as the almost unspeaking observer is, through no fault of hers, deeply uncinematic. [PN] MENASCO, NORMAN [s] Wyman GUIN. MENDELSOHN, FELIX Jr (1906-1990) US writer of two unremarkable comic sf novels, Club Tycoon Sends Man to Moon (1965) and Superbaby (1969). The former, in its spoofing of the space race, sometimes scores an amusing point. [JC] MENDELSON, DREW (? - ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Star Train" for IASFM in 1978. His Pilgrimage (1981) grippingly presents a vision of a bleak post- HOLOCAUST Earth, long abandoned by most humans except for those who inhabit the planet's one remaining artifact, a vast city that moves slowly across the devastated land. This city houses a genuine POCKET-UNIVERSE culture, which has lost touch with the human past and has become ignorant of the technologies which give it life. The adolescent protagonists' quest for meaning ( CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH) takes them from the moribund Tailend of the City to Frontend; the novel closes in an ambiguous affirmation of renewal. DM's apparent retirement from the field after the publication of this novel is a matter for considerable regret. [JC]MENDES, HENRY PEREIRA Henry PEREIRA MENDES. MENVILLE, DOUGLAS (ALVER) (1935- ) US author and editor. He ed FORGOTTEN FANTASY 1970-71 and, with R. REGINALD (whom see for further details), was advisory editor of the various ARNO PRESS reprint book series; he and Reginald have also collaborated on several books and anthologies. Solo, DM has written A Historical and Critical Survey of the SF Film (1975); with Reginald and Mary A. Burgess he wrote Futurevisions: The New Golden Age of the Science Fiction Film (1985). He also compiled The Work of Ross Rocklynne: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1989 chap). [PN] MERAK, A.J. John S. GLASBY. MERCHANT, PAUL [s] Harlan ELLISON. MERCIER, LOUIS-SEBASTIEN (1740-1814) French writer best known for his numerous plays and for his anecdotal journalism; he was active in the French Revolution, being imprisoned during the Terror. His UTOPIA, L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante 52*B]1771 UK; trans William Hooper as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred 1772; vt Astraea's Return, or The Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440 1797), depicts a future FRANCE governed rationally, according to Enlightenment precepts as stirred by the neoprimitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), and is a central 18th-century text, important particularly for any analysis of pre-Revolutionary ferment in France. It was probably the first utopia to be published in the USA, in 1795, in an edition which replicated the 1772 translation; unfortunately, LSM's expanded version of the text (1786 France) has never appeared in English. [JC]See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS; BALLOONS; CITIES; FUTUROLOGY; NEAR FUTURE; SUSPENDED ANIMATION. MERCURY Mercury is the planet nearest the Sun, and hence is difficult to observe. Until the late 19th century it was believed to rotate on its axis every 24 hours or so, but this opinion was displaced by that of Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910) and Percival Lowell (1855-1916), who contended that it kept the same face permanently towards the Sun. 20th-century sf writers thus pictured it as having an extremely hot "dayside", a cold "nightside" and a narrow "twilight zone". This image persisted until the 1960s, when it was discovered that Mercury rotates on its axis rapidly enough to have a day somewhat shorter than its year.The earliest visit to Mercury was probably that of Athanasius KIRCHER in his Itinerarium Exstaticum (1656), and it was generally included in other round tours of the planets, including Emanuel SWEDENBORG's The Earths in Our Solar System (1758) and George GRIFFITH's A Honeymoon in Space (1901). John MUNRO's A Trip to Venus (1897) includes a detour to Mercury. The earliest novel in which Mercury came into principal focus was Relation du Monde de Mercure (1750 France) by Le Chevalier de Bethune; the first novel in English to be set there was William Wallace COOK's SATIRE Adrift in the Unknown (1904-5; 1925). E.R. EDDISON's series of fantasy novels begun with The Worm Ouroboros (1922) is likewise set on Mercury, but the name is used purely for convenience. GENRE SF rarely employed Mercury as a milieu for exotic adventure, preferring MARS and VENUS, but it does feature in Homer Eon FLINT's "The Lord of Death" (1919; in The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life [coll 1965]), Ray CUMMINGS's Tama of the Light Country (1930; 1965) and its sequel Tama, Princess of Mercury (1931; 1966), and Clark Ashton SMITH's "The Immortals of Mercury" (1932). An invasion from Mercury is thwarted in J.M. WALSH's Vandals of the Void (1931), and Leigh BRACKETT set one of her exotic romances there, "Shannach - the Last" (1952). Attempts to use Mercury in more thoughtful stories with some fidelity to astronomical knowledge were likewise infrequent in the pre-WWII pulps, the first significant examples being Clifford D. SIMAK's "Masquerade" (1941; vt "Operation Mercury") and Isaac ASIMOV's "Runaround" (1942).After WWII, however, things picked up a little. Three juvenile novels featuring Mercury are Lester DEL REY's Battle on Mercury (1956 as by Erik van Lhin), Asimov's Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (1956 as by Paul French; vt The Big Sun of Mercury), and Mission to Mercury (1965) by Hugh WALTERS. Alan E. NOURSE's memorable "Brightside Crossing" (1956) represents a journey across the dayside of the planet as an adventurous feat akin to the then-recent conquest of Everest. The nightside of Mercury features ironically in Larry NIVEN's "The Coldest Place" (1964), but recent sf usually employs Mercury as merely a convenient place to site bases for studying the SUN, like the one in David BRIN's Sundiver (1980). Perhaps the most enduring sf image of Mercury, though, is from Kurt VONNEGUT Jr's THE SIRENS OF TITAN (1959), which offers an account of the Harmonia, cave-dwelling lifeforms thriving on vibration and introduced to music by a stranded astronaut. [BS] MERCURY PRESS The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION. MEREDITH, JAMES CREED (1875-1942) Irish writer, usually on philosophical subjects, who carried that interest into fiction in The Rainbow in the Valley (1939), which features scientists in communication with Martians, and discursively compares and contrasts the two civilizations. [JC] MEREDITH, RICHARD C(ARLTON) (1937-1979) US writer who began publishing sf with "Slugs" for Knight magazine in 1962. His first novel, The Sky is Filled with Ships (1969), is an effective SPACE OPERA in which colonies revolt against a tyrannical corporation. We All Died at Breakaway Station (1969) is a bleak, well crafted space opera in a kind of Alamo setting, where a CYBORG must withstand both external enemies and the devils of introspection. Run, Come See Jerusalem! (1976) is a complex, thoroughly worked out TIME-PARADOX novel. Time also figures centrally in the Timeliner sequence - At the Narrow Passage (1973; rev 1979), No Brother, No Friend (1976; rev 1979) and Vestiges of Time (1978; rev 1979), all 3 being assembled as The Timeliner Trilogy (omni 1987 UK) - during the course of which ALIENS attempt to change Earth's past, and, more importantly, to punish humanity in various PARALLEL WORLDS. RCM's sense of history was acute and atmospheric, and his ALTERNATE-WORLDS tales are, as a consequence, hauntingly suggestive. Into these frameworks his heroes - wounded and reluctant but ultimately stoic - fit neatly. [JC/PN]Other work: The Awakening (1979).See also: HITLER WINS. MERLE, ROBERT (1908- ) Algerian-born French writer, recipient of the Prix Goncourt in 1949, known primarily for his work outside the sf field. His Un animal doue de raison (1967; trans Helen Weaver as The Day of the Dolphin 1969 US) is an ingenious examination of scientific and political ethics following the main character's breakthrough in COMMUNICATION with dolphins. Malevil (1972; trans Derek Coltman 1974 US), joint winner of the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD in 1974, is a realistic and delicately told post- HOLOCAUST survival and reconstruction story. Both have been filmed ( The DAY OF THE DOLPHIN ; MALEVIL). Les hommes proteges (1974; trans Martin Sokolinsky as The Virility Factor 1977 US) uses an sf framework to satirize both sexist and feminist attitudes. An epidemic to which boys, castrated men and men over 60 are immune is killing the male population of the USA. The government is taken over by women and eunuchs, and new changes are rung on the old sf theme with what some saw as cheery ribaldry, others as cheap vulgarity. [MJ/PN]Other works: Madrapour (1976). See also: FRANCE; LINGUISTICS; UNDER THE SEA. MERLYN, ARTHUR [r] James BLISH. MERRIL, JUDITH (1923- ) US-born writer and anthologist, in Canada from 1968. Born Josephine Grossman, she preferred the forename Judith; she became Judith Zissman by marriage, then changed her name to Merril before marrying Frederik POHL in 1949; they were divorced in 1953. She occasionally used the pseudonym Rose Sharon. JM was associated with the FUTURIANS fan group during and after WWII. Her first published sf was "That Only a Mother" for ASF in 1948. Her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth (1950; rev 1966 UK), tells the story of an atomic war in effectively understated fashion from the viewpoint of a housewife; one of the very best stories of nuclear HOLOCAUST, it was televised as Atomic Attack.JM wrote two routine novels in collaboration with C.M. KORNBLUTH as Cyril JUDD: Outpost Mars (1952; rev vt Sin in Space 1961) is about the COLONIZATION of MARS, Gunner Cade (1952) about an era in which WAR is a spectator sport ( GAMES AND SPORTS). Her best short stories, which usually feature protagonists passively caught up in world-changing events, and often hurt thereby, were a little ahead of their time. The neatly heart-rending "Dead Center" (1954) was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories: 1955 ed Martha Foley. Daughters of Earth (coll 1968 UK; cut vt A Judith Merril Omnibus: Daughters of Earth and Other Stories 1985 Canada) features 3 fine novellas: the title story (1953) is a family saga set on a colony world; "Project Nursemaid" (1955)-cut from the vt-concerns the problems of the administrator of a space project which must adopt human embryos; "Homecalling" (1956) is a story of contact with an ALIEN being. The Tomorrow People (1960), an intense psychological mystery story, lacks the emotional resonance of her best early work. She published very little fiction after 1960. Her short-story collections, which overlap somewhat, are Out of Bounds (coll 1960), Survival Ship and Other Stories (coll 1974) and The Best of Judith Merril (coll 1976).JM began editing sf ANTHOLOGIES in the early 1950s with Shot in the Dark (anth 1950), Beyond Human Ken (anth 1952; with 6 of 21 stories cut 1953 UK; cut version vt Selections from Beyond Human Ken 1954 US), Beyond the Barriers of Time and Space (anth 1954), Human? (anth 1954) and Galaxy of Ghouls (anth 1955; vt Off the Beaten Orbit 1959). She made her mark with the series of 12 "year's best" anthologies she began in 1956: S-F The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy (anth 1956); SF: 57 (anth 1957; vt SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Second Annual Volume 1957); SF 58 (anth 1958; vt SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Third Annual Volume 1958); SF 59 (anth 1959; vt SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Fourth Annual Volume); The 5th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1960; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 5 1966 UK); The 6th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1961; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 1963 UK); The 7th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1962; vt The Best of Sci-Fi - Two 1964 UK); The 8th Annual of The Year's Best SF (anth 1963; vt The Best of Sci-Fi No. 4 1965 UK); The 9th Annual of The Year's Best SF (anth 1964; vt 9th Annual S-F 1967 UK); 10th Annual Edition The Year's Best SF (anth 1965; vt 10th Annual SF 1967 UK); 11th Annual Edition The Year's Best S-F (anth 1966); SF 12 (anth 1968; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 12 1970 UK); though announced, SF 13 never in fact appeared. The UK edns omit some editorial material and are numbered without regard to sense; The Best of Sci-Fi 3 (anth 1964 UK) ed Cordelia Titcomb Smith has no connection with the JM series. A selection from the sequence was published as SF: The Best of the Best (anth 1967). JM was an unusually eclectic anthologist, habitually using stories from outside the SF MAGAZINES, thus helping to broaden the horizons of the genre; she campaigned in her anthologies and in her book-review column in FSF (May 1965-May 1969) for the replacement of the term "science fiction" by SPECULATIVE FICTION. She was the first US champion of the NEW WAVE (primarily associated with the UK magazine NEW WORLDS), which she attempted to popularize in England Swings SF (anth 1968; cut vt The Space-Time Journal 1972 UK). She ed the first of the Tesseracts series ( CANADA) of representative anthologies of Canadian sf, Tesseracts (anth 1985).Her book collection now forms the basis of the MERRIL COLLECTION OF SCIENCE FICTION, SPECULATION AND FANTASY, based in Toronto. [BS]See also: DEFINITIONS OF SF; END OF THE WORLD; GENERATION STARSHIPS; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; SHARED WORLDS; SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS; WOMEN SF WRITERS. MERRIL COLLECTION OF SCIENCE FICTION, SPECULATION AND FANTASY Founded in 1970 by Toronto Public Library in Canada, to house a major donation by sf author and anthologist Judith MERRIL and substantially added to since; known as the Spaced Out Library until 1 Jan 1991, and housed from September 1995 in a Special Collections building at 239 College Street in Toronto. With more than 29,000 books and 19,000 periodicals in the reference section, this COLLECTION is one of the world's more important sf research libraries. Among its holdings are many complete runs of PULP MAGAZINES, a good collection of sf from CANADA, a full set of ARKHAM HOUSE publications and a strong Jules VERNE collection. The quarterly newsletter of the library's Friends is Sol Rising.In 1993-94 the library board attempted to cut the Collection's budget, threatening its proposed move to a new, large building in 1995, and possibly restricting access through a combination of staff cuts and, perhaps, user fees. At an angry meeting in the Worldcon in 1994 the Friends of the Merril Collection announced the formation of a new body, the Canadian Science Fiction Foundation, to lobby for the Collection's survival. [PN] MERRILL, ALBERT ADAMS (? -? ) US writer of whom nothing is known beyond his renowned UTOPIA, The Great Awakening: The Story of the Twenty-Second Century (1899), in which a reincarnated 19th-century American is guided through the technological wonderland which the USA has become 200 years in the future, with electric cars and tv; everyone is paid the same, the state owns all property, and happiness seems rife. [JC] MERRIMAN, ALEX [s] Robert SILVERBERG. MERRITT, A(BRAHAM) (1884-1943) US editor, real-estate developer and writer, primarily of FANTASY, though he was influential among sf writers and readers as well. His first years were occupied with newspaper journalism; he was a longtime assistant editor of The American Weekly, becoming editor-in-chief in 1937 and remaining so until his death. His fiction was written as a sideline to this busy career, which may explain why his output was relatively small. He began publishing stories with Thru the Dragon Glass (1917 All-Story Weekly as "Through the Dragon Glass"; 1932 chap); his first novel, The Moon Pool ("The Moon Pool" 1918 All-Story Weekly; "The Conquest of the Moon Pool" 1919 All-Story Weekly; fixup 1919), begins with the Shining One, a deadly though insubstantial monster within a pool in Micronesia, and moves on to a complicated lost-race melodrama ( ANTHROPOLOGY; LOST WORLDS). (The posthumous Reflections in the Moon Pool [coll 1985], ed anon [actually Sam MOSKOWITZ], is unrelated to the novel, containing a long biography of AM by Moskowitz, a few prose items by AM, and some poetry, letters and articles.) The Metal Monster (1920 Argosy; 1946), another lost-race tale (and containing one of the characters from the previous book), describes a collective ALIEN being, comprised of millions of metal parts, who is absentmindedly kind to the explorer-protagonist. The Face in the Abyss ("The Face in the Abyss" 1923 Argosy; "The Snake Mother" 1930 Argosy; fixup 1931) describes an ancient, almost extinct, semireptilian race and its considerable wisdom. In The Ship of Ishtar (1924 Argosy; cut 1926; text restored 1949), his best novel, a man travels into a magical world and falls in love with the beautiful female captain of the ship of Ishtar; the highly coloured descriptive passages of this novel still have a strong effect on readers. 7 Footprints to Satan (1927 Argosy; 1928), filmed in 1929, is a horror/detective mystery, "Satan" being a greedy villain. The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932 Argosy with happy ending; 1932; with original intended unhappy ending 1944) is an effective lost-race novel, one of AM's best. Burn Witch Burn! (1932 Argosy; exp 1933) and its sequel, Creep, Shadow! (1934 Argosy; 1934; vt Creep, Shadow, Creep! 1935 UK), the first volume filmed as The DEVIL DOLL (1936), comprise a short series about witchcraft and HORROR detection. The Fox Woman and Other Stories (coll 1949) assembles short stories and uncompleted fragments, of which the title story had already been incorporated into The Fox Woman and The Blue Pagoda (coll of 2 stories 1946) by AM and Hannes BOK, "The Blue Pagoda" being by Bok but linked to AM's fragment with connecting passages. Bok's second completion of AM's work was The Black Wheel (1947), of which less than a quarter is by AM.AM was influential upon the sf and fantasy world not primarily through his storylines, which tended to be unoriginal, or through the excesses of his style, but because of the genuine imaginative power he displayed in the creation of desirable alternative worlds and realities. He was extremely popular during his life, even having a PULP MAGAZINE, A. MERRITT'S FANTASY MAGAZINE, named after him; and Sam MOSKOWITZ, in Chapter 12 of Explorers of the Infinite (1963), probably represents the view of many of AM's original readers that he was the supreme fantasy genius of his day. Even though, by any absolute literary standard, AM's prose was verbose and sentimental, and his repeated romantic image of the beautiful evil priestess was trivial - deriving as it did from a common Victorian image of womanhood (women being either virgins or devils) - the escapist yearning for otherness and mystery that he expressed has seldom been conveyed in sf with such an emotional charge. [JC/PN]Other works: Three Lines of Old French (1919 All-Story Weekly; 1937 chap); The Drone Man (1934 Fantasy Magazine as "The Drone"; 1948 chap); Rhythm of the Spheres (1936 TWS; 1948 chap); Woman of the Wood (1926 Weird Tales; 1948 chap); The People of the Pit (1918 All-Story Weekly; 1948 chap); Seven Footprints to Satan and Burn Witch Burn! (omni 1952); Dwellers in the Mirage and The Face in the Abyss (omni 1953).See also: AMAZING STORIES; DIME-NOVEL SF; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FAR FUTURE; HISTORY OF SF; PARALLEL WORLDS; PUBLISHING; SF MAGAZINES. MERWIN, SAM Jr Working name of US writer W. Samuel Kimball Merwin Jr (1910- ), son of the writer W.S. Merwin (1874-1936). SM's first sf story was "The Scourge Below" for THRILLING WONDER STORIES in 1939. He later went to work for the Beacon pulp chain, which published TWS and STARTLING STORIES, and was appointed to the editorship of both in 1944, succeeding Oscar J. FRIEND; although he had contributed to TWS and had done some editorial work for the magazines, he claimed never actually to have read an SF MAGAZINE before becoming editor of two of them. During his editorship he greatly raised the standard of both titles, abolishing the juvenile slant they had previously adopted, and making them the leading PULP MAGAZINES in the field behind ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. He contributed stories to both, using his own name and the pseudonyms Matt Lee and Carter Sprague. He also edited WONDER STORY ANNUAL and FANTASTIC STORY QUARTERLY - additional companion magazines to Startling and TWS - before leaving in 1951 to freelance. Further editorial forays included editing the first issues of FANTASTIC UNIVERSE, a period as assistant editor for Galaxy Publications-working on GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, BEYOND FANTASY FICTION and GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS - and editing the auspicious first 2 issues of SATELLITE SCIENCE FICTION. He later went to work in Hollywood. Two articles by SM - reminiscences of his pulp-magazine days - appeared in The ALIEN CRITIC #9 and #10. Although comparatively little known, SM's record shows him to have been one of the most capable of all sf magazine editors. SM's fiction, on the other hand, was unexceptional; his detective novels, beginning with Murder in Miniatures (1940), are perhaps better than his sf, of which the best are probably The House of Many Worlds (1951) and its sequel Three Faces of Time (1955 dos), assembled as The House of Many Worlds (omni 1983). The Feb 1957 issue of Satellite contained "Planet for Plunder", a novel written in collaboration with Hal CLEMENT; this was actually a Clement novelette expanded by SM (who added alternate chapters from another viewpoint) in order to fit Satellite's novel-oriented policy. Chauvinisto (1976) took a DYSTOPIAN attitude towards female domination. [MJE]Other works: Killer to Come (1953); The White Widows (1953; vt The Sex War 1960); The Time Shifters (1971).See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS; SPACESHIPS. MESHTE NASTRESHU PLANETA BUR. MESMERISM PSYCHOLOGY. MESSAC, REGIS [r] FRANCE. MESSAGE FROM MARS, A Film (1913). UK Films. Dir J. Wallett Waller, starring Charles Hawtrey, E. Holman Clark, Chrissie Bell. Scenario Waller, based on the play A Message from Mars (1899) by Richard Ganthony. 60 mins, cut to 54 mins. B/w.This moral fable about a messenger sent from Mars to help bring humans - especially the selfish Horace Parlan - to their senses was based on a remarkably successful and long-running play, and the film version was actually made in the theatre with the same actors. The story is very similar to that of Scrooge being redeemed by the ghosts in Charles DICKENS's A Christmas Carol (1843); very little is made of the alien nature of the Martian, who is more like an angel. An earlier film version of the same play was made in 1909 in New Zealand, probably much shorter; the details and the film itself have been lost. A later (1921) US version (Metro, 69 mins, cut to 63 mins), dir Maxwell Karger, gives the events of the story a dream framework. A novelized version of the play is A Message from Mars * (1912) by Lester LURGAN, the 2nd edn of which was illustrated by stills from the film. [PN] MESSIAHS In the MYTHOLOGY of the Old Testament the Messiah is the deliverer of prophecy, destined to lead the Jews to their salvation; the New Testament claims that Jesus was the Messiah. The term is applied by analogy to any saviour or champion whose arrival is anticipated, hoped for or desperately needed. Because Christian images of the future have always been associated with ideas of the Millennium and the Apocalypse, a preoccupation with messiahs in the futuristic fiction of Western culture is only to be expected. Many HEROES in sf play quasimessianic roles, but there is a more-or-less distinct category of stories which deals specifically with this aspect of Judaeo-Christian religion.Early sf featured numerous messianic political fantasies, including H.G. WELLS's When the Sleeper Wakes (1899) and Victor ROUSSEAU's The Messiah of the Cylinder (1917); the most literal of these is M.P. SHIEL's Lord of the Sea (1901). Earnest futuristic religious fantasies of the same period featuring messianic figures include Guy THORNE's And it Came to Pass (1915) and Upton SINCLAIR's They Call me Carpenter (1922). William Hope HODGSON's "The Baumoff Explosion" (1919; vt "Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani") strikes a more sceptical note in describing a re-enactment of the crucifixion which goes hideously wrong. There is little or no trace of messianic mythology in the sf PULP MAGAZINES until the 1940s, when it became possible for a SUPERMAN to play a quasimessianic role, as in DARKER THAN YOU THINK (1940; 1948) by Jack WILLIAMSON. What Dreams May Come (1941) by J.D. BERESFORD likewise features a superhuman messiah, although The Gift (1946) by Beresford and Esme Wynne-Tyson is a more straightforward religious fantasy. L. Ron HUBBARD's Final Blackout (1940 ASF; 1948) has an inordinately charismatic hero who may qualify as a messiah. Ordinary men sometimes take on similarly charismatic roles when they are transplanted into PARALLEL WORLDS, as in Henry KUTTNER's The Dark World (1946 Startling Stories; 1965) and James BLISH's The Warriors of Day (1953).Messiah-figures increased in popularity when Millenarian fantasies became newly fashionable in the wake of the Bomb. C.S. LEWIS's trilogy of interplanetary religious romances was concluded in That Hideous Strength (1945), in which a messianic role is assumed by Merlin, though he is in effect an agent only of the trilogy's true messiah figure, Ransom. Christ first appeared in GENRE SF in this period - in Ray BRADBURY's "The Man" (1949) - but it was not until the 1960s that TIME TRAVEL was used to confront Christ's life (and death) directly. In Michael MOORCOCK's BEHOLD THE MAN (1966 NW; exp 1969) a time traveller takes Christ's place. Brian EARNSHAW's Planet in the Eye of Time (1968) features a time-trip to witness the crucifixion; Garry KILWORTH's "Let's Go to Golgotha" (1975) uses a similar notion to construct a heavily ironic parable, as does Gore VIDAL's Live from Golgotha (1992). Another protagonist who becomes Christ is featured in Barry N. MALZBERG's The Cross of Fire (1982). In Philip Jose FARMER's "Riverworld" (1966) the crucifixion is re-enacted in the human race's new incarnation. The most notable story featuring a re-enactment of the crucifixion on an alien world is "The Streets of Ashkelon" (1962) by Harry HARRISON. Nativity stories are more common; they include Robert F. YOUNG's "Robot Son" (1959), Edward BRYANT's "Eyes of Onyx" (1971) and John CAMERON's The Astrologer (1972).The theme of redemption through sacrifice is more or less explicitly linked to Christian mythology in many sf stories, including Robert F. Young's "Redemption" (1963), Cordwainer SMITH's "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (1964), Harlan ELLISON's "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman" (1965) and R.A. LAFFERTY's Past Master (1968); Robert A. HEINLEIN's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (1961) also belongs to this category. Clifford D. SIMAK's Time and Again (1951; vt First He Died 1953) features a resurrection of sorts as well as a sacrifice, as do Thomas M. DISCH's CAMP CONCENTRATION (1968) and Jack Williamson's Firechild (1986). Explicit (and mostly ironic) sciencefictional accounts of the actual Second Coming include Edward WELLEN's "Seven Days Wonder" (1963), J.G. BALLARD's "You and Me and the Continuum" (1966), Damon KNIGHT's The Man in the Tree (1984), Philip Jose Farmer's Jesus on Mars (1979) and Theodore STURGEON's posthumous Godbody (1986).More enigmatic messiahs, who offer little in the way of redemption, are featured in Vidal's Messiah (1954; rev 1965), Robert SILVERBERG's The Masks of Time (1968; vt Vornan-19 1970 UK), Brian M. STABLEFORD's The Walking Shadow (1979), Stuart GORDON's Smile on the Void (1982), Somtow Sucharitkul's (S.P. SOMTOW's) Starship and Haiku (1984) and Kim Stanley ROBINSON's The Memory of Whiteness (1985). A fake messiah, used as a political instrument, is featured in Robin SANBORN's The Book of Stier (1971). An enigmatically sinister "messiah" is featured in Philip K. DICK's THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (1964), but later Dick novels, including A Maze of Death (1970), play in ever more complex and constructive fashion with messianic figures - a process which culminates in The Divine Invasion (1981). The most elaborate messianic fantasy in modern sf, however, is that in Frank HERBERT's DUNE (1965) and its sequels, following the career and posthumous influence of Paul Atreides, messiah to the desert world Arrakis. Herbert has also deployed messianic mythology elsewhere in his work, notably in The Jesus Incident (1979) with Bill RANSOM. Another writer constantly fascinated by messianic mythology is Roger ZELAZNY, whose many fantasies in this vein include "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" (1963), LORD OF LIGHT (1967) and Isle of the Dead (1969). Many of Zelazny's messianic fantasies take a broadly syncretic view of such figures, linking them to mythologies other than the Christian one; a similarly generalized theory of messianic revivification is featured in James KAHN's Time's Dark Laughter (1982).The most significant contemporary religious fantasy about a messiah is James MORROW's brilliantly bitter Only Begotten Daughter (1990), which cleverly deploys sf motifs alongside more traditional imagery. Jack WOMACK's Heathern (1990 UK) is another almost seamless alloy of sf and religious fantasy. [BS]See also: GODS AND DEMONS. MESSMANN, JON [r] Nick CARTER. METAFICTION FABULATION. METAL HURLANT French BEDSHEET-size, glossy colour COMIC-strip sf magazine launched Jan 1975 by Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet (1947- ) and illustrators Jean GIRAUD and Philippe DRUILLET; published by Les Humanoids Associees. Conceived as a high-quality showcase for the growing number of French sf artists, MH was an instant success, combining many aspects of sf narrative with particular stress on the erotic, the grotesque and the horrific in illustrated form. Although it was accused of putting emphasis on graphics rather than content, its influence was notable throughout Europe and North America, and translations of its contents appeared in similar magazines in the USA ( HEAVY METAL), Italy, Spain, Holland and elsewhere. Major contributors included Druillet, Giraud, Alexis (Dominique Valler [1946-1977]), Enki BILAL, Vaughn BODE, Caza (Philippe Cazaumayou [1941- ]), Nicole Claveloux (1940- ), Serge Clerc (1957- ), Richard CORBEN, F'Murr (Richard Peyzaret [1946- ]), Jean-Claude Forest (1930- ), Jean-Claude Gal (1944- ), Dominique He (1949- ), Jacques Lob (1932-1990), Sergio Macedo (1951- ), Nikita Mandryka (1940- ), Francis Masse (1948- ), Jean-Claude Mezieres (1938- ), Rene Petillon (1945- ) and Jacques Tardi (1946- ). Quarterly from its inception, MH became a monthly with #9 (Sep 1976), at which time it began to carry a warning forbidding sale to minors. In Oct 1976 it spawned a companion magazine devoted exclusively to female illustrators, Ah! Nana (9 issues, Oct 1976-Sep 1978). HM also published a series of Hors Serie (specials) on themes such as the END OF THE WORLD and H.P. LOVECRAFT. In 1985 Hachette bought the title and Dionnet was replaced as editor by C. Fromental. With #123 (Sep 1986) a new team took over, but by this time MH had declined in quality and popularity, and the new editor-in-chief C. Generot succeeded only in prolonging its life as a pale imitation of its early self. Its last issue was #133 (Aug 1987). [RT/MJ]See also: ILLUSTRATION. METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN Film (1983). Albert Band International. Dir and coprod Charles BAND, starring Jeffrey Byron, Mike Preston, Tim Thomerson. Screenplay by coprod Alan J. Adler. 83 mins. 3-D. Colour.More SCIENCE FANTASY than sf, this 3-D exploitation movie, set in a tribalized future wasteland, is notable for the absence of metalstorms and the fact that the totalitarian wizard Jared-Syn is not destroyed. The hero saves his girl - after post- MAD MAX fights with punk nomads and CYBORGS - from the lifeforce-absorbing wizard who exits via another DIMENSION. Aimlessly routine, the film shows little of the comic-book energy that characterizes some later Band productions. [PN] METAPHYSICAL REVIEW, THE Bruce GILLESPIE; SF COMMENTARY. METAPHYSICS One of the qualities of sf that sometimes baffles new readers is the relative infrequency, despite its label, with which it deals with the hard sciences; indeed, sf deals as often with metaphysics as with PHYSICS. This is not an accidental or a recent development; the exploration of metaphysical questions has been central to sf at least since the time of Mary SHELLEY's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831). This centrality was not thereafter abandoned: it recurs in the pioneering sf of Edgar Allan POE, Nathaniel HAWTHORNE, Robert Louis STEVENSON and pre-eminently H.G. WELLS. The basic metaphysical question is the notorious cliche, "What does it all mean?" It is to the credit of sf that it has consistently tackled this overwhelming (if nebulous) question, through a fantastically elaborate series of thought experiments, sometimes trivial and sometimes profound, in a way that the traditional novel of character and social interaction is ill equipped to manage.Metaphysics is an important field of philosophy; and from early on has been regularly used as a synonym for ontology, the study of being or existence. Metaphysics is defined in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as "that branch of speculation which deals with the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity etc." Many of the thematic entries in this encyclopedia can be regarded as pertaining as much to metaphysics as to the natural sciences, notably ALTERNATE WORLDS, CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH, COSMOLOGY, DIMENSIONS, END OF THE WORLD, ENTROPY, ESCHATOLOGY, EVOLUTION, GODS AND DEMONS, INTELLIGENCE, LINGUISTICS, MYTHOLOGY, ORIGIN OF MAN, PARALLEL WORLDS, PERCEPTION (under which rubric sf dealing with questions of appearance versus reality is discussed), REINCARNATION, RELIGION, SENSE OF WONDER, TIME PARADOXES, TIME TRAVEL and VIRTUAL REALITY. Indeed, it is no longer possible, particularly at the frontiers of theoretical physics, to distinguish between speculation which belongs specifically to the natural sciences and speculation which is metaphysical. However, if metaphysics can be distinguished from science it is in this (the quotation is from Man is the Measure [1976], by Reuben Abel, a good account for the layman of central problems in philosophy): "Metaphysics is that branch of philosophy which attempts to comprehend the Universe as a whole - not so much by examining it in detail (which is the procedure of science) as by analysing and organizing the ideas and concepts by means of which we examine and think about the world."Thus, for instance, a central example of metaphysical sf is Stanislaw LEM's SOLARIS (1961; trans 1970), which asks to what extent can scientists studying a totally alien and apparently sentient planet comprehend its essence, if to do so requires transcending categories of thought that are limited by their very humanness. This question about the limitation of our perceptions is one of the fundamental problems sf regularly tackles; many further examples are discussed under ALIENS and CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH. Confrontation with the alien, especially in sf stories of the 1960s and after, is often seen in sf as leading to a higher level of understanding, and a renewed sense of cosmic harmony. Robert SILVERBERG has written several novels of this type, a good one being Downward to the Earth (1970). Algis BUDRYS's ROGUE MOON (1960) projects its protagonist into a maze of metaphysical self-discovery by confronting him with a literal, murderous, alien maze on the Moon.Metaphysical questions of identity are particularly closely associated with the work of Philip K. DICK, who by blurring the distinctions between human and artificial, between Man, ANDROID and MACHINE, forces the reader to consider what qualities of consciousness constitute the essence of humanity. (Gene WOLFE entered the same area of speculation with his brilliant and subtle THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS [1972], in which one of the protagonists, it transpires, is a simulation.) Dick, in fact, has a finger in almost every metaphysical pie. He specializes in questions of appearance and reality, and of solipsism, asking to what extent the Universe as it appears to us is an objective fact, and to what extent it is a mental construct, either individual or consensual. The novels of Ian WATSON have characteristically met some of the most difficult questions in metaphysics head-on and doggedly. Watson's special interest is also whether our models of the Universe, especially as reflected in language ( LINGUISTICS), correspond to any external reality; at times he seems to go further and suggest that the meaning and shape of the Universe is created by the consciousnesses that observe it.Questions of good and evil in sf are intimately bound up with questions of human EVOLUTION; to what extent do we carry the mark of the amoral beast within us, imprinted in the more primitive areas of our brains? Robert Louis STEVENSON's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) asks this question, and the theme is still very much alive today, in part through the work of such evolutionary behaviourist popularizers as Desmond Morris (1928- ) and Robert ARDREY, and in part through sf itself. An example of this kind of metaphysics running wild in sf is Altered States (1978) by Paddy CHAYEFSKY, filmed as ALTERED STATES (1980), in which, absurdly, cause and effect are reversed (because consciousness may be coded in the DNA molecule, Chayefsky proposes that alterations in consciousness may be somehow able to alter our genetic make-up); his hero devolves first to hominid, then, briefly, to primal chaos, undifferentiated cosmic matter.Reversals of cause and effect are not new to sf. It is the very nature of the TIME-TRAVEL story to confront us with thought-provoking paradoxes of this sort, and in so doing, of course, to make us speculate about the question (not merely an intellectual game) of whether the shape of our lives is created by free will or determinism. Stories that deal with this issue are legion: two good ones are "The Custodians" (1975) by Richard COWPER and Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt VONNEGUT Jr. The very nature of causality has been questioned by stories like Brian W. ALDISS's An Age (1967; vt Cryptozoic! US) and other stories in which the arrow of time is reversed and time runs backwards, such as Dick's Counter-Clock World (1967) and Martin AMIS's Time's Arrow (1991) (further examples are discussed under PERCEPTION); John CROWLEY's story "Great Work of Time" (1989) is perhaps of all time-travel stories the one that most sharply (and movingly) questions the relationship of cause and effect.The books of writers like Crowley, Gene Wolfe and Ian Watson are actually about metaphysical exploration; but such questions are by no means eschewed by writers of HARD SF. Arthur C. CLARKE has throughout his career been as interested in metaphysics as in physics; 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) amply testifies to that, as do many of his novels. Within hard sf and SPACE OPERA to this day, metaphysical explorations consistently appear. Greg BEAR, in novels like BLOOD MUSIC (1985) and EON (1985), perhaps cuts even deeper than Clarke, often by way of fantastic premises: genetically engineered microorganisms that develop a gestalt consciousness and ultimately transform humanity into a new state of being in the former, and the exploration of a conceptually impossible infinitely extended SPACE HABITAT in the latter. While it might be objected that sf, though it indeed tackles metaphysical questions, has very often done so with a gosh-wow, pop crudity - producing metaphysical notions like brightly coloured flags without in the least understanding them - this is certainly not true of the writers of its upper echelons, of whom Bear is one. Another is Paul J. MCAULEY, whose Eternal Light (1991) is the very model of a metaphysical space opera, luring the reader in with promises of high adventure and low conspiracy, and then stirring cosmogony, GENETIC ENGINEERING and (of course) the secret history of the Universe into a potent - and really rather demanding - mix. The increased sophistication, in some quarters, of hard sf and space opera must, of course, be connected with the sudden appetite the reading public has shown for nonfiction books by authors like Fred HOYLE, Fritjof Capra, Heinz R. Pagels, Stephen Hawking, Freeman DYSON and Paul DAVIES: books about the most far-reaching speculations of contemporary theoretical physics. It was in such popularizations that, for example, most of us first learned about BLACK HOLES, a theme that rapidly became an irresistible magnet for writers of metaphysical hard sf.There is no traditional crux in metaphysics that is not amply reflected in sf, whether it be "What is the nature of mind as opposed to body?" or "Is there purpose in Nature?" Among sf writers of the pre-WWII generation, Olaf STAPLEDON is certainly pre-eminent as a propounder of questions of ultimate meaning: he confronted all the great metaphysical questions one after the other. But GENRE SF, too, has been amply supplied with amateur metaphysicians who have often made up in colour and verve what they may have lacked in rigorous thought; they may not have answered the questions but they certainly persuaded the reader to think about them ( SENSE OF WONDER). A.E. VAN VOGT is one such, and Charles L. HARNESS, with his fantastic paradoxes of COSMOLOGY, is another; while even in the early PULP MAGAZINES John TAINE, in The Time Stream (1931 Wonder Stories; 1946) and elsewhere, flung himself headlong and daringly (and quite unselfconsciously) into questions of ultimate meaning. Later, and initially only in garish pulp paperback format, Barrington J. BAYLEY did the same. Sf may derive its muscle and sinew from science and sociology, but much of the time its heartbeat derives from the drama of metaphysics, a drama that seems primarily intellectual, but has an enormous capacity to touch the feelings too. [PN] METCALF, NORM Working name of US fan bibliographer Norman Metcalf (1937- ), whose The Index of Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965 (1968) is a sequel to Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1926-1950 (1952) by Donald B. DAY, and covers the same ground as the computerized index for the same years ed Erwin S. STRAUSS (though without the latter's issue-by-issue contents listing). One or other of these works is essential to the serious sf researcher. [PN]See also: BIBLIOGRAPHIES. METEOR MAN, THE Film 1993. Tinsel Townsend/MGM. Prod Loretha C. Jones, dir and screenplay Robert Townsend, starring Townsend, Marla Gibbs, Robert Guillame, Eddie Griffin, James Earl Jones, Don Cheadle and Bill Cosby. 100 mins. Colour.Townsend, the film's writer, director and leading actor, is a black comic with an extremely likeable, gentle manner; likeable enough, apparently, for him-he arranged the financing- to obtain many of the leading black actors in the US for what in this congenial low-budget comedy must have been a pittance. A timid schoolteacher (Townsend) in a black area of Washington, DC, is given superhero powers when struck by a mysterious green meteor. Being afraid of heights, however, he mostly flies only four feet above the ground. His neighbours persuade him to use his superpowers to do something about the Golden Lords, a black gang terrorising the area, but after several spectacular successes this becomes more difficult as his powers begin to wear off. In the end, his neighbours summon up the strength to resist the hoodlums on their own. The film is perhaps too simplistic in its view that endemic black-against-black violence can be countered with ordinary decency, but despite that is innocent and fresh in its portrayal of neighbourhood life, though most of the star names are wasted in being given very little to do. It is pleasant to have a borderline sf movie that questions whether superhero powers, in the end, would be of much use. [PN] METROPOLIS Film (1926). UFA. Dir Fritz LANG, starring Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Frohlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Heinrich George, Fritz Rasp. Screenplay Lang, Thea VON HARBOU. Original version about 3 hours (17 reels); 1927 UK release print 128 mins (12 reels); 1927 US Paramount release print 75 mins (7 reels); Munich Film Museum reconstruction about 21/2 hours; 1984 US reconstruction and adaptation by Giorgio Moroder 83 mins. B/w.Set in a vast city of the future whose society is divided into downtrodden workers and a ruling elite, M focuses on Freder (Froehlich), who falls in love with Maria (Helm), saintly protector of the workers' children and informal spiritual leader to the masses. But Freder's jealous father Fredersen (Abel), the industrialist master of the city, has a ROBOT duplicate of Maria built for him by malign SCIENTIST Rotwang (Klein-Rogge), which he uses to incite the workers to self-destructive revolt (for reasons which are never entirely made clear). The damage to the city's machinery caused by the rioting floods the lower levels, threatening the lives of the children, but they are saved by the real Maria. The film ends with the city's ruler being persuaded to shake hands with the workers' spokesman and promising that things will be better from now on.Though often described as the first sf epic of the CINEMA, this famous German film - of which no complete version now exists - has just as much in common with the cinema of the GOTHIC. Though set in a future visually emphasized by towering buildings and vast, brooding MACHINES, the City of Metropolis has an underworld dark and medieval in atmosphere. One might almost say that the film's metaphor is to keep the very spectacular sf for the elite above, while the Gothic grub gnaws at the city's roots. The bridging figure is Rotwang, both scientist and sorcerer, one hand clean, the other deformed and gloved, accomplishing gleaming miracles of science while living in a bizarre house with a pentagram inscribed over the door. The story of M is trite and its politics ludicrously simplistic; but these flaws cannot detract from the sheer visual power of the film - a combination of the high Expressionistic sets (the work of art directors Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut and Karl Vollbrecht) and Lang's direction, particularly in the sequences involving the vast crowds which he uses as a kind of living clay with which to create giant fluid sculptures. Individual images, as when the apparently living Maria is burned to reveal the gleaming robot beneath, have been so well remembered as now to seem archetypes, alive still in the consciousness of filmgoers everywhere.M, which was extremely expensive and not a financial success, almost bankrupted the studio that made it (UFA). The film was cut almost as soon as it was released, and - still in the 1920s - shortened yet more radically in the UK and the USA. Even recently restored archival versions are half an hour shorter than the original.The 1984 US adaptation by Italian composer and producer Giorgio Moroder can be seen as a successful homage, the new tinted print cleverly recut to match the fierce rock MUSIC to which Moroder sets it. But the editing, for all its meticulousness, makes of M something rather different from Lang's (presumptive) version; now the love story is central, and the hesitant Freder appears much more decisive, while much of the obliqueness and some of the ambiguity is gone. Yet M is still a very strong film indeed, vividly renewed for a new generation.The novelization is Metropolis * (1926; trans 1927) by von Harbou. [JB/PN]See also: COMICS; GERMANY. MEXICO LATIN AMERICA. MEYER, NICHOLAS [r] The DAY AFTER ; Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE; INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS; The NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA ; STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN; STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME; STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY; TIME AFTER TIME. [PN] MEYERS, RIC Richard S. MEYERS. MEYERS, RICHARD S. (1953- ) US writer who publishes also as Wade Barker. His sf novels are of relatively little interest, though the Doomstar sequence - Doom Star (1978; rev vt Doomstar 1985) and Doom Star 2 (1979; rev vt Return to Doomstar 1985)-are moderately entertaining sf adventures. Of more interest are his nonfiction film studies, including The World of Fantasy Films (1980), For One Week Only: The World of Exploitation Films (1983) and S-F 2: A Pictorial History of Science Fiction Films from "Rollerball" to "Return of the Jedi" (1984; vt The Great Science Fiction Films from "Rollerball" to "Return of the Jedi" 1990). [JC]Other works: Cry of the Beast * (1979), an INCREDIBLE HULK tie; Dzurlord: A Crossroads Adventure in the World of Steven Brust's Jhereg * (1987), anon with 6 other writers; the Book of the Undead horror sequence, as by Ric Meyers, comprising Fear Itself (1991), Living Hell (1991) and Worst Nightmare (1992).As Wade Barker: Serpent's Eye: The Year of the Ninja Master: Autumn * (1985) and The Shibo Discipline * (1988), both contributions to the Ninja Master sequence. MEYERS, ROY (LETHBRIDGE) (1910-1974) UK physician and writer whose first sf novel, The Man They Couldn't Kill (1944), introduces the vastly talented Dr D'eath, who is capable of inducing hypnotic trances at a distance and of scientifically arranging for souls to take out-of-body excursions. Falsely convicted of a murder, D'eath clears his name and might have starred in a sequence of Doc Savage-like adventures had the book been successful. RM is best known for the later Dolphin series about the relationship between dolphins and humans: Dolphin Boy (1967 US; vt Dolphin Rider 1968 UK), Daughters of the Dolphin (1968 US) and Destiny and the Dolphins (1969 US). RM's style is wooden, but his interest in dolphins is obviously profound, and the novels are easy reading, though their mixture of melodrama and didacticism may not be to everyone's taste. [JC]Other work: Gift of the Manti (1977 Canada) with J.F. BONE (RM's name is here spelled Myers, almost certainly in error).See also: UNDER THE SEA. MEYERS, WALTER E(ARL) (1939- ) US academic based at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. A grammarian and medievalist, WEM has also been teaching sf and fantasy since the 1970s (currently with John KESSEL). His first book of genre interest, Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction (1980), is an excellent and amusing work on LINGUISTICS in sf; the argument is updated in "The Language and Languages of Science Fiction" in Fictional Space: Essays on Contemporary Science Fiction (anth 1991) ed Tom SHIPPEY. WEM has published other essays on sf in a number of critical anthologies, and has written several books in his other specialities. [PN] MEYN, NIELS [r] DENMARK. MEYRINK, GUSTAV (1868-1932) Austrian novelist, long resident in Prague, a city whose depiction in his novels prefigures Franz KAFKA's, and active as a writer from the publication of Der heisse Soldat und andere Geschichten ["The Hot Soldier and Other Stories"] (coll 1903). Of his broodingly Expressionist work, much of which deals with the mechanics of occultism, genre interest attaches to Der Golem (1914; cut trans Madge Pemberton as The Golem 1928 US; full version of trans 1976 US; preferred trans Mike Mitchell 1995 UK), in which a 19th-century protagonist experiences the original myth of the GOLEM; to Das grune Gesicht (1916; trans Mike Mitchell as The Green Face 1992 UK), an apocalyptic fantasy haunted by the Wandering Jew and culminating in the destruction of Amsterdam; to some degree to Walpurgisnacht (1917; trans Mike Mitchell 1993 UK) and Der weiAEe Dominikaner (1921; trans Mike Mitchell as The White Dominican 1994 UK); and to Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster (1927; trans Mike Mitchell as The Angel of the West Window 1991 UK), in which a 20th-century figure engages with John Dee (1527-1608), whose Neoplatonic speculations and adventurous life have inspired writers like John CROWLEY. [JC]See also: AUSTRIA. MEZO, FRANCINE (MARIE) (? - ) US writer whose Fall of Worlds series - The Fall of Worlds (1980), Unless She Burn (1981) and No Earthly Shore (1981)-features a female starship captain who works also as a warrior mercenary in adventures covering a good portion of the Galaxy. [JC] MIALL, ROBERT Jonathan BURKE. MICHAELS, MELISA C. (? - ) US writer who remains best known for her Skyrider sequence of sf adventures - Skirmish (1985), First Battle (1985), Last War (1986), Pirate Prince (1987) and Floater Factor (1987) - depicting the growth into maturity of its eponymous female starship-pilot protagonist. The tales are at times congested, often parodic, occasionally damaged by cliche, but carry their underlying message about human potential with some grace. Far Harbor (1989) depicts with sympathy the plight of a planet whose natives are being attacked by humans. [JC]Other work: Through the Eyes of the Dead (1988), a mystery novel, associational. MICHENER, JAMES A(LBERT) (1907- ) US author of numerous bestsellers. His long novel Space (1982), televised 1985, is based on the history of the US space program, becoming sf only in its later stages, when it describes invented missions and adventures roughly contemporaneous with the historical ones (e.g., a disaster owing to an outburst of solar radiation during an Apollo 18 lunar mission in 1973), and then peers optimistically into the NEAR FUTURE. Among several errors of fact are consistent references to Stanley G. WEINBAUM as Stanley G. Weinberg. [JGr]See also: ROCKETS. MICKIEWICZ, ADAM [r] POLAND. MICROCOSM GREAT AND SMALL. MIELKE, THOMAS R.P. [r] GERMANY. MIESEL, SANDRA (LOUISE) (1941- ) US critic and writer, with degrees in chemistry and medieval history. Her involvement in sf was initially as a fan; since 1967 she has published over 75 pieces in FANZINES. As a critic she became active in the 1970s, her first book being Myth, Symbol, and Religion in The Lord of the Rings (1973 chap) on J.R.R. TOLKIEN. Her next book, Against Time's Arrow: The High Crusade of Poul Anderson (1979 chap), was her first significant assessment of either Poul ANDERSON or Gordon R. DICKSON, the two figures to whom she has devoted most attention, and of whose work and philosophies she has become a noted advocate. This advocacy, especially perhaps in the case of Dickson's Dorsai sequence, has perhaps assumed too readily that the claims for thematic import made for it by its author have been fully realized in the texts as read. Sometimes uncredited, she ed in the mid-1980s several collections assembling short work by these writers, usually selected from early in their careers: Anderson's Dialogue with Darkness (coll 1985) uncredited and Dickson's Survival! (coll 1984) uncredited, Forward! (coll 1985), Invaders! (coll 1985), The Last Dream (coll 1986) uncredited, and Mindspan (coll 1986). With David A. DRAKE she ed A Separate Star (anth 1989) and Heads to the Storm (anth 1989).As an author of fiction, SM has concentrated mainly on fantasy. Dreamrider (1982; rev vt Shaman 1989), however, mixes genres with some competence, carrying its female protagonist from a NEAR-FUTURE Earth to an ALTERNATE WORLD in which mental control ( PSI POWERS) over subatomic processes is exercised by shamans; the protagonist soon becomes one. [JC] MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (vt Mr Joseph Young of Africa) Film (1949). Argosy/RKO. Dir Ernest B. Schoedsack, starring Terry Moore, Ben Johnson, Robert Armstrong. Screenplay Ruth Rose, from a story by Merian C. Cooper. 94 mins. B/w, with some tinted sequences.A virtual remake, though on a smaller scale, of KING KONG (1933), by much the same team that produced that classic. The hero organizes a cowboy expedition to Africa to capture animals for his new night-club. Once there they encounter a 12ft (3.7m) gorilla and, after failing to lasso it, discover it is a girl's pet. They persuade her to return with the ape to the USA, where it is exhibited in a nightclub. Finally it goes berserk, but redeems itself by rescuing children from a burning orphanage. Special-effects genius Willis H. O'BRIEN had few successes after King Kong but at least MJY, on which he supervised the model animation, won him some belated recognition as well as an Academy Award. Also working on the film was the young Ray HARRYHAUSEN. [JB] MILAN, VICTOR (WOODWARD) (1954- ) US writer who has written under his own name and, it is understood, under more than just his one acknowledged pseudonym, Richard Austin. He began publishing sf with "Soldatenmangel" for Dragons of Darkness (anth 1981) ed Orson Scott CARD. His first books were in the War of Powers sequence of fantasies with Robert E. VARDEMAN (whom see for titles) from 1984, but the next year he started publishing in his own right with The Cybernetic Samurai (1985); it and its sequel, The Cybernetic Shogun (1990), comprise the complicatedly and intriguingly told story of the embodiment and education of an AI given the bodily form of a samurai, and the subsequent warfare, which severely damages the entire world, between its/his two "children". Runespear (1987) with Melinda M. SNODGRASS is a fantasy set in 1936 in which the Nazi rulers of Germany attempt to gain the eponymous spear and thus become invincible. As Richard Austin, VM has been responsible for the Guardians sequence of post- HOLOCAUST military-sf adventures: The Guardians (1985), #2: Trial by Fire (1985), #3: Thunder of Hell (1985), #4: Night of the Phoenix (1985), #5: Armageddon Run (1986), #6: War Zone (1986), #7: Brute Force (1986), #8: Desolation Road (1987), #9: Vengeance Day (1987), #10: Freedom Fight (1988), #11: Valley of the Gods (1988), #12: The Plague Years (1988), #13: Devil's Deal (1989), #14: Death from Above (1989), #15: Snake Eyes (1990) and #16: Death Charge (1991).Subsequent work - which includes a Star Trek tie, From the Depths * (1993), a Wild Cards tie, Turn of the Cards* (1993), a Battletech tie, Close Quarters *(1994), and a lonely singleton, Red Sands (1992) - has not demonstrated any dauntingly explorative tendency. A fuller sense of VM's career awaits a better sense of its range and possible depths. [JC]See also: CYBERNETICS; LIBERTARIAN SF. MILES Neil BELL. MILES, KEITH Robert S. TRALINS. MILFORD CIRCLE When the Milford Science Fiction Conference was founded in 1956 by Damon Knight and Judith Merril, Milford, Pennsylvania was already quite the gathering place for writers. James Blish was the first to move to this small town in eastern Pennsylvania. Other settlers eventually included Thomas M. Disch and James Sallis. Why did Blish choose a town that, while charming, was noticeably lacking in urban amenities? The reason was that James Blish was convinced that nuclear war was imminent in the 1950s, and Milford was outside the lethal blast radius if an H-bomb fell on New York. MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE Annual writers' workshop founded in 1956, held at Milford, Pennsylvania, where several sf writers - including one of its founders, Damon KNIGHT - have lived at various times. (A writers' workshop - see also CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP - includes sessions of mutual criticism of not yet published stories, interspersed with discussion groups on various professional problems.) The success of MSFWC, especially the camaraderie it inspired, was directly responsible for the setting up of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA. Robert SILVERBERG, Harlan ELLISON, Kate WILHELM, Terry CARR and Samuel R. DELANY are among the many who were at some period regular Milford attenders. Ideally, the workshop (open only to published sf writers) had a balance between beginner writers and more experienced professionals. It was felt by some critics that Milford attenders constituted a powerful in-group in sf (particularly since editors of important anthology series attended) and that they received preferential treatment by publishers; hence the nickname "Milford Mafia". Founder member James BLISH and his wife, J.A. LAWRENCE, moved to the UK, where they set up a UK Milford in 1972, coincidentally the year in which the US Milford was officially pronounced dead. This was held until 1988, out of terminological nostalgia, at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire each autumn; thereafter it was held at Cheltenham (1989-90) and Margate (1991 onwards). Richard COWPER and Christopher PRIEST were two regular early attenders; more recent regulars have included Mary GENTLE, Colin GREENLAND and Diana Wynne JONES. [PN] MILHAUS, MICHAEL F.X. David F. BISCHOFF. MILLARD, JOSEPH (JOHN) (1908-1989) US writer in several genres who began publishing sf with "The Crystal Invaders" for TWS in 1941, and was active in the field for a few years, a period which included the magazine release of his only novel, The Gods Hate Kansas (1941 Startling Stories; rev 1964), a routine adventure involving manipulation of humans by aliens. It was filmed, dreadfully, as They Came from Beyond Space (1967). [JC]See also: INVASION. MILLENNIUM Film (1989). First Millennium Partnership/Gladden Entertainment. Dir Michael Anderson, starring Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, Daniel J. Travanti. Screenplay John VARLEY, based on his "Air Raid" (1977). 105 mins. Colour.Commando teams from the future steal people from planes just before they crash, but an investigator becomes suspicious. He is seduced by a woman time-traveller, follows her to a chaotic future (represented by a single set) that is about to collapse in a timequake caused by careless TIME PARADOXES in its past. They escape to a further future. Nowhere is the reason for the kidnapping explained. Kristofferson acts like a sleepwalker. There is a manipulative ROBOT that looks like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Michael Anderson's essays in genre directing, including LOGAN'S RUN and DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE, have been uniformly wooden.Curiously, only Varley's short story is credited as the basis for his screenplay, even though he had turned it into a novel, Millennium (1983), which explains the points this botched film leaves obscure; one can only suppose that his screenplay was cut to ribbons. [PN] MILLER, BENJAMIN [s] Noel LOOMIS. MILLER, CHUCK Working name of US publisher and anthologist Charles Franklin Miller II (1952- ). For his publishing activities UNDERWOOD-MILLER INC.; for his anthologies Tim UNDERWOOD. [JC] MILLER, FRANK (1957- ) US COMIC-book writer and artist, with a distinctive fragmented narrative technique; also film scriptwriter. During 1979-85 FM worked on MARVEL COMICS's Daredevil, producing work that was later re-released in three collections: Child's Play (graph coll 1988), Marked for Death (graph coll 1990) and Gang War (graph coll 1992). He then produced two apocalyptic dramas for DC COMICS: Ronin (1983-4; graph coll 1987) and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986; graph coll 1986). All of this work brought a new integrity to the gritty, toughly narrated drama in comics, and paved the way among prospective publishers for other hopeful writer/artists. Further work from this period included Elektra Saga (1984; graph coll 1989) and, written by Chris CLAREMONT, Wolverine (1982; graph coll 1987).Following the phenomenal success of The Dark Knight Returns - nominated for a 1987 HUGO in, absurdly, the Best Non-Fiction Book category, coming second - FM has collaborated with other comics artists including: David Mazzuchelli on Daredevil: Born Again (1985; graph coll 1987) and Batman: Year One (1987; graph coll 1988); Bill SIENKEWICZ on Elektra Assassin (1986-7; graph coll 1987) and Daredevil: Love and War (graph 1986); Dave GIBBONS on Give Me Liberty (1990-91; graph coll 1991); and Geoff Darrow on Hard Boiled (1990-92). FM's other work includes Elektra Lives Again (graph 1990) and Sin City (1991-2) in Dark Horse Presents, as well as a collaboration with Walter Simonson on a series tied to the Terminator films ( The TERMINATOR; TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY). FM has also collaborated on the screenplays for ROBOCOP 2 (1990) and the projected RoboCop 3, the former being based on his original story. [SW]See also: GRAPHIC NOVEL; ILLUSTRATION; SUPERHEROES; SUPERMAN [character]. MILLER, GEORGE (1948- ) Australian film-maker. After a satirical short film, A History of Violence in the Cinema, Part One (1975), GM made an international impact with MAD MAX (1979), a NEAR-FUTURE cop/vigilante car-chase movie that introduced Mel Gibson to stardom as a leather-clad highway patrolman in an anarchic post- HOLOCAUST Australia. It success was great enough to fund a more elaborate, more effective sequel, MAD MAX 2 (1981, vt The Road Warrior). Influential enough to generate an infestation of Italian and Filippino imitations, including I nuovi barbari (1983; vt The New Barbarians; vt Warriors of the Wasteland) and Stryker (1983), Mad Max 2 led to a sequel of its own, which GM codirected with George Ogilvie: MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME (1985). This was a more expensive, less gritty retread of the earlier film, with themes imported from Russell HOBAN's RIDDLEY WALKER (1980). GM's only feature film since the Mad Max trilogy has been The Witches of Eastwick (1987), a successful adaptation of John UPDIKE's 1984 novel, although he remade Richard MATHESON's TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" as a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and produced Philip Noyce's thriller Dead Calm (1988). GM should not be confused with the other Australian director of the same name, who made The Man from Snowy River (1982) and The Neverending Story: Part 2 (1990). [KN]See also: MUSIC. MILLER, IAN (1946- ) UK illustrator. After graduating from St Martin's College of Art, IM became a commercial illustrator in 1970, with both book-cover work and interior ILLUSTRATIONS, some of the latter in David Day's The Tolkien Bestiary (1979). He did highly characteristic work on the backgrounds for Ralph Bakshi's Wizards (1977), an animated film with a FAR FUTURE setting. Books of his work are Green Dog Trumpet and Other Stories (graph coll 1978) - the stories being in the form of pictures without accompanying text - Secret Art (1980) and, more recently, Ratspike (1990) with John Blanche. The Luck in the Head (graph 1991) with M. John HARRISON is a GRAPHIC NOVEL with text adapted by Harrison from his 1983 short story of the same name. IM appears in The Guide to Fantasy Art Techniques (1984) ed Martyn Dean. Though he has worked in a commercial vein, he is also known for fanciful work at the opposite pole from the airbrushed superrealism that has dominated UK sf/fantasy art for two decades: two of his gloomier modes involve, respectively, detailed fine-lined GOTHIC black-and-white work in ink, almost STEAMPUNK in style, and semi-abstracted deliquescing faces; in Ratspike he classed these as "tight pen" and "asylum images" respectively. IM was art editor for INTERZONE 1983-5. He is a gallery artist as well as an illustrator, his first exhibition having been in 1973. [PN/JC]See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; GAMES WORKSHOP. MILLER, JIMMY (? - ) US writer whose The Big Win (1969) is a noisy but sometimes effective post- HOLOCAUST quest story which moves eventually into space, as the protagonists search for the Chinese war criminal whose plague has decimated the rest of the world. Though not essentially an sf novel, her Some Parts in the Single Life (1970) moves into a shattering NEAR FUTURE at its close. JM was married to Warren MILLER. [JC] MILLER, MIRANDA (1950- ) UK writer whose early work, like Under the Rainbow (1978), was published as by Miranda Hyman. Her sf DYSTOPIA, Smiles and the Millennium (1987) as MM, depicts a fiercely uncongenial NEAR-FUTURE UK where class differences have hardened, the poor are downtrodden, and the Isle of Man has seceded. [JC] MILLER, P(ETER) SCHUYLER (1912-1974) US writer and critic; an MSc in chemistry, he did research for a time and for most of his career worked as a technical writer. He remains best known in the sf world for his book reviews in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, which first appeared in 1945 and became a regular monthly feature in Oct 1951, continuing until his death. He was not a particularly demanding critic, but his judgements were generally shrewd, his enthusiasm never waned, and his column's coverage was remarkably comprehensive. Largely as a by-product, he accumulated one of the largest private sf COLLECTIONS; the annotated Catalogue of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Library of the Late P. Schuyler Miller (1977) was a useful bibliographical aid. In 1963 he was presented with a special HUGO for his reviewing.However, he began as an author of fiction, being one of the more popular and accomplished sf pulp writers of the 1930s; his first story was "The Red Plague" for Wonder Stories in 1930. He collaborated with Paul McDermott and Walter Dennis on two connected stories, "Red Spot on Jupiter" (1931) and "Duel on the Asteroid" (1932), the first under the pseudonym Dennis McDermott, the second as by PSM and Dennis McDermott. Alicia in Blunderland (1933 Science Fiction Digest as by Nihil; coll of linked stories 1983) presents a sequence of spoof tales with RECURSIVE-SF elements, several figures from early FANDOM being represented. Later stories of note included a TIME-PARADOX variant, "As Never Was" (1944), and "The Titan" (1934-5), a story whose (mild) sexual content made it unacceptable to the pulp magazines; MARVEL TALES, which published it, ceased publication before the last instalment, and the story was not printed entire until The Titan (coll 1952), which assembles most of PSM's better fiction. He also collaborated with L. Sprague DE CAMP on Genus Homo (1941 Super Science Stories; rev 1950), a novel set in the FAR FUTURE and filled with satirical evolutionary marvels, for apes have taken over. [MJE]About the author: A Canticle for P. Schuyler Miller (1975 chap) by Sam MOSKOWITZ.See also: ALIENS; EVOLUTION; INVASION; MARS. MILLER, RICHARD (CONNELLY) (1925- ) US writer whose Snail (1984) is a satirical TIME-TRAVEL tale in which the Wandering Jew and a Prussian soldier traverse a late-20th-century USA, viewing with dismay the New Age trash - both psychic and physical - which chokes the land, and en route meeting Kilgore Trout ( Kurt VONNEGUT Jr). Squed (1989 UK) and its sequel Sowboy (1991 UK) are sf FABULATIONS. [JC] MILLER, R(ICHARD) DEWITT (1910-1958) US writer who was involved in promulgating ideas about Fortean phenomena ( Charles FORT), and who began publishing sf with "The Shapes" for ASF in 1936. In addition to some works of Fortean nonfiction, such as You Do Take it with You (1956), he published an sf novel, The Man who Lived Forever (1938 ASF as "The Master Shall not Die" as by RDM alone; rev 1956 dos; vt Year 3097 1958 UK) with Anna Hunger, about an immortal who struggles to keep mankind's technology from running amuck. The Loose Board in the Floor (1951) is a fantasy about stuffed animals going on a trip. [JC] MILLER, STEVE (1950- ) US writer who began publishing sf with 3 novels set in the same SPACE-OPERA galaxy, all in collaboration with Sharon Lee. Agent of Change (1988) and Carpe Diem (1989) are closely linked adventure tales featuring an interstellar agent on the loose; the heroine of Conflict of Honors (1988) is a starship crewperson who undergoes various travails in her quest to become a pilot. [JC] MILLER, WALTER M(ICHAEL) (1922- ) US writer. WMM flew combat missions in WWII and was converted to Catholicism in 1947; he began publishing sf with "Secret of the Death Dome" in AMZ in 1951, and over the 10 years of his active writing career released about 40 more tales, many of which had a deep impact upon the field. During the 1950s, a time when US sf tended to express its new-found interest in character through stories whose rigid formulae were derived from sentimental fiction and which tended to read as simplistic moralities, WMM published in Gal, FSF, ASF and elsewhere tales whose treatment of character was effortlessly complex; moreover, through his preoccupation with RELIGION, he transfigured conventional sf themes and instruments - progress, GENETIC ENGINEERING, BIOLOGY in general - by treating them with a rich ambivalence.Perhaps the best example is "The Darfsteller" (1955), which won a HUGO as Best Novelette in 1955. The sf premise seems simple: a computer-like machine that controls a THEATRE of life-sized mannequins has displaced human actors. The darfsteller, an unemployed Method actor, has been working as a janitor in a theatre, and sabotages one of the mannequin-tapes so that he can replace it on stage. At this point the typical sf story of "character" might well give him his comeuppance and the tale would end. But WMM is just beginning; the rigged performance becomes an essay in acting and, through its presentation of Christ's Passion, a continually deepening examination of the actor's complex, emblem-haunted nature. The story appears in Conditionally Human (coll 1962); WMM's other collection of shorter items was The View from the Stars (coll 1965). The Science Fiction of Walter M. Miller, Jr. (coll 1978) and The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. (coll 1980) amply convey a sense of his finest work in short form.But WMM remains best known for his single novel, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1955-7 FSF; fixup 1960), which, along with James BLISH's A CASE OF CONSCIENCE (1953 If; exp 1958), stands as one of the very few attempts in US sf to deal with formal religion. The first part of this 3-part work is set in a Dark Ages 600 years after a 20th-century nuclear HOLOCAUST, when the survival of the human race remains a moot question. The Catholic Order of Leibowitz - named after a 20th-century physicist who created the Order and bestowed upon it the task of preserving knowledge during the period of violent nescience that followed the holocaust - has come into some holy relics relevant to Leibowitz's canonization, and their survival becomes emblematic of humanity's. In the second part, half a millennium later, the Order is confronted with the rise once again of the scientific mentality, with all its benefits and risks. In the third part, a further half-millennium later, the Order has lost prestige and power in a new industrial-scientific age, but prepares a spaceship to escape the inevitable second holocaust, thus hoping to shorten the period of darkness that will ensue. The novel is full of subtly presented detail about the nature of religious vocation and the way of life of an isolated community, deals ably with the questions of the nature of historical and scientific knowledge which it raises, and poses and intriguingly answers ethical questions about mankind's proper relation to God and the world; though the vagrant entry of the Wandering Jew into the text is perhaps a little contrived, that is a small flaw in a seminal work. While A Canticle for Liebowitz can be read as a work of Christian apologetics, WMM (like Gene WOLFE after him) clearly responds mythopoeically to the holy story - and to the institutions - of his Church, with effects both ambiguous and ironic. At the same time, however, his central commitment (like Wolfe's) is unwavering, and the cyclical pattern of the tale reads as anything but defeatist - for the moment of Christ's Coming is not a matter of dead history. The 1961 Hugo for the book was richly deserved. A sequel is projected for publication in the early 1990s. [JC]Other works: Beyond Armageddon: Survivors of the Megawar (anth 1985) ed with Harry Martin GREENBERG.See also: AMAZING STORIES; ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ARTS; AUTOMATION; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; ESP; HISTORY IN SF; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MEDICINE; MUTANTS; ROBOTS; SOCIOLOGY; SPACE FLIGHT; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. MILLER, WARREN (1921-1966) US writer, best known for his first Harlem novel, The Cool World (1959). Looking for the General (1964) is a combination of FABULATION and quest, and some of its devices belong to sf. WM's sf novel proper, The Siege of Harlem (1964), is a NEAR-FUTURE tale in which Harlem, New York, declares itself a separate state. WM was married to Jimmy MILLER. [JC]See also: POLITICS. MILLIGAN, SPIKE Working name of Indian-born Irish writer and comic Terence Alan Milligan (1918- ), who first became famous for his central role as the author and one of the stars of the long series of Goon Show programmes on BBC Radio in the 1950s. Many of his books, beginning with his first, Silly Verse for Kids (coll 1959 chap), have fantasy content, as do his two novels, Puckoon (1963) and The Looney: An Irish Fantasy (1987). He is of direct sf interest for a play, The Bedsitting Room (1970) with John Antrobus (1933- ), which initially treats a nuclear HOLOCAUST in terms of surreal spoof, though by the final act the few survivors are engaging in cannibalism. The original play was filmed as The BED-SITTING ROOM in 1969. [JC] MILLS, C(ARLA) J(OHNSON) (1944- ) US writer known only for her Winter World sequence - Winter World (1988), Winter World #2: Egil's Book (1991), #3: Kit's Book (1991), #4: Brander's Book (1992) and #5: Zjhanne's Book (1992) - featuring various adventures on a strife-beset frozen world. [JC] MILLS, ROBERT E. (? - ) US author who began writing sf with the Star Quest Trilogy of adventure tales: Star Quest (1978), Star Fighters (1978) and Star Force (1978). Under the Eyes of Night (1980) is a novel of the occult. [JC] MILLS, ROBERT P(ARK) (1920-1986) US editor and literary agent, managing editor of The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION from its inception; he assumed the editorship proper with the Sep 1958 issue, following Anthony BOUCHER's resignation, remaining editor until Mar 1962 and continuing thereafter as consulting editor until Feb 1963. During his tenure FSF maintained its standing as the most sophisticated sf magazine and won HUGOS in 1959, 1960 and 1963. RPM edited several FSF anthologies, including The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Ninth Series (anth 1960; cut vt Flowers for Algernon and Other Stories 1960), Tenth Series (anth 1961) and Eleventh Series (anth 1962), as well as A Decade of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1960) and Twenty Years of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1970), the latter with Edward L. FERMAN. RPM was also editor of VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION during its first incarnation (1957-8), when the magazine was renowned for its "daring" approach to sexual topics. He also edited The Worlds of Science Fiction (anth 1963).After leaving FSF RPM became a literary agent, operating as Robert P. Mills Ltd, and during the 1960s and early 1970s served a prestigious list of clients. He sold the agency to Richard A. CURTIS in 1984. [MJE] MILLS-MALET, VINCENT (? -? ) UK writer in whose sf novel, The Meteoric Benson: A Romance of Actuality (1912), the inventor of an aerostat (or helicopter) uses it to frighten the Germans and subsequently the entire world into peace, and gains the hand of the peer's daughter he loves. [JC] MILNE, ROBERT DUNCAN (GORDON) (1844-1899) Scottish-born journalist and writer, in the USA from about 1864, who published at least 60 sf stories of very considerable conceptual ingenuity, prefiguring many of the themes of the modern genre. Beginning with "A Modern Robe of Nessus" in 1879, he published most of these tales in the San Francisco journal The Argonaut, one of whose editors, Ambrose BIERCE, was strongly influenced by his work. Forgotten for many decades after his death, RDM was rediscovered by Sam MOSKOWITZ, who in Science Fiction in Old San Francisco, Volume 1: History of the Movement from 1854 to 1890 (1980) forcefully argued the case for treating him as an important figure, and who assembled some of RDM's tales in a companion volume, Into the Sun and Other Stories (coll 1980). Typical of RDM's vigorous creative mind are "Into the Sun" (1882) and its sequel, "Plucked from the Burning" (1882), which together describe a world-cataclysm caused by a comet, detail the protagonist's escape in a BALLOON from the effects of impact, follow him first to Tibet and then back to a devastated world full of apocalyptic scenes, and end in the creation of a new and better society based on the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Throughout his work - the rest of which remains uncollected - can be perceived the workings of a mind for whom science and technology granted far more to the imaginative mind when their rules were obeyed, or at least understood. RDM was one of the first genuinely extrapolative thinkers to work in the field. [JC]See also: MATTER TRANSMISSION. MIND OF MR SOAMES, THE Film (1969). Amicus. Dir Alan Cooke, starring Terence Stamp, Robert Vaughn, Nigel Davenport. Screenplay John Hale, Edward Simpson, from The Mind of Mr Soames (1961) by Charles Eric MAINE. 98 mins. Colour.Soames (Stamp) has been in a coma since birth and is now 30 years old. A neurosurgeon (Vaughn) brings him to consciousness with a brain operation. Now a sexually mature man, his brain is a blank slate for life to write on. Stamp's performance as the innocent who escapes his teachers too soon, and who turns violent when society treats him violently, is touching; through the pulp cliches a genuine thoughtfulness about the nature of education and learning is dimly apparent. In its theme this small-scale, rather solemn UK film resembles CHARLY (1968). [PN] MINDWARP: AN INFINITY OF TERROR Roger CORMAN. MINES, SAMUEL (1909- ) US editor who worked from 1942 for Standard Magazines, the chain that published STARTLING STORIES and THRILLING WONDER STORIES. Although an sf enthusiast - he published 4 stories in TWS, beginning with "Find the Sculptor" in 1946 - he concentrated mainly on non-sf pulps until Sam MERWIN left the company in 1951, whereupon he took over the editorship of Startling Stories (Nov 1951-Fall 1954), TWS (Dec 1951-Summer 1954), FANTASTIC STORY QUARTERLY (Winter 1952-Fall 1954) and WONDER STORY ANNUAL (1952-3); he also edited all issues of the short-lived SPACE STORIES. Although he took control of the magazines at a time when the PULP-MAGAZINE industry was generally in decline, and the sf pulps in particular were suffering from the powerful competition of such new magazines as GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION and The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION , SM was generally successful in maintaining the standard to which Merwin had raised them. He ed The Best from Startling Stories (anth 1953; vt Startling Stories 1954 UK; vt Moment without Time 1956 UK); the book contained stories from TWS as well. SM left Standard in 1954; the various magazines did not survive him long. He held no further editorial positions in sf, although he did review books occasionally for LUNA MONTHLY. [MJE] MINKOV, SVETOSLAV (1902-1966) Bulgarian writer and man of letters, active from 1920 ( for contextual comments on his earliest work BULGARIA). The sf tales and FABULATIONS assembled in The Lady with the X-Ray Eyes (coll trans Krassimira Noneva 1965 Bulgaria), which brings together work originally published 1928-65, are sharp, occasionally didactic, and expose a sometimes insistent irony. This text is not a translation of a 1934 Bulgarian collection with the same title. [JC] MINTO, WILLIAM (1845-1893) UK writer whose sf novel, The Crack of Doom (1886), portentously invokes the threatened arrival of a dangerous comet to influence, intermittently, an entirely prosaic plot. [JC]See also: END OF THE WORLD. MIRACLEMAN CAPTAIN MARVEL; Neil GAIMAN; Alan MOORE. MIRACLE SCIENCE AND FANTASY STORIES US PULP MAGAZINE. 2 issues, Apr/May and June/July 1931, published by Good Story Magazine Co., ed Douglas M. DOLD. MSFS's publisher was Harold HERSEY, previously editor of THRILL BOOK, while Douglas Dold was consulting editor of Astounding Stories ( ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION) 1930-31. The magazine featured undistinguished pulp fiction by both Douglas and Elliott DOLD and by Victor ROUSSEAU. Its cover design, by Elliott, was unusually stylish for its time. Douglas was blind, and a reference by Hersey in Pulpwood Editor (1937) implies that the editor was in fact Elliott. [MJE/PN] MIRAGE PRESS US SMALL PRESS publishing primarily fantasy-related material and taking its name from Mirage, a successful 1960s FANZINE published by Jack L. CHALKER. Chalker began issuing books under the Mirage logo in 1961, beginning with his own The New H.P. Lovecraft Bibliography (1961 chap) and including A Figment of a Dream (1962 chap) by David H. KELLER. The Mirage Press took on a more formal existence in 1967, with new financing; later publications include The Conan Reader (coll 1968), a collection of essays by L. Sprague DE CAMP drawn from the fanzine AMRA (the dustjacket artwork was Berni Wrightson's first professional sale). De Camp and George SCITHERS subsequently edited 2 further vols of Conan-related SWORD-AND-SORCERY material ( Robert E. HOWARD) for Mirage: The Conan Swordbook (anth 1969) and The Conan Grimoire (anth 1972). Other Mirage books include Dragons and Nightmares (coll 1969) by Robert BLOCH, poetry by De Camp, A Guide to Middle Earth (1971) by Robert Foster, H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress (1973) by Jack WILLIAMSON, and a variety of sf/fantasy reference books. There were around 20 Mirage books by 1975, at which point the business slowed to a near halt because its financial backer fell ill. Chalker's career as a novelist began at about this point, and MP has since been relatively inactive, though long-held projects - including an edition of The Harlan Ellison Hornbook (coll 1990) slipcased with Harlan Ellison's Movie (1990), both by Harlan ELLISON, and Chalker's and Mark OWING's The Science-Fantasy Publishers (vastly exp 3rd edn 1991) - eventually appeared. [MJE/JC/PN] MISHA Working name of US writer Misha Chocholak (? - ), of Native American background, who began publishing material of genre interest with Prayers of Steel (coll 1989 chap), which assembles some fantasy poems; her second collection, Ke-Qua-Hawk-As (coll 1993), similarly incorporates poems, intermixed with stories based on Native American material. Her sf novel, Red Spider White Web (1990 UK), employs a congested CYBERPUNK venue (a USA in which sanitized enclaves called "Mickey-sans" shelter their lobotomized inhabitants from the excremental waste and POLLUTION outside) to darken the inherently romantic story of a dedicated artist whose intransigent attempts to do her work run afoul of surreally caricatured figures from the corrupted mire. The ending is grim. [JC]Other Works: Dr. Ihoka's Cure1993, non-fiction. MISSION GALACTICA: THE CYLON ATTACK BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. MR JOSEPH YOUNG OF AFRICA MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. MISTER X Created by Canadian designers Dean Motter and Paul Rivoche, this cipherlike character-bald and with sunglasses, black overcoat and suitcase - appeared in illustrations and on record-album covers in the late 1970s before plans were made to publish a comic. The Mister X comic was promoted with several gorgeously designed posters 1981-3 without in fact appearing. Eventually Rivoche was taken off the strip and the project was handed over to Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez, the creators of LOVE AND ROCKETS; using Rivoche's designs, they produced The Return of Mister X (graph coll 1986) which first ran in Mister X #1-#4 1984-5.Mr X is not really the star of his own comic. Its main subject and the cause of most of its stories is its location, Radiant City. This city was codesigned by Mr X using the dogmas of "Psychetecture", so that its enclosures, shapes and spaces would have resonances in the human psyche. Sadly, someone skimped on the materials during construction, and the result is the nightmare city Somnopolis - a place deliberately reminiscent of Fritz LANG's METROPOLIS.Since the Hernandez brothers many others have turned their hand to matters Somnopolitan. They include D'Israeli, Shane Oakley, Klaus Schoenfeld, Seth and eventually even Rivoche himself. [SW] MISTRAL, BENGO House name used for a novel by Norman A. LAZENBY and for two others: Pirates of Cerebus (fixup 1953) based on stories in John Spencer magazines ( BADGER BOOKS) by B. Ward, and SPACE FLIGHT 139 (1954). [JC] MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS, THE Die HERRIN VON ATLANTIS. MITCHELL, ADRIAN (1932- ) UK writer, best known for his poetry. His second novel, The Bodyguard (1970), is the deathbed narrative of a representative figure of a 1980s UK, a paramilitary bodyguard whose reminiscences of his various jobs defending a totalitarian state provide a DYSTOPIAN portrait of the Europe to come. [JC]See also: POLITICS. MITCHELL, CLYDE ZIFF-DAVIS house name, 1956-7, used twice by Robert SILVERBERG and Randall GARRETT in collaboration, twice by unidentified writers, and once by Harlan ELLISON on "The Wife Factory" (1957 Fantastic). [PN] MITCHELL, EDWARD PAGE (1852-1927) US newspaperman and writer, associated from 1875 until his death with the New York Sun, serving as editor-in-chief 1903-20. EPM's sf, which came from the first decade of his career and most of which first appeared in his own journal, was restricted to about 30 short stories, beginning with "The Tachypomp" (1874), about a sort of humanoid calculator. Their subject matters range widely, from TIME TRAVEL in "The Clock that Went Backward" (1881) to MATTER TRANSMISSION in "The Man without a Body" (1877) and INVISIBILITY in "The Crystal Man" (1881). EPM's work, which in its variety and imaginative power may have influenced H.G. WELLS and others, came to be noticed in the sf field through the publication of The Crystal Man: Landmark Science Fiction (coll 1973), edited and with a long and informative introduction by Sam MOSKOWITZ. [JC]See also: COMPUTERS. MITCHELL, J(AMES) LESLIE (1901-1935) Scottish novelist, known mainly for regional novels written as by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, and for Scottish Scene (1934) with Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978). Under his own name he wrote popular archaeology and fiction, much of the latter coloured by fantasy and romantic chinoiserie after the fashion of James Elroy FLECKER. Typical of these are The Calends of Cairo (coll of linked stories 1931; vt Cairo Dawns 1931 USA) with a letter in preface by H.G. WELLS, and Persian Dawns, Egyptian Nights (coll of 2 linked story sequences 1933) with a foreword by J.D. BERESFORD. Three Go Back (1932; bowdlerized 1953 USA) is sf, combining ANTHROPOLOGY, ATLANTIS and TIME TRAVEL themes in a well written though awkwardly plotted story of three 20th-century passengers on an airship cast back in time (by earthquakes!) to Atlantis, where they find unspoiled proto-Basques in an Eden doomed by the nearing Ice Age and by conflicts with savage Neanderthalers, which decimate the tribe; the two surviving castaways then snap back to the present. The book is notable for its realistic and ebullient female protagonist, who adapts far more readily to her strange surroundings than either of the men. Very similarly, the eponymous female protagonist of Gay Hunter (1934), on being cast into a far-future Britain, adapts with commendable swiftness, stripping naked just as quickly as the heroine of the previous book, but remaining decorously virgin; eventually, espousing healthy athleticism, she helps defeat a fascist attempt to reindustrialize the country. "Kametis and Evelpis", a third tale linked to the previous two by similarities of plot, was left incomplete at JLM's death; John GAWSWORTH revised the manuscript and published the resulting novelette in his Masterpiece of Thrills (anth 1936), along with other posthumous sf and fantasy, as by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. In the nonfiction Hanno, or The Future of Exploration (1928), JLM committed himself to some humorous thoughts about exploring both space and the centre of the Earth. [JC]Other work: The Lost Trumpet (1932).About the author: "The Science Fiction of John Leslie Mitchell" by Ian Campbell in EXTRAPOLATION, Dec 1974.See also: ORIGIN OF MAN. MITCHELL, JOHN A(MES) (1845-1918) US writer in various genres. His sf began with The Last American: A Fragment from the Journal of Khan-Li, Prince of Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy (1889), a satirical post- HOLOCAUST novel in which a 30th-century Persian expedition visits a North America long devastated by climatic changes; it was much influenced by Edgar Allan POE's "Mellonta Tauta" (1849) and curiously prefigures Gene WOLFE's Seven American Nights (1978 Orbit #20; 1989 chap dos). The racism of the book - the USA falls because of unfettered immigration - is typical of JAM's era. His other well known sf book, Drowsy (1917), is a sentimental love story involving a telepath who discovers ANTIGRAVITY and visits the Moon and Mars. The book was notable for Angus Peter Macdonnal's fine illustrations, many of them moonscapes, some reproduced in EXTRAPOLATION, May 1971; their relationship to the text is at times exiguous. [JC]Other works: The Romance of the Moon (1886 chap), a fantasy for children; Life's Fairy Tales (coll 1892); Amos Judd (1895); Gloria Victis (1897; rev vt Dr Thorne's Idea 1910); That First Affair and Other Sketches (coll 1902); The Villa Claudia (1904); The Silent War (1906). MITCHELL, KIRK (JOHN) (1950- ) US writer and former police officer who began writing sf with an ALTERNATE-WORLD trilogy - Procurator (1984), New Barbarians (1986) and Cry Republic (1989) - based on the premise that Rome did not fall and that the world of 2000CE reflects a mixture of Roman modes and richly conceived technologies. KM's best single novel is probably Never the Twain (1987), a TIME-TRAVEL tale in which a descendant of the US writer Bret Harte (1836-1902) goes back to Civil War Nevada with a copy of Mark TWAIN's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884 UK) and attempts to persuade Harte to put his name to the tale, and so make his eventual heir rich. The ensuing complications are superficially comic, but an intriguingly human and detailed portrayal of the main characters, and of 19th-century Nevada, slowly emerges. [JC]Other works: Anno Domini (1985); Lethal Wagon * (1987) as by Joel Norst, a film tie; Black Dragon (1988).See also: TIME PARADOXES. MITCHELL, SILAS WEIR (1829-1914) US physician, neurologist and writer, of considerable eminence for his original research - he published at least 172 papers from 1852 on neurophysiology and related subjects. Most of his voluminous fiction is historical and depicts US subjects with romantic solemnity. His first story, "The Case of George Dedlow" (1866), is of some sf interest, as it is a SATIRE on Spiritualism. In Dr North and his Friends (1900) a female character exhibits a dual personality; it is one of the earliest appearances of this phenomenon in fiction ( PSYCHOLOGY). Little Stories (coll 1903) assembles tales whose sf interest lies in SWM's ability to ground supernatural subject matter with speculations usually derived from his own researches. A further story, "Was He Dead?" (1870), appears in Future Perfect (anth 1966) ed H. Bruce FRANKLIN. [JC] MITCHISON, NAOMI (MARGARET) (1897- ) Scottish novelist, story writer, cattle breeder and polemicist, sister of J.B.S. HALDANE. She is known mainly for her work outside the sf field - her bibliography includes over 100 books and over 1000 shorter pieces, beginning with Saunes Bairos: A Study in Recurrence: A Play in Three Acts, a Prologue and Epilogue (1913 chap) as by N.M.Haldane, the first performance of which featured an appearance by the young Aldous HUXLEY - and includes such historical novels as The Conquered (1923) and The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931; vt The Barbarian 1961 US), the latter an ANTHROPOLOGICAL fantasy about Sparta. Some of her earlier stories, such as "The Goat", published in Barbarian Stories (coll 1929), the short novel The Powers of Light (1932 chap), which deals with prehistory, and many of the tales and fables in The Fourth Pig (coll 1936), use sf or fantasy elements for allegorical purposes. We Have Been Warned (1935) is a NEAR-FUTURE political novel involving the oppression of the Left in the UK. Beyond this Limit (1935 chap), whose illustrations by Wyndham LEWIS constitute a co-creation of the book, is an afterlife fantasy with some satirical impact. The Big House (1950) is a fairy tale for children, set within a Celtic frame. Travel Light (1952) is an historical fantasy. To the Chapel Perilous (1955) is a witty account of the Grail legend which pits rival anthropological and historical theories together as if, in a sense, they were all true. Behold Your King (1957) is a novel about Christ's crucifixion, told in a slangy, contemporary idiom to demystify it. Images of Africa (coll 1980) assembles short fantasies told in a folktale idiom. Early in Orcadia (1987), also fantasy, is set in prehistoric Orkney. Of her 30 or more books for children, many are fantasy. Two late collections, Beyond this Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction (coll 1986), which assembles pre-WWII work, and A Girl Must Live: Stories and Poems (coll 1990), which assembles work from the following half-century, include a considerable amount of sf.NM's first genuine sf novel was MEMOIRS OF A SPACEWOMAN (1962), a ruminative picaresque comprising a series of episodes recollected by the narrator, Mary, a COMMUNICATIONS expert dealing with ALIEN intelligences. Most of the episodes contain ingenious biological (or exobiological) speculations. Mary's reminiscences are warm and urgent; her job necessitates interstellar travel, which requires "time blackouts", so that she constantly returns to a changed world. She loves her work, however, and intends to continue; it is a radiant book. Solution Three (1975) is a less sustained examination of a CLONE solution to the problems of a post-catastrophe Earth. Heterosexuality is out; but a new generation is beginning to question the rigidity of the homosexual Solution Three. Not by Bread Alone (1983) suggests that the sudden distribution of free food worldwide will create serious problems; the Australian Aborigines wisely refuse the offer.Though NM's fiction is both copious and fluent, her writing is primarily motivated by extrinsic concerns. Where these concerns are successfully embedded in her stories, she is a writer of glowing power. [JC]See also: GENETIC ENGINEERING; INTELLIGENCE; MYTHOLOGY; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION. MITSUSE, RYU [r] JAPAN. MIXON, LAURA J. (1957- ) US writer who began publishing sf with the first in the Omni Odysseyssequence for younger readers, Omni: Astropilots(1987; vt Astro Pilots 1987 UK); other titles were from other hands. Her first adultnovel, Glass Houses (1992), is a CYBERPUNK-influenced tale set in New York City, and told in a style one might describe asEast Coast noir. The female protagonist, grittilycharacterized, is tough, believable, humanly vulnerable. The plot, which involves at least one MCGUFFIN, brings in the usual cyberpunk suspects: corporations; henchmen; crazedentrepreneurs; VIRTUAL REALITY surfers. It is a remarkable debut, and points to muchmore. [JC] MOAV, RAM [r] ISRAEL. MODERN ELECTRICS SCIENCE AND INVENTION. MODESITT, L(ELAND) E(XTON Jr) (1943- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "The Great American Economy" for ASF in 1973, the first of two Council of Economic Advisors tales. His first novel The Fires of Paratime (1982), is an eccentric but ambitious TIME-TRAVEL tale, in which emissaries/guardians from the planet Query engage in complex and metaphysical manipulations of reality. The Hammer of Darkness (1985), also sf, was followed by two series. The Forever Hero novels - Dawn for a Distant Earth (1987), Silent Warrior (1987) and In Endless Twilight (1988) - treat the profound ecological desecration of Earth through a sequence of SPACE OPERAS whose protagonist, an immortal warrior called MacGregor Gerswin, saves the planet as part of a scheme of sweeping galactic exploits. The Ecolitan Trilogy - The Ecologic Envoy (1986), The Ecolitan Operation (1989) and The Ecologic Secession (1990) - deals with similar themes, though ultimate success is here achieved as part of a pattern of political intrigues and battles. The Reclucefantasy sequence comprisesThe Magic of Recluce (1991), The Towers of the Sunset (1992) and The Magic Engineer (1994).The Green Progression (1992) with Bruce Scott Levinson is a nongenre novel on ecological issues. Of Tangible Ghosts (1994) is an ALTERNATE WORLD sf tale. [JC]Other Works:Timediver's Dawn (1992) and The Timegod (1993). MOEBIUS Jean GIRAUD. MOFFAT, W. GRAHAM (1866-? ) UK writer whose What's the World Coming To? (1893) with John White takes the form of a series of discussions, set in AD2003, of the various marvels which the 20th century has seen. The tone is satirical; the targets include Edward BELLAMY, fictional cliches such as crime detection by psychic means, and concerns such as FEMINISM. [JC] MOFFATT, JAMES (1922-1993) Canadian-born UK writer who wrote at least 290 novels in several genres under at least 45 pseudonyms, including the Hank JANSON house name (though not in that case for sf) and Richard Allen, a personal pseudonym for the non-sf Skin books. In the 1960s he wrote the first chapter of a novel which, when taken over by Michael MOORCOCK according to a practice very common in UK pulp publishing, became Somewhere in the Night (1966) as by Moorcock. JM's sf novels under his own name - others may exist - are The Sleeping Bomb (1970; vt The Cambri Plot 1973 US), which was the first volume in an otherwise non-sf series starring Silas Manners, and Queen Kong (1977), spoofing KING KONG from a feminist point of view. [JC] MOFFETT, CLEVELAND LANGSTON (1863-1926) US playwright and popular novelist, author of one of the most explicit EDISONADES to appear in early-20th-century US sf. In The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory (1916), Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) himself saves the USA from decadent socialists while fending off a threat of WAR from Germany. The Mysterious Card (fixup 1912) and Possessed (fixup 1920) are occult fantasies. [JC] MOFFETT, JUDITH (1942- ) US writer and academic, a professor with the University of Pennsylvania since 1979. She was first active as a poet, publishing 2 collections - Keeping Time (coll 1976) and Whinny Moor Crossing (coll 1984) - before turning to sf with an ape-as-human tale ( APES AND CAVEMEN), "Surviving", for FSF in 1986, later assembled with "Not without Honor" (1989) as Two that Came True (coll 1991). With her first novel, Pennterra (1987), she came into immediate prominence, partly because of the rousing sexual explicitness of some scenes between humans and the pheromone-emitting Hrossa, a mysterious group-mind species named - oddly, given C.S. LEWIS's prurient distaste for sexual material - after the Martians who feature in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (1938). Having escaped a terminally polluted Earth, a party of Quakers has landed on the planet Pennterra and been permitted restricted residence on condition that they do not breed indiscriminately, claim further territory or use invasive technologies. All goes well until a second human expedition arrives with no intention of changing any of the behaviour which has ruined humanity's first home. The Hrossa warn them that Pennterra herself will punish them for any disobedience, and the novel - taking on the hues of a grave and didactic PLANETARY ROMANCE-moves inexorably to the comeuppance. JM's second novel, THE RAGGED WORLD: A NOVEL OF THE HEFN ON EARTH (fixup 1991), adroitly transforms a series of stories-including "Tiny Tango" (1989), about AIDS - into a remarkably effective fable of DISASTER and redemption, the latter at the hands of a deus ex machina cabal of aliens; the sequel was Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream (1992). These novels come close to aesthetic overkill, but do not succumb: the first generally avoids the chill of piety, and the sequence overall eschews the coy. By choosing controversial subjects and then treating them to generic solutions, JM shows a mature sense of balance and an active engagement with the sf genre; she is a risk-taker of very considerable interest. [JC]See also: EDISONADE; JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD; PASTORAL; SEX; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES; THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD. MOFFITT, DONALD (ANTHONY) (1936- ) US writer who started publishing sf with The Jupiter Theft (1977), a tale which established him as an author of numerate, physics-oriented, fast-moving HARD-SF adventures. After some years of silence came the Genesis series - The Genesis Quest (1986) and Second Genesis (1986) - which demonstrates a competence with the mythopoeically large scales and calculations typical of DM's category of SPACE OPERA as Earth sends terminal messages through space which reach their alien targets millions of years hence, generating an eon-leaping response. Slightly closer to home, the Mechanical Sky sequence - Crescent in the Sky (1990) and A Gathering of Stars (1990) - posits Arab-dominated venues in space. Though some local-colour weaknesses (the first volume features a court eunuch) might irritate Muslims, the focus of the tales - especially the wide-ranging second instalment - is firmly on the wide-scale action and the physics. [JC] MOLESWORTH, VOL(TAIRE) (1924-1964) Australian journalist and writer, active in FANDOM around the period of WWII. His sf included 4 short novels: Ape of God (1943 chap) and its sequel Monster at Large (1943 chap), Blinded They Fly (1951 chap), based in part on the works of Charles FORT, and Let There Be Monsters! (1952 chap), a tale about MUTANTS. VM also wrote Outline History of Australian Fandom (1953). [JC]See also: SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS. MONEY Love of money, being the root of all evil, has always played a leading part in literature, and sf is no exception: few plots could move without it. Precisely because it is so basic, however, speculative thought has rarely focused on it; it is one of those things that is habitually taken for granted. Money may change its form, and the dollar may be replaced by the CREDIT, but its centrality in human affairs is inviolable.The commonest of all wish-fulfilment fantasies is the sudden acquisition of wealth, and sf has often given form to the wish. As with other such fantasies, however, sf writers have characteristically taken a cynical and slightly disapproving view of the issue, implying that no good can come of it. T.L. SHERRED's "Eye for Iniquity" (1953) is a neat cautionary tale about the problems involved in having a talent for making money out of nothing. The frenzy which can be aroused by the prospect of easy money is exemplified in history by the affair of the South Sea Bubble (1720), and this prompted one of the earliest speculative fictions about speculation, Samuel Brunt's A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727). However, many UTOPIANS had already expressed their distaste for the profit motive and its effects on human affairs. Various romances commenting on the folly of the alchemical quest - of which the most notable is Honore de BALZAC's La recherche de l'absolu (1834; trans under various titles) - took a similar line. The prospect of science making at least the physical part of the alchemist's quest a reality did little to alter this disparaging attitude. Edgar Allan POE's "Von Kempelen and His Discovery" (1849) suggests that the discovery of a way of making gold would simply rob a practically valueless metal of its ridiculous price, and that the world would press on regardless. Arthur Conan DOYLE's successful gold-maker in The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891) is quickly disillusioned with philanthropy and reverts his hoard to the dust whence it came. Henry Richardson CHAMBERLAIN's eponymous 6000 Tons of Gold (1894) nearly precipitates worldwide catastrophe. Only John TAINE's hero in Quayle's Invention (1927) gets much joy out of his instant wealth, and he finds it far from easy. Much more beneficial to humanity, in the eyes of its author, is the wealth-destroying machine in George Allan ENGLAND's The Golden Blight (1916), which frees mankind from the present generation of capitalists. The folly of retaining the gold standard in an era of technological ingenuity is exposed in Frank O'Rourke's SATIRE Instant Gold (1964); it is hardly surprising that the main change in the money system consistently made by sf writers was the replacement of the gold standard by a purely theoretical credit system. Garrett P. SERVISS's The Moon Metal (1900) offers a variant on the gold-making theme, while George O. SMITH's "Pandora's Millions" (1945) concerns the desperate race to find a new symbolic medium of exchange following the invention of the matter-duplicator, and the title of "The Iron Standard" (1943) by Henry KUTTNER largely speaks for itself. Exotic media of exchange are occasionally featured in sf, notably the virtue-based credit system of Patrick Wilkins's "Money is the Root of All Good" and the alien exchange-system whereby depression leads to extinction in John BRUNNER's Total Eclipse (1975). Jack VANCE has been particularly ingenious in the invention of various monetary systems appropriately or ironically adapted to different cultures.One subtheme of note is developed in stories celebrating the wonders of compound interest. Simple mathematics shows that money invested for 1000 years grows quite magnificently even at relatively low interest rates - an observation first made in Eugene Sue's The Wandering Jew (1845). SLEEPERS AWAKE from periods of SUSPENDED ANIMATION to find themselves rich in Edmond ABOUT's The Man with the Broken Ear (1861; trans 1867), H.G. WELLS's When the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev as The Sleeper Awakes 1910) and Charles Eric MAINE's The Man who Owned the World (1961). Harry Stephen Keeler took the notion to extremes in "John Jones' Dollar" (1915 Black Cat), in which a dollar invested in trust for John Jones's distant descendants ultimately grows to represent all the wealth in the Universe. More recently, however, we have become all too well aware of what inflation can do to long-term investments, and the hero of Frederik POHL's The Age of the Pussyfoot (1968) awakes from suspended animation to find his "fortune" valueless in terms of real purchasing power. It all goes to prove the old adage that money doesn't grow on trees - except, of course, in Clifford D. SIMAK's "The Money Tree" (1958). [BS]See also: ECONOMICS. MONITORS, THE Film (1969). Bell & Howell Productions/Commonwealth United/Second City. Dir Jack Shea, starring Guy Stockwell, Susan Oliver, Avery Schreiber, Sherry Jackson, with cameos by Keenan Wynn, Ed Begley and others. Screenplay Myron J. Gold, based on The Monitors (1966) by Keith LAUMER. 92 mins. Colour.Filled with bizarre jokes and moments of stunning banality, this film - or string of revue sketches - made in Chicago by the Second City cabaret troupe, concerns an invasion of Earth by superior ALIENS who enforce on the population a system of brotherly love and nonviolence. Dressed in black overcoats, black hats and dark glasses, the monitors control people by spraying them with a pacifying gas; a resistance movement is formed and the aliens are overthrown. An oddity, which flopped badly, the film is a product of a time when the hippy flower power counterculture was attempting to usher in an era of peace and happiness, but followed close on the heels of police brutality against hippy protesters outside the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. [JB/PN] MONKEY BUSINESS Film (1952). 20th Century-Fox. Dir Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Hugh Marlowe, Marilyn Monroe. Screenplay Ben HECHT, I.A.L. Diamond, Charles Lederer. 97 mins. B/w.Made only a year after The THING (though his direction of the latter was uncredited), Hawks's second sf film is one of the classic screwball comedies. Grant plays a staid scientist working on slowing the ageing process. One of his laboratory apes accidentally mixes the ingredients that bring a kind of rejuvenation and dumps them in the water cooler. First the scientist, then his equally grave wife (Rogers) and then his employers mistakenly take the elixir, and all, sequentially, revert to manic adolescent behaviour. In a splendid bit part Marilyn Monroe plays the now predatory scientist's first quarry. Amid the well orchestrated farce, a serious enough point is made about hormonal experiments, as anarchy strikes deep into the heart of adulthood. [PN] MONKEY SHINES (vt Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Terror) Film (1988). Orion/Charles Evans. Dir George ROMERO, starring Jason Beghe, John Pankow, Kate McNeil, Joyce Van Patten. Screenplay Romero, based on Monkey Shines (1983) by Michael STEWART. 113 mins. Colour.The sf element in this horror thriller is Ella, a monkey, the subject of an experiment to increase simian intelligence by injecting human genetic material into her brain. Ella is given as a therapeutic companion to quadriplegic Allan, with whom she develops a quasitelepathic link. His exasperation at his helplessness is translated by Ella into instructions to kill anyone (including his suffocating mother) who angers him. She also becomes jealous, attacking the two people closest to Allan: his best friend and his new lover. Allan must stop her, using (literally) only his head. Put baldly this sounds trite, but MS is close to perfect in its own apparently unpromising terms. It is made with great patience and subtlety, with an astonishing performance from the monkey - whose growing intelligence (and malice) is rendered utterly believable - and with Beghe brilliant in the difficult quadriplegic role. The subtext (a Jekyll-and-Hyde theme with Ella being Allan's vicariously controlled Hyde, representing the animal instincts still functioning within the human mind) is maintained even in the one gratuitous shock added to the finale after previews in order to make the film less sedate: a metaphoric twist on the old phrase "a monkey on my back". [PN] MONOLITH MONSTERS, THE Film (1957). Universal. Dir John Sherwood, starring Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne. Screenplay Norman Jolley, Robert M. Fresco, based on a story by Jack ARNOLD, Fresco. 77 mins. B/w.In this rather good little film, crystals from a meteorite that has fallen near a small desert town grow and multiply rapidly when wet. They also cause death by absorbing all the silicon from any living thing that touches them, paradoxically turning the victims to stone. There is a rainstorm: the outstandingly surreal sequences of the crystals rearing up and crashing down, in their inexorable march towards the seemingly doomed town, are memorable. Then it is discovered that ordinary salt will stop them. Sherwood's debt to Jack Arnold is obvious, especially in the moody desert landscapes. The idea of the marching crystals may well have been borrowed from "White Lily" (1930) by John TAINE. [JB/PN] MONROE, LYLE Robert A. HEINLEIN. MONSARRAT, NICHOLAS Pseudonym of Nicholas John Turney (1910-1979), UK-born writer long in Canada, best known for such adventure novels as The Cruel Sea (1951). The first of the 4 vols of his Signs of the Times series, The Time Before This (1962 UK), which is sf, tells of the discovery of ancient artefacts and frozen beings in Canada, evidence of a highly evolved earlier race on Earth, and of an atomic HOLOCAUST which ended their civilization. The second, Smith and Jones (1963 UK), is a seemingly conventional spy story but is transformed devastatingly into either an ALTERNATE-WORLD or a NEAR-FUTURE novel by its last line. With The Master Mariner, Book 1: Running Proud (1978 UK), NM began a projected 2-part novel about a Flying Dutchman figure, whose story was planned to extend over four centuries of UK life at sea; the second volume, which NM died before completing, was published as The Master Mariner, Book 2: Darken Ship: The Unfinished Novel (1980 UK). [JC] MONSTER Roger CORMAN. MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR Roger CORMAN. MONSTER MAKER Roger CORMAN. MONSTER MOVIES A term colloquially used for a very specific genre of film, usually borderline sf. A monster movie - sometimes called a Creature Feature - must contain the unexpected appearance, normally in a serene setting, of a creature (or many creatures) hostile to humanity. The nature of the creature is usually revealed gradually, and its attacks normally increase in severity. It may be a mutated animal or human, an alien, a kind of animal normally not hostile (as in Hitchcock's The BIRDS [1963]), or any unnatural (but not supernatural) creature.The monster is usually rationalized (often half-heartedly) as, for example, a dormant prehistoric species newly awakened (e.g., GOJIRA [1954]), an unintended result of scientific experiment (e.g., TARANTULA [1955]), a MUTANT created by radioactivity (e.g., THEM! [1954]), or a secret government experimental warfare device gone wrong (e.g., the remake of The BLOB [1988]). In the majority of cases the monster represents a punishment for humankind-for tampering with Nature, corrupting the environment or creating vile weapons. The featuring of a monstrous creature - e.g., the vampire protagonist of Dracula (1931) and its successors - is not in itself a sufficient condition for a film to be classed as a MM. The monster must occupy our world - a world where cause and effect are operative, and phenomena normally have explanations - and not a fantasy world; for this reason MMs can properly be defined as sf. The monster is, however, not a natural occupant of our world, and to this degree MMs approach the condition of fantasy.If the MM has an ultimate moral, it is about the fragility of the Age of Reason in which we supposedly live. Unreason lurks in the surrounding dark, just beyond the light cast by our campfires, and may break in. The case can be put psychologically, too: in Freudian terms as the revenge of the id over the conscious ego ( FORBIDDEN PLANET), or in Jungian terms as the irruption of archetypes into a world which does not consciously recognize them. The oldest part of our brains, the hindbrain or limbic system, wellspring of our fight-or-flight reflex, is sometimes claimed as the source of our monsters, not so much Unreason reclaiming ground from Reason as the Primitive asserting its continuing strength over the Sophisticated. It is one of the interesting qualities of MMs that any attempt to unravel their subtexts nearly always reveals a critique of the smugness of "civilization" - indeed, a questioning of the very nature of civilization. Thus one of our most apparently childish genres asks some of the most unanswerable questions of our world.Various elements that make up the generic MM had previously existed in isolation: prehistoric survivals in The LOST WORLD (1925); a gigantic threat to humanity in KING KONG (1933); deformed creatures revenging themselves against normality in FRANKENSTEIN (1931), ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932) and Freaks (1932). It was only with the sf movie boom of the 1950s that the generic structure of the MM took the shape it retains today, quite rapidly developing inflexible conventions. The most plausible candidate for the first such film is The THING (1951), with subsequent milestones including The BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953), GOJIRA (1954), THEM! (1954) and TARANTULA (1955). The boom climaxed with a veritable eruption of MMs in 1957, including one of Roger CORMAN's first, ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, and, unusually, a UK offering, the marvellously insane FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. The cascade continued in 1958, with variations on the theme becoming more knowing - a sign that generic conventions had sufficiently hardened for audience expectations to be consciously manipulated - in I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE, The BLOB and The FLY . But generic rigidity soon degenerated into decline and fall. More MMs were made 1959-62 than in the whole of 1951-8, but almost without exception they were low-budget, cynical exploitationers of no real quality aimed at the teenage drive-in market; an exception might be made of the surreal Japanese MOSURA (1961).The structure of MMs normally follows, in sequence, the following narrative conventions: the peaceful beginning; the first intimations that something is wrong; half-seen glimpses of the monster; disbelief of the first reports; attacks of increasing ferocity in which the monster is fully revealed; the fight back against the monster and its destruction. Often there is also the revelation in the final frames that more monsters are hatching.An important variation, signalled by King Kong, is the sympathetic monster, doomed to destruction, sometimes magnificent in its monstrousness, more often merely pathetic as in The CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955; vt The Creeping Unknown), The AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957), NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957) and The Fly (1958). Here the subtext might be that the monster, basically, is us. Another classic variation is the monstrous creature that can take over, or assume the shape of, human beings, as in IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953), INVADERS FROM MARS (1953), INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), QUATERMASS II (1957; vt Enemy from Space), I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), TERRORE NELLO SPAZIO (1965; vt Planet of the Vampires) and the tv series The INVADERS (1967-8). Such films still turn up occasionally, as in The HIDDEN (1988) and THEY LIVE (1988). Their subtext, however, is entirely different from that of MMs proper ( PARANOIA) and many would not regard them as the real thing.After The Birds (1963), few MMs of any quality were made for some time. Then came the extraordinary NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), in which the director, George ROMERO, rejuvenated the genre by adding to it one of its great icons, the army of (scientifically created) zombies, literally eating society away. In the 1970s the revenge-of-Nature theme of The Birds was taken up again by a number of other films in which the "monster" was natural, aside from its exceptional ferocity towards humanity. Some of these were FROGS (1972), NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972), Squirm (1976), The GIANT SPIDER INVASION (1975), KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) and, most famous of all, Jaws (1975). PHASE IV (1974) and BUG (1975), both featuring intelligent insects, also have points of interest. Most of these films are marginal sf at best, being closer in their paranoia to supernatural fantasy.In the mid-1970s MMs - not just in the revenge-of-Nature subgenre - began bit by bit to make their comeback, often through the work of quirky, independent directors. DEATH LINE (1973; vt Raw Meat) and IT'S ALIVE (1974) are both notable for sympathetic monsters. The latter is the work of the deeply eccentric Larry COHEN, whose subsequent MMs include IT LIVES AGAIN (1978) and Q (1983; vt The Winged Serpent; vt Q: The Winged Serpent). David CRONENBERG also began making borderline MMs in the 1970s, with The PARASITE MURDERS (1974; vt They Came from Within; vt Shivers), RABID (1976) and The BROOD (1979), all notable for being both intelligent and disgusting. Joe DANTE's PIRANHA (1978) is another witty and subversive independent production. Indeed, it was now becoming clear that the second generation of MMs, far from being primitive exploitation movies, were attracting some of the most radical and sophisticated directors. Any of these films offers sufficiently complex readings, often political, to give grist for a doctoral thesis. This is only possible when genres enter their mature phase, where, although self-referential decadence ( RECURSIVE SF) can become tiresome, virtuoso variations on a theme are also likely to occur.The year 1979 was a turning point for MMs. Although it featured one of the most disappointing ever made, PROPHECY, an expensive flop for John FRANKENHEIMER, it also saw the release of ALIEN, directed by Ridley SCOTT, which was an enormous success, both commercially and, in the view of some critics, artistically. Thus, although the 1980s saw the continuing release of interesting low-budget MMs from independents - e.g., ALLIGATOR (1980), DAY OF THE DEAD (1985), CRITTERS (1986), SOCIETY (1989) and TREMORS (1989) - it saw also more expensive productions from companies encouraged by the success of Alien. A surprising number were remakes (mostly middle-budget), including two that were very interesting indeed and may come to have classic status: John CARPENTER's The THING (1982) and David Cronenberg's The FLY (1986). Also better than most people expected were The BLOB (1988) and The FLY II (1989). Other middling-to-large budget MMs of the period were PREDATOR (1987) and its efficient sequel PREDATOR 2 (1990), LEVIATHAN (1989), The ABYSS (1989) - where the monsters turn out to be good ALIENS-and perhaps the best of them, the spider movie to end all spider movies, ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990), which has a strong element of social comedy. Indeed, outright comedy - either at the expense of or through the medium of MMs - is quite common, with one of the first examples being Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK) (1972), which in one episode features a giant breast on the rampage. Most MM spoofs (there are quite a few) are bad, with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) being typical in its ineptness. SCHLOCK (1971), on the other hand, featuring a Neanderthal survival rather than a monster proper, is rather funny, as is Larry Cohen's The STUFF (1985), about a passive monster disguised as food. Two more recent MM satires targeting Middle America are TERRORVISION (1986) and MEET THE APPLEGATES (1990): the latter ingeniously shows life from the monsters' point of view. [PN] MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS Film (1958). Universal. Dir Jack ARNOLD, starring Arthur Franz, Joanna Moore, Judson Pratt, Troy Donahue. Screenplay David DUNCAN. 77 mins. B/w.This is one of Jack Arnold's last and poorest sf films, a variation on the Jekyll and Hyde theme: blood from a specimen coelacanth causes living creatures to devolve ( DEVOLUTION); a SCIENTIST (Franz) temporarily but repeatedly becomes an apeman. The film is, foolishly, structured as a mystery which everybody is too unobservant to solve, and the science is absurd. As critic Bill WARREN has pointed out, the main interest is noting the variety of ways in which the unfortunate scientist (whose noble quasi-suicide is the film's climax), along with a dog and a dragonfly, contrive to contaminate themselves. [JB/PN] MONSTERS Monsters have always stalked the hinterlands of the imagination, emblems of fear and symbols of guilt. They commonly take their aspects and roles from the supernatural imagination ( SUPERNATURAL CREATURES); but the scientific imagination has produced many monsters of its own. The recruitment to the HORROR story of monsters spawned by Nature was pioneered by H.G. WELLS's classic alien- INVASION story THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1897) and by William Hope HODGSON's sea stories. Sf monsters are often familiar but repulsive creatures made monstrous by increasing their size ( GREAT AND SMALL), and alien monsters are often created by chimerical redeployment of the repulsive features of earthly creatures. The fossil record has increased this vocabulary of ideas considerably. Other monsters arise as MUTANTS or as the accidental products of human scientific endeavour: the archetypal monster of this kind stars in Mary SHELLEY's GOTHIC-SF classic Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831). The actual scientific discipline of teratology (the study of monsters) has made little impact on sf, although its elaboration in the gruesome murder mystery The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (1934) by Alexander LAING brings that novel close to the sf borderline, and the same might be said of Whitley STRIEBER's horror-detective novel The Wolfen (1978). Russell M. GRIFFIN's The Blind Men and the Elephant (1982) borrows heavily from the well known "Elephant Man" case.Many of the standard figures of fear have made their way from MYTHOLOGY or elsewhere into sf via more-or-less ingenious processes of rationalization. The invisible monster proved easy to adapt ( INVISIBILITY): one was featured in the first issue of AMZ in George Allan ENGLAND's "The Thing from-Outside" (1926). The Gorgon became C.L. MOORE's "Shambleau" (1933). Werewolves are rationalized in DARKER THAN YOU THINK (1940; 1948) by Jack WILLIAMSON and "There Shall Be No Darkness" (1950) by James BLISH. "Who Goes There?" (1938) by John W. CAMPBELL Jr takes the idea of the menacing shapeshifter to its limit. Sf vampires are featured in numerous stories, including "Asylum" (1942) by A. E. VAN VOGT - whose The Voyage of the Space Beagle (fixup 1950) features a whole repertoire of monsters - I Am Legend (1954) by Richard MATHESON, The Space Vampires (1976) by Colin WILSON, The Vampire Tapestry (fixup 1980) by Suzy McKee CHARNAS and The Empire of Fear (1988) by Brian M. STABLEFORD. The entire retinue of mythological monsters is recreated by COMPUTER in Nightworld (1979) and The Vampires of Nightworld (1981) by David F. BISCHOFF. Other kinds of quasivampiric PARASITISM are featured in Eric Frank RUSSELL's Sinister Barrier (1939; 1943; rev 1948), van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet" (1939) and Robert A. HEINLEIN's The Puppet Masters (1951; text restored 1989).Monsters have always been very popular in the movies, and until the 1960s sf CINEMA was dominated by MONSTER MOVIES of every possible kind. The first of many versions of FRANKENSTEIN was made in 1910, but the legend was created anew in 1931 when Boris Karloff took the role of the monster. Shortly afterwards a new legend was born in the story of KING KONG (1933), in which fear was modified by sympathy: the pragmatically necessary destruction of monster by mankind was thereafter able to take on a dimension of tragedy, and the monsters could be pitied in their monstrousness. Japanese monster movies, pioneered by GOJIRA (1954), have frequently converted charismatic monsters into heroes. Another significant cinematic innovation was the monster liberated from the scientist's id in FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956). Recent advances in special-effects technology have permitted a resurgence of scary MONSTER MOVIES, the most notable sf examples being ALIEN (1979) and its sequels, and various films dir David CRONENBERG, while TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) grafts a traditional monstrous propensity - shapeshifting-onto a technological construct. GENRE SF, of course, made abundant melodramatic use of monsters. ILLUSTRATION played a considerable part in building sf's monster mythology - ALIEN horrors were a particularly rich source of lurid cover pictures, and the BUG-EYED MONSTER, or BEM (whose archetype appeared on the cover of ASF May 1931, illustrating Charles Willard Diffin's "Dark Moon"), quickly became a CLICHE MONSTERS FROM THE UNKNOWN PLANET GOJIRA. MONSTERS INVADE EXPO 70 DAIKAIJU GAMERA. MONSTER ZERO GOJIRA; RADON. MONTANA, RON (A.) (?1945- ) US writer whose published work in FANZINES included "We the People" in 1974 for Craig STRETE's Red Planet Earth. His first sf novel, The Sign of the Thunderbird (1977), conveys its post- HOLOCAUST protagonists to the New Mexico of 1860, where their actions in espousing a free Indian Nation generate an ALTERNATE-WORLD vision of the USA. His second, The Cathedral Option (1978), is of less interest. RM's engagement with Native American material ironically prefigured a controversy of the 1980s, in which he accused Strete of plagiarizing his draft of the manuscript published as Death in the Spirit House (1988) under Strete's name alone; RM's version of the book was eventually republished, as part of an agreed settlement, as Face in the Snow (1992), under his name as sole author. The book itself remains difficult to evaluate, for the transformation of the protagonist from spoiled "evolue" Native American into the transcendent manifestation of the spirit of a symbolic mountain seems, perhaps, rather forced. [JC] MONTEIRO, JERONIMO [r] LATIN AMERICA. MONTELEONE, THOMAS F(RANCIS) (1946- ) US writer active in sf since 1972, first with book reviews in AMZ, then with short stories, beginning with "Wendigo's Child" for Monster Tales (anth 1973) ed Roger ELWOOD. Two of his stories have received NEBULA nominations; nine of them (plus a play) are collected in Dark Stars, and Other Illuminations (coll 1981). These were more ambitious than most of his work at novel length, which is undemanding adventure fiction, starting with Seeds of Change (1975 Canada); this is of interest in that, as the first of the LASER BOOKS, it was issued free to libraries and booksellers as a promotional item in order to generate sales of later titles. TFM's subsequent sf novels include The Time-Swept City (fixup 1977), featuring a city-controlling COMPUTER developing sentience; The Secret Sea (1979), with Jules VERNE's Captain Nemo and the Nautilus turning up in one of a set of PARALLEL WORLDS; and the entertaining post- HOLOCAUST Guardian sequence: Guardian (1980) and Ozymandias (1981); in the first volume a pre-holocaust supercomputer is found, and in the second it is incarnated in a human body. The rather derivative Dragonstar sequence with David F. BISCHOFF - Day of the Dragonstar (1983), Night of the Dragonstar (1985) and Dragonstar Destiny (1989) - is about First Contact with a saurian race aboard a vast, alien spacecraft. In 1980 TFM moved to horror/dark fantasy with Night Things (1980), returning to it with Night-Train (1984) and later with others.TFM is a thoughtful editor. His 2 sf theme anthologies are The Arts, and Beyond: Visions of Man's Aesthetic Future (anth 1977) and R-A-M: Random Access Messages of the Computer Age (anth 1984; vt Microworlds: SF Stories of the Computer Age 1985 UK). His 2 horror anthologies are Borderlands (anth 1990),Borderlands II (anth 1991 ) and Borderlands III (anth 1994). [PN]Other works: The Time Connection (1976), sf; Lyrica (1987), The Magnificent Gallery (1987), Crooked House (1987) with John DECHANCIE and Fantasma (1989),The Blood of the Lamb (1992), all horror.See also: ARTS. MONTGOMERY, FRANCES TREGO (1858-1925) US writer, mostly of books for children, whose Electric Elephant sequence - The Wonderful Electric Elephant (1903) and On a Lark to the Planets (1904) - describes in a DIME-NOVEL manner the adventures of a young man who inherits a hollow mechanical elephant after the apparent death of the old man who owned it. With a girlfriend (they later marry), he frolics across the USA and, in the second volume, around the Solar System, which is described in terms appropriate to astrology. The old man then reappears and takes them on a guided tour of the Milky Way. [JC] MONTHLY STORY BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE, THE The BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE . MONTHLY STORY MAGAZINE, THE The BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE. MOON The lunar voyage has a long literary history, having developed from a standard framework for social SATIRE to become one of the archetypal projects of speculative fiction. Major works in the former tradition include two 2nd-century tales by LUCIAN of Samosata, Francis GODWIN's The Man in the Moone (1638), the first part of CYRANO DE BERGERAC's L'autre monde (1657), Daniel DEFOE's The Consolidator (1705), Samuel Brunt's A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (1727), Murtagh MCDERMOT's A Trip to the Moon (1728) and Joseph ATTERLEY's A Voyage to the Moon (1827). This phase of the history of the lunar voyage is the subject of Marjorie Hope NICOLSON's excellent Voyages to the Moon (1948), which has an extensive annotated bibliography. Several pre-1841 lunar voyages can be found in The Man in the Moone (anth 1971) ed Faith K. Pizor and T. Allan Comp. The use of the Moon as a stage for the erection of mock societies became less fashionable in the 19th century, but echoes of the tradition recur even in the present century, as in Compton MACKENZIE's The Lunatic Republic (1959). The first trip to the Moon seemingly motivated solely by the spirit of adventure was in a brief episode in Ralph MORRIS's ROBINSONADE The Life and Wonderful Adventures of John Daniel (1751).The idea that travelling to the Moon might be a notion worth taking seriously first crops up in the appendix to John WILKINS's The Discovery of a New World (3rd edn 1640), where the author suggests that a man might be carried to the Moon by a large bird or that a flying machine capable of the trip might one day become practicable. Another writer to take seriously the modes of TRANSPORTATION used as conveniences by satirists was David RUSSEN, author of Iter Lunare (1703): he suggested that a man might be propelled to the Moon by the force of a gargantuan spring. The first writer to make any pretence at verisimilitude was Edgar Allan POE, whose "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" (1835) is a curious admixture of comic satire and speculative fiction, although Pfaall's BALLOON seems hardly more credible than Russen's spring. A superficially more convincing method was the space-gun envisaged by Jules VERNE in De la terre a la lune (1865; trans J.K. Hoyte as From the Earth to the Moon 1869 US) and its sequel, Autour de la lune (1870; both trans Lewis Mercier and Eleanor King as From the Earth to the Moon . . ., and a Trip Around It 1873 UK).Serious interest in the Moon as a world in its own right, possibly harbouring ALIEN life of its own, began with Johannes KEPLER's Somnium (1634), but this work stands almost alone. Richard Adams LOCKE published his "Moon Hoax" in the New York Sun in 1835, purporting to describe the inhabitants of the Moon as observed by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) with the aid of a new telescope, but this vision of lunar life was a gaudy burlesque. By the time the cosmic voyage began to be taken seriously in the 19th century the possibility of there being life on the Moon was already past credibility. H.G. WELLS imagined a Selenite society within the Moon in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1901), but the setting here was no more than a convenient literary device, like the antigravitic Cavorite by means of which the trip was accomplished. Other contemporary works - including W.S. LACH-SZYRMA's "Letters from the Planets" (1887-93), Edgar FAWCETT's The Ghost of Guy Thyrle (1895) and George GRIFFITH's A Honeymoon in Space (1901)-portray the Moon as a place of ultimate desolation where life is extinct, although the scenes in which interplanetary voyagers find the ruins of long-dead civilizations on the Moon exhibit a curiously nostalgic sense of tragedy. A dead Moon is featured also in Andre LAURIE's Les exiles de la Terre (1887; trans as The Conquest of the Moon 1889 UK), a story made memorable by the magnificent notion that traversing the vacuum of space might be avoided if the Moon could be temporarily attracted into the Earth's atmosphere by giant magnets. Lunar life reappeared, however-sometimes in extravagant fashion - in the works of PULP-MAGAZINE writers, notably in Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's The Moon Maid (1923-5; fixup 1926), Edmond HAMILTON's "The Other Side of the Moon" (1929), Otis Adelbert KLINE's Maza of the Moon (1930) and, most impressively, Jack WILLIAMSON's "The Moon Era" (1932). Lip-service is paid to the deadness of the Moon's visible surface by locating the aliens inside the Moon, as Wells did, or only on its far side, or in the distant past. A nostalgic elegy for lunar life is offered by Lester DEL REY's "The Wings of Night" (1942).Dead or not, though, the Moon was there - a mere quarter of a million miles away - to be reached and to be claimed. To the early pulp writers this was an article of faith, so easily taken for granted that the Moon routinely became a mere stepping-stone en route to MARS or the STARS. The lunar voyage remained a constant theme of sf of the 1930s and 1940s, but it was more peripheral than the hype surrounding the first actual Moon landing (1969) suggested. The imminent possibility of SPACE FLIGHT in a real NEAR FUTURE had been taken seriously by relatively few writers. Arthur C. CLARKE's essay, "We Can Rocket to the Moon - Now!" (1939), ushered in a new era of realism, but it was the advent towards the end of WWII of the V-2 rocket-bomb that hammered home the message that ROCKET-powered SPACESHIPS were just around the corner. The post-WWII years saw publication of a number of visionary novels which elevated the first trip to the Moon to quasimythical status. Robert A. HEINLEIN, who had earlier written the poignant "Requiem" (1940) about the burning ambition of a man who longed to go to the Moon even though the trip would kill him, wrote a short novel about the same hero's earlier fight to finance the first Moon-shot and sell the myth of space conquest to the world: "The Man who Sold the Moon" (1950). Heinlein also scripted the George PAL film DESTINATION MOON (1950), drawing material from his first juvenile novel, Rocket Ship Galileo (1947). Heinlein wrote realistic sf stories set on the Moon for non-genre magazines, as did Arthur C. Clarke, the chief UK prophet and propagandist of space travel, and author of Prelude to Space (1951) and Earthlight (1951). Realistic juvenile novels concerning the establishment of Moon bases were written by Lester DEL REY and Patrick MOORE, and the UK RADIO serial Journey into Space (novelized by Charles CHILTON as Journey into Space * [1954]) further popularized the idea. Pierre BOULLE moved the myth decisively into MAINSTREAM fiction in Garden on the Moon (1964; trans 1965), but by then most sf writers had abandoned the theme as too commonplace. William F. TEMPLE's Shoot at the Moon (1966) was one of the last major celebrations of the lunar-voyage myth in sf before Neil Armstrong took his "one small step".In the mythology of sf, the first lunar landing was usually a prelude to rapid COLONIZATION. A lunar colony had waged its carbon-copy war of independence as long ago as The Birth of a New Republic (1931 AMZ Quarterly; 1981) by Jack Williamson and Miles J. BREUER. The hostility of the lunar environment was admitted, but faith in human ingenuity ran high-John W. CAMPBELL Jr wrote the ultimate lunar robinsonade in The Moon is Hell (1950), easily outdoing Charles Eric MAINE's more modest High Vacuum (1956). Thrillers and mysteries set on the inhabited Moon became commonplace in the 1950s; examples are Murray LEINSTER's City on the Moon (1957), Clarke's A Fall of Moondust (1961) and Clifford D. SIMAK's Trouble with Tycho (1961). Heinlein produced a definitive new version of the birth of the new republic in THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS (1966), a vision which John VARLEY modified and expanded upon in Steel Beach (1992).Despite its deadness, the Moon retained its status as an alien world, and human visitors sometimes found echoes of others long passed on - artefacts left behind to confront the Earthlings, as they broke out of their atmospheric shell, with a glimpse of the infinite possibilities of an inhabited Universe. Clarke's "Sentinel of Eternity" (1951; vt "The Sentinel") captured the essence of this notion and became its archetypal expression, ultimately forming the seed of the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1967). An equally challenging but far less hospitable artefact is featured in ROGUE MOON (1960) by Algis BUDRYS, and the discovery of an apparently human corpse on the Moon in James P. HOGAN's Inherit the Stars (1977) is a prelude to far more spectacular discoveries.Post-1969 sf tends to look farther out than the Moon, although lunar colonies are still a frequent feature of HARD-SF stories. Despite a deflection of attention towards orbiting SPACE HABITATS, Moon-based thrillers and mysteries are still produced. Notable examples are Larry NIVEN's The Patchwork Girl (1980), Roger MacBride ALLEN's Farside Cannon (1988), Michael SWANWICK's Griffin's Egg (1991) and Charles L. HARNESS's Lunar Justice (1991). Moon colonies occasionally survive the devastation of Earth, as in When the Sky Burned (1973; exp vt Test of Fire 1982) by Ben BOVA. More spectacular use of the Moon is made by Bob SHAW in The Ceres Solution (1981), where it is broken up, and by John GRIBBIN and Marcus CHOWN in Double Planet (1988) and its sequel Reunion (1991), where it is supplied with a brand new atmosphere.A theme anthology is Men on the Moon (anth 1958) ed Donald A. WOLLHEIM. [BS] MOON, ELIZABETH (N.) (1945- ) US writer whose strongest work has been fantasy, primarily the Deed of Paksennarion sequence: The Deed of Paksennarion #1: Sheepfarmer's Daughter (1988), #2: Divided Allegiance (1988) and #3: Oath of Gold (1989), all assembled as The Deed of Paksennarion (all texts rev, omni 1992); a prequel, Surrender None: The Legacy of Gird (1990), vigorously sets the scene, and is followed by Liar's Oath (1992), which is similarly vigorous. EM began publishing sf with "ABCs in Zero-G" for ASF in 1986, a polished high-tech tale which was assembled, with other sf and FANTASY, in Lunar Activity (coll 1990) - the title is a play on EM's name rather than an accurate description of the book's contents. She collaborated with Anne MCCAFFREY on Sassinak (1990) and Generation Warriors (1992), being #1 and #3 of the Planet Pirates sequence of sf adventures featuring a young girl who, after her home planet has been destroyed by "planet pirates", becomes a Federation pirate hunter. Hunting Party (1993) is an sf tale starring a female soldier who must recoup her reputation after having been forced to resign in disgrace. [JC]Other Works: Sporting Chance (1994). MOONBASE 3 UK tv serial (1973). BBC TV. Prod Barry Letts. Script ed Terrance Dicks. Scriptwriters Dicks and Letts (1st episode), and John Brason, John Lucarotti, Arden Winch. Dirs Ken Hannam, Christopher Barry. Scientific advisor James Burke, a well known presenter of tv popular-science programmes. Starring Donald Houston, Barry Lowe, Ralph Bates, Fiona Gaunt. 6 30min episodes. Colour.Set on an enclosed European Moon base in AD2003 (other nations had set up similar bases), M3 concerned a group of scientists. The usual sensational elements (aliens, monsters) were studiously eschewed in favour of psychological problems in the small, claustrophobic community, but the attempt at responsible realism was somewhat dull. [JB/PN] MOONCHILD Gardner F. FOX. MOONEY, TED Working name of US writer Edward Mooney (1951- ), whose remarkable first novel, published in the MAINSTREAM, is sf: Easy Travel to Other Planets (1981). Set on a NEAR-FUTURE Earth against a backdrop of global information sickness, war in the Antarctic and a new emotion nobody has ever felt before, it tells a love story - with visionary ramifications - concerning a woman marine biologist and the dolphin on whom she conducts experiments in LINGUISTICS. It has been seen as a proto- CYBERPUNK work, but its cool, pellucid, dissecting style - perhaps influenced by J.G. BALLARD - is far removed from the hectic insistence that has characterized much of that school. TM's second sf book was the ALTERNATE-WORLD novel Traffic and Laughter (1990), set in the near future of an Earth where WWII was inconclusive and nuclear power never developed. [PN] MOONRAKER Film (1979). Eon/Les Productions Artistes Associes. Dir Lewis Gilbert, starring Roger Moore, Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel. Screenplay Christopher Wood, based on Moonraker (1955) by Ian FLEMING. 126 mins. Colour.British agent James Bond (Moore) uncovers a plot by megalomaniac Hugo Drax (Lonsdale) to destroy the present human race using space-launched nerve-gas capsules and replace it by a master race, to be specially bred in a large, radar-invisible SPACE HABITAT. This belongs towards the decadent, later end of the James Bond film sequence, with Moore pouting fleshily as Bond and a sequence of spectacularly destructive set pieces replacing any of the escalation of suspense we expect of the true thriller. As with most James Bond films, the science is contemptible and logical flaws highly visible. The film is remembered mainly for the finding by giant, steel-toothed assassin Jaws (Kiel) of a pigtailed girlfriend. The novelization is James Bond and Moonraker * (1979) by Christopher Wood (1935- ). The other two (much earlier) films in the sequence that most resemble sf are DR NO (1962) and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). [PN] MOON ZERO TWO Film (1969). Hammer/Warner Bros. Dir Roy Ward Baker, starring James Olson, Catherine von Schell, Warren Mitchell, Adrienne Corri. Screenplay Michael Carreras. 100 mins. Colour.At the same time as the first actual Moon landing, Hammer Films were making this quasi-Western set on the Moon, envisaged as a rip-roaring Frontier area; the results are absurd. One of the hoariest of pulp Western plots is dressed up with a lot of colourful space hardware: a poor but honest space pilot/cowboy/gunslinger (Olson) is forced by a group of villains to capture an asteroid of pure sapphire, but his principles triumph and he foils their plans. The special effects by Kit West, Nick Allder and Les Bowie are unexpectedly convincing, considering the relatively small budget, but the film has no other strength. The novelization is Moon Zero Two * (1969) by John BURKE. [JB/PN] MOORCOCK, MICHAEL (JOHN) (1939- ) UK writer and editor, London-based and London-obsessed from his first vivid memories of WWII bombing of its southern suburbs, experiences constantly reflected in his fiction - wartime London providing many of its characteristic landscapes and its images of ENTROPY - and central to what may be his finest single novel, Mother London (1988), a work of singular complexity whose comprehensive grasp makes generic pigeonholing impossible, despite touches of telepathy and other psi phenomena in the text ( ESP; PSI POWERS).During MM's desultory schooling he began to write, starting with Outlaw's Own (about 1950), a hand-done magazine, and continuing with several other similar FANZINE titles until 1962. After leaving school he began to contribute professionally to Tarzan Adventures, which he ed 1957-8, producing for it his first HEROIC-FANTASY series, later assembled as Sojan (coll of linked stories with independent material 1977). The Golden Barge (written 1958; except 1965 NW as by William Barclay; 1979) also demonstrated the precocity common to many generic writers, plus an already characteristic questioning of the violence and morality of commercial heroic fantasy, a genre he was all the same to exploit extensively for the next 15 years. After working on the Sexton Blake Library (a long series of thrillers)-publishing one non-sf novella for it, Caribbean Crisis (1962 chap) with James CAWTHORN, together writing as Desmond Reid - and after doing some night-club work as a blues singer, MM, inspired by John CARNELL, began to contribute sf and fantasy stories to SF ADVENTURES and SCIENCE FANTASY. His first sf novel was The Sundered Worlds (1962-3 SF Adventures; fixup 1965; vt The Blood Red Game 1970), a metaphysical SPACE OPERA which introduced the concept of the "multiverse", a term probably derived from the works of John Cowper POWYS. The word describes a Universe in which multiple PARALLEL WORLDS co-exist, constantly (but never permanently) intersecting with one another; in this infinite nesting of intersecting arenas, similar cosmic dramas are played and replayed by numerous characters who inhabit the various worlds, but who reduce to a relatively small cast of core identities, each playing himself or herself under various names throughout the nest of worlds. Of these recurring characters, the most central to the heroic-fantasy novels is the figure of the Eternal Champion, the protagonist of various series including the Eternal Champion or Erekose sequence, Elric of Melnibone, the Warrior of Mars, Hawkmoon, Corum and Von Bek. In the fantasies, the Champion's fundamental task is to combat Chaos on behalf of Order. In the sf novels, the FABULATIONS and the non-genre works, the motives and tasks of those figures closest in nature to the Champion are much more ambiguous. Throughout, MM has consistently used the multiverse and the Eternal Champion as devices by which it becomes possible to construe all his very sizable oeuvre as comprising one enormous series.The Elric stories, published intermittently for over 30 years, constitute MM's first consequential work. At their heart is the albino melancholic Elric of Melnibone, a treacherous figure who is in a sense the minion of his own supernatural Chaos-inducing sword. They comprise a sustained critique and parody of the SWORD-AND-SORCERY brand of heroic fantasy. A sense that the target of this parody was trivial clearly motivated MM's next significant move, the creation of a figure parodic of the pretentious Weltschmerz of the antiheroic Elric: Jerry Cornelius, a portmanteau antihero painted initially in the Pop colours of 1960s "Swinging London", was Elric turned inside out, an anarchic streetwise urban ragamuffin with James Bond gear, and amorally deft at manipulating everything from women to the multiverse itself. In his early adventures - during which the planet suffers various catastrophes - Jerry ranges from the present through the FAR FUTURE, ever melancholy, randy and evanescent. This early version of Jerry dominates the first two novels of the Jerry Cornelius sequence: The Final Programme (excerpts 1965-6 NW; 1968 US; rev 1969 UK; rev 1977 US; rev 1979 UK), later filmed as The FINAL PROGRAMME (1973; cut vt The Last Days of Man on Earth 1975 US), and A Cure for Cancer (1969 NW; 1971; rev 1977 US; rev 1979 UK). In the third and fourth volumes of the sequence - The English Assassin (1972; rev 1977 US; rev 1979 UK) and The Condition of Muzak (1977; rev 1977 US; further rev 1978 UK), which won the 1977 Guardian Fiction Prize - the portrait of Pierrot-like Jerry and his enduring family and associates deepens, as the various Londons they inhabit become less and less open to their sf/fantasy manipulations. Caught between the forces of Law and Chaos, they gradually come to represent the dubious success of any late-20th-century strategy for survival "in the deep cities of this world, in the years of their dying", as claimed by John CLUTE in an introduction to the omnibus which first assembled all 4 vols: THE CORNELIUS CHRONICLES (omni 1977 US; using 1979 revs of individual titles, rev vt in 2 vols as The Cornelius Chronicles: Book One 1988 UK and Book Two 1988 UK). In The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume II (omni 1986 US) were assembled The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius (coll 1976; exp 1987) and The Entropy Tango: A Comic Romance (fixup 1981). In The Cornelius Chronicles, Volume III (omni 1987 US) were assembled The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century (1976; cut vt The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in omni 1980 US with The Black Corridor [see below]) and "The Alchemist's Question" (1984) from The Opium General and Other Stories (coll 1984). The titles assembled in the second and third omnibuses served as modulations upon the thematic material of the central quartet, but lacked its cumulative intensity or Commedia dell'Arte pathos. Further associated material appeared in The Nature of the Catastrophe (anth 1971) ed MM and Langdon JONES, which contained stories and material by MM and other NW writers who were allowed to use the Cornelius world as an OPEN UNIVERSE, and as The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle (1980 chap in the format of a tabloid newspaper; rev vt "Gold Diggers of 1977" in Casablanca 1979). The Distant Suns (1969 The Illustrated Weekly of India; 1975 chap) with Philip James (Cawthorn) has as its protagonist a Jerry Cornelius who bears no relation to the Jerry Cornelius of the other books.In the 1960s MM also became editor of NEW WORLDS, a position he held, with a few voluntary breaks, from #142 (May/June 1964) to its effective demise (but see below) as a magazine with #201 (Mar 1971). For some time he had been arguing that GENRE SF and FANTASY sadly lacked human values and literacy of texture, and he now began to accept for the journal stories from authors like Brian W. ALDISS, J.G. BALLARD, Samuel R. DELANY, Thomas M. DISCH, M. John HARRISON, John T. SLADEK and Norman SPINRAD which - he argued in its pages - proved that literate and humane sf and fantasy could be written. Works from these authors, and by MM himself, were soon identified as comprising a NEW WAVE (a term first used in 1961 in a book review by P. Schuyler MILLER, and later transformed by Christopher PRIEST into a tag for NW's new-style fiction). For several years after 1965, NW and the New Wave were virtually synonymous in the UK. MM published-and himself wrote - stories experimental in form and content, influenced by French Surrealism and by the early work of William S. BURROUGHS. After ceasing as a magazine, NW continued as a series of anthologies until 1976, under the editorship (variously and in combination) of MM, Hilary BAILEY (MM's wife 1962-78) and Platt; another brief NW series in magazine format ran for several issues in 1978-9; a further anthology series, with MM's authorization, began in the 1990s with New Worlds 1 (anth 1991) ed David S. GARNETT.Though MM was never prolific as an author of pure sf, the 1960s saw several works of interest, notably: The Black Corridor (1969 US) with Hilary Bailey (uncredited); The Ice Schooner (1966-7 SF Impulse; 1969; rev 1977 US; rev 1985 UK), a homage to and recasting of Joseph CONRAD's The Rescue (1920) which convincingly portrays the cultures of a new Ice Age at the moment when the temperature begins to rise again; and the Karl Glogauer sequence, comprising BEHOLD THE MAN (1966 NW; exp 1969), the magazine version of which won a 1967 NEBULA for Best Novella, and the full version of which later appeared in Behold the Man and Other Stories (coll 1994), and Breakfast in the Ruins (1972). In the earlier book Glogauer is cast back by a TIME MACHINE; he becomes Christ and is crucified. In the second, structured as a series of vignettes, he is exposed to a series of moral crises exemplary of our modern world, and to which he is forced to respond. Collections included The Deep Fix (coll 1966) as by James COLVIN (an NW house name) and The Time Dweller (coll 1969). MM's pseudonymous output was, despite 1960s rumour, not large. Beyond Desmond Reid and Colvin, he used only Bill Barclay (1 story; 2 non-sf novels), the collaborative pseudonym Michael BARRINGTON (with Barrington J. BAYLEY; 1 story) and Edward P. Bradbury (3 fantasies).This intermittent production of sf did not increase in the 1970s, though two sequences appeared. The Oswald Bastable books - The Warlord of the Air (1971 US), subsequent texts being edited by other hands, The Land Leviathan (1974) and The Steel Tsar (1981) - expressed a nostalgia, evident also in The Condition of Muzak, for the kind of future an Edwardian might have hoped for ( STEAMPUNK); all 3 were assembled as The Nomad of Time (omni 1982 US). More important was the far-future Dancers at the End of Time sequence, comprising a central trilogy - An Alien Heat (1972), The Hollow Lands (1974 US) and The End of All Songs (1976 US), assembled as The Dancers at the End of Time (omni 1981) - plus a collection, Legends from the End of Time (coll 1976 US), and a further novel, The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming (1976 NW as "Constant Fire";1977; vt A Messiah at the End of Time 1978 US), both assembled as Tales from the End of Time (omni 1989 US). The protagonist of the sequence, Jherek Carnelian, although his name echoes that of Jerry Cornelius, nevertheless remains an independent character, inhabiting a far-future Earth in which infinitely available power makes everything and everyone constantly malleable; Carnelian himself, however, transported into the 19th century, becomes obsessed with humanity's moral and physical trammels, even to the point of falling in love. Gloriana, or The Unfulfill'd Queen: Being a Romance (1978), a rare singleton, presents an ambiguous sexual fable in a world which could be defined as an alternate Elizabethan England.In the 1980s MM increasingly concentrated either on fantasies which continued (and at times alarmingly amplified) earlier work, or on tales in which little or no generic content could be found. He also published: a political pamphlet, The Retreat from Liberty: The Erosion of Democracy in Today's Britain (1983 chap); an autobiographical sequence, Letters from Hollywood (1986); a patchy study, Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy (1987), a chapter of which was based on Epic Pooh (1978 chap); and Fantasy: The 100 Best Books (1988) with (but in fact written almost entirely by) James Cawthorn. After the singletons Mother London and The Brothel in Rosenstrasse (1982), a fantasy of sexual torment, the most interesting later novels are the Colonel Pyat sequence, comprising Byzantium Endures (1981; cut 1981 US), The Laughter of Carthage (1984), and Jerusalem Commands (1992), with one further novel projected, The Vengeance of Rome (the 4 titles read together, appropriately punctuated, as one sentence). These novels, which feature many characters from the Jerry Cornelius books, are non-generic, being an ambitious attempt to convey some sense of the 20th century through the unreliable memoirs of one man. They represent MM's slow but inexorable evolution from PULP to POSTMODERNISM, a transition made all the more interesting because of the large number of books through which it can be traced, and because he has so frequently returned to early sequences (Elric in particular), transforming them in the process. MM has therefore become less and less easy to pigeonhole as a writer, and has come to be recognized as a major figure at the edge of - but materially helping to define - all his chosen worlds. [JC]Other works:Sf: The Fireclown (1965; vt The Winds of Limbo 1969 US); The Twilight Man (1964 NW; rev1966; vt The Shores of Death 1970); The LSD Dossier (1966) as by Roger Harris (i.e., as heavily ed MM) and its sequels Somewhere in the Night (1966 as by Bill Barclay; rev vt The Chinese Agent 1970 US as by MM) and Printer's Devil (1966 as by Bill Barclay; rev vt The Russian Intelligence 1980 as by MM), the revisions of the latter books taking them out of the original sequence and recreating them as tales of Jerry Cornell; The Wrecks of Time (1965-6 NW as by James Colvin; edited 1967 dos US; text restored vt The Rituals of Infinity 1971 UK); Moorcock's Book of Martyrs (coll 1976; vt Dying for Tomorrow 1978 US); The Time of the Hawklords (1976) and Queens of Deliria (1977), the first as by MM and Michael BUTTERWORTH, the second by Butterworth alone, only the general idea (for the first title alone) being supplied by MM; The Real Life Mr Newman (1966 in The Deep Fix; 1979 chap); My Experiences in the Third World War (coll 1980); Casablanca (coll 1989).Eternal Champion titles:The bibliographic description of the 2 1990s omnibus sequences, each given the overall title of The Tale of the Eternal Champion, is immensely complex, and as most of the 14 UK (or 15+ US) volumes contain mostly fantasy, the sequence is not here described in any detail. The UK sequence comprises Von Bek (omni 1992), The Eternal Champion (omni 1992), Hawkmoon (omni 1992), Corum (omni 1992), Sailing to Utopia (omni 1993), A Nomad of the Time Streams (omni 1993), The Dancers at the End of Time (omni 1981; rev 1991; not rev for this sequence), Elric of Melnibone (omni 1993), The New Nature of the Catastrophe (coll 1993), which contains much of sf interest, The Prince with the Silver Hand (omni 1993), Legends from the End of Time (omni 1993), Stormbringer (omni 1993), Earl Aubec (coll 1993), containing some new material, and Count Brass (omni 1993). The US sequence begins with The Eternal Champion (omni 1994), which differs - as will almost all subsequent US titles - from the UK release bearing the same title. The various Eternal Champion series are listed below according to their original titles and dates:Erekose: The Eternal Champion (1962 Science Fantasy; exp 1970US; rev 1978 US); Phoenix in Obsidian (1970; vt The Silver Warriors 1973 US); The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell (graph 1979 US) with Howard V. CHAYKIN; The Dragon in the Sword (1986 US; exp 1987 UK), all but the 3rd being assembled in The Eternal Champion (rev omni 1992).Elric of Melnibone: (by internal chronology) Elric of Melnibone (1972; cut vt The Dreaming City 1972 US); The Fortress of the Pearl (1989); The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (fixup 1976), incorporating rev of The Jade Man's Eyes (1973 chap); The Weird of the White Wolf (coll 1977 US), incorporating stories from The Stealer of Souls (1961-62 Science Fantasy; coll 1963) and from The Singing Citadel (coll 1970); The Sleeping Sorceress (1971; vt The Vanishing Tower 1977 US); The Revenge of the Rose: A Tale of the Albino Prince in the Years of his Wandering (1991); The Bane of the Black Sword (1962Science Fantasy; coll 1977 US), incorporating the remaining stories (see above) from The Stealer of Souls and The Singing Citadel; Stormbringer (1963-4 Science Fantasy; cut 1965; text restored and rev 1977 US). Omnibuses of this material are The Elric Saga Part I (omni 1984 US) containing Elric of Melnibone, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate and The Weird of the White Wolf; and The Elric Saga Part II (omni 1984 US) containing The Vanishing Tower, The Bane of the Black Sword and Stormbringer. Elric at the End of Time (coll 1984) assembles mostly earlier stories, including some from Sojan.Warrior of Mars: Warriors of Mars (1965; vt The City of the Beast 1970 US), Blades of Mars 1965; vt The Lord of the Spiders 1971 US) and Barbarians of Mars (1965; vt Masters of the Pit 1971), all assembled as Warrior of Mars (omni 1981 UK). The original versions of all 3 were published as by Edward P. Bradbury.Hawkmoon: 2 series. The Runestaff books are The Jewel in the Skull (1967 US; rev 1977 US), Sorcerer's Amulet (1968 US; vt The Mad God's Amulet 1969 UK), Sword of the Dawn (1968 US; rev 1977 US) and The Secret of the Runestaff (1969 US; vt The Runestaff 1969 UK; rev 1977 US), all assembled as The History of the Runestaff (omni 1979 UK; rev vt Hawkmoon 1992). The Count Brass books are Count Brass (1973), The Champion of Garathorm (1973) and The Quest for Tanelorn (1975), all assembled as The Chronicles of Castle Brass (omni 1985 UK).Corum: 2 series. The Swords books are The Knight of the Swords (1971), The Queen of the Swords (1971 US) and The King of the Swords (1971 US), all assembled as The Swords Trilogy (omni 1977 US; vt The Swords of Corum 1986 UK; rev vt Corum 1992 UK). A second trilogy comprises The Bull and the Spear (1973), The Oak and the Ram (1973) and The Sword and the Stallion (1974), all assembled as The Chronicles of Corum (omni 1978 US).Von Bek: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981 US) and The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), assembled with an added story as Von Bek (rev omni 1992).As Editor: The Best of New Worlds (anth 1965); Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds (anth 1967); Best Stories from New Worlds 2 (anth 1968; vt Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 21969 US); Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 3 (anth 1968); The Traps of Time (anth 1968); Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 4 (anth 1969); The Inner Landscape (anth 1969), ed anon; Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 5 (anth 1969); Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 6 (anth 1970); Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 7 (anth 1971); New Worlds 1 (anth 1971; vt New Worlds Quarterly 1 1971 US); New Worlds 2 (anth 1971; vt New Worlds Quarterly 2 1971 US); New Worlds 3 (anth 1972; vt New Worlds Quarterly 3 1972 US); New Worlds 4 (anth 1972; vt New Worlds Quarterly 4 1972 US); New Worlds 5 (anth 1973); New Worlds 6 (anth 1973; vt New Worlds Quarterly 5 1974 US) with Charles PLATT; Best S.F. Stories from New Worlds 8 (anth 1974); Before Armageddon (anth 1975); England Invaded (anth 1977); New Worlds: An Anthology (anth 1983).Film: The LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975), script by MM and James Cawthorn.About the author: The Tanelorn Archives: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography of the Works of Michael Moorcock, 1949-1979 (1981) by Richard Bilyeu; The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the British "New Wave" in Science Fiction (1983) by Colin GREENLAND; Michael Moorcock: A Reader's Guide (1991 chap; rev 1992 chap) by John Davey (1962- ); Death is No Obstacle (1992), a book-length interview conducted by Greenland with MM about his work.See also: ABSURDIST SF; BOYS' PAPERS; CITIES; COMICS; DAW BOOKS; GAMES AND TOYS; GOTHIC SF; HISTORY OF SF; HUMOUR; IMMORTALITY; INTERZONE; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD; LEISURE; MESSIAHS; MUSIC; MYTHOLOGY; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; RELIGION; SATIRE; SF REPRISE; SUSPENDED ANIMATION; TIME TRAVEL; TRANSPORTATION; WAR. MOORE, ALAN (1953- ) UK COMICS illustrator and writer, mainly active in the latter capacity for the GRAPHIC NOVELS that made him famous; all of these, including WATCHMEN, were illustrated by others. On rare occasions, beginning with "Sawdust Memories" for Knave in 1984, he has also written prose fiction.AM's first professional work was as an artist and illustrator, beginning with a 1969 ad for the London sf bookshop Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. As Curt Vile, he began creating comics with 2 series - Roscoe Moscow (Mar 1979-July 1980) and The Stars my Degradation (July 1980-Feb 1982; continued with a different scriptwriter but drawn by AM until the Mar 1983 issue) - for the weekly music paper Sounds; another Curt Vile strip, Three Eyes McGurk & His Death Planet Commandos (Dec 1979 in Dark Star) appeared in the USA in Rip Off Comics #8 (1981). As Jill de Ray, AM wrote and drew the weekly Maxwell the Magic Cat (Aug 1979-Oct 1986) for the Northants Post. Perhaps fortunately - his drawing style was an anaemic rehash of underground-comix cliches - this was his last work as an illustrator.The appearance in the UK in 1977 of the weekly sf comic 2,000 AD - the birthplace of JUDGE DREDD - had provided a forum for a new generation of writers and artists, of which AM soon became a prominent member. With scripts for MARVEL COMICS UK's Dr. Who Weekly/Monthly (June 1980-Oct 1981), he began to work for the commercial-comics industry, and was intensely active for the next half decade. For the Future Shocks section of 2,000 AD itself he wrote 26 sf shorts (July 1980-Aug 1983); most of these were later assembled as Alan Moore's Shocking Futures (graph coll 1986) and Alan Moore's Twisted Times (graph coll 1986), both with various illustrators. During the same period, he wrote 5 stories for Marvel UK's STAR WARS comic (Nov 1981-Aug 1982), and 20 episodes of the PARALLEL-WORLDS Captain Britain sequence for various other Marvel UK comics. Aside from Captain Britain, most of this early work was comparatively journeyman.In March 1982, with #1 of the anthology-comic Warrior, this all changed. In that issue, AM began 2 series of considerable significance. Marvelman was a radical POSTMODERNIST reinterpretation of a SUPERHERO ( CAPTAIN MARVEL) from the 1940s. After Aug 1984, the strip was removed from Warrior, and in retitled form reprinted and completed in the US anthology-comic Eclipse; the full strip was then assembled as Miracleman (graph coll 1988 US), The Red King Syndrome (graph coll 1990 US) and Olympus (graph coll 1990 US), with various illustrators, including Alan Davis and Garry Leach. (Just as the original Captain Marvel was plagued by litigation, so was the new: the US MARVEL COMICS, which had begun its own Captain Marvel comic in 1967, insisted on the AM strip being retitled Miracleman in the USA; in retaliation, AM refused Marvel UK permission to reprint any of his early work, which remains uncollected.) The second series begun in that first issue of Warrior was V for Vendetta, which pits an anarchist hero against the fascist regime of a NEAR-FUTURE, post-Thatcherite UK. V for Vendetta also moved to the USA (after Feb 1985), being published there by DC COMICS, and was assembled as V for Vendetta (graph coll 1990 US) illus David Lloyd.Other UK work during this period included The Ballad of Halo Jones (July 1984-Apr 1986 2,000 AD), set in a variety of sf locales and later collected in 3 vols as The Ballad of Halo Jones, Book 1 (graph 1986), #2 (graph 1986) and #3 (graph 1986), all 3 being later assembled as The Complete Ballad of Halo Jones (graph omni 1990), and all illus Ian Gibson. Skizz (Mar 1983-Aug 1983 2,000 AD), an sf tale reminiscent of E.T. : THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, was collected as Skizz (graph 1989) illus Jim Baikie; and D.R. and Quinch (Apr 1983-Summer 1985 2,000 AD), a comedy about ALIEN juvenile delinquents, was collected as D.R. and Quinch's Totally Awesome Guide to Life (graph 1986) illus Alan Davis and D.R. and Quinch (graph 1991).In 1984 AM began to work directly for US firms, becoming the writer for DC's Saga of the Swamp Thing (in Nov 1984 the title changed to SWAMP THING), the eponymous monster being a 1970s antihero now revived in the wake of the poor 1982 film. AM's 44 Swamp Thing stories (Jan 1984-Sep 1987), which were collected in 11 vols with various illustrators, perhaps take the "orthodox" sf/ GOTHIC only-partly-human-superhero theme as far as it could be taken within the framework of the conventional comic, which is distributed through newsstands and must operate in constant fear of censorship. The Grand Guignol violence of AM's imagery, and the disturbing psychosexual impact of his storylines, established Swamp Thing as probably the seminal comic of the 1980s.The success of Swamp Thing led directly to WATCHMEN, a graphic novel whose 12 chapters were first published as individual comics (Sep 1986-Oct 1987 Watchmen), but which are best read in their intended book form as Watchmen (graph 1987 US; with additional material 1988 US) illus Dave GIBBONS. Set in an ALTERNATE WORLD distinguished by the fact that the existence of costumed superheroes has subtly modified the history of the 20th century, Watchmen is both a satirical analysis of the human cost of being (or needing) a superhero, and an extremely distressing tale of a nearly-terminal holocaust fomented by one of these iconic figures. The impact of the tale - and that of its sophisticated visual language, through which subtexts and subplots interweave with (in hindsight) the utmost clarity - was enormous.After finishing the last parts of V for Vendetta and a Batman book, The Killing Joke (graph 1988 US) illus Brian Bolland, AM left mainstream comics, forming Mad Love (Publishing) Ltd in 1988 with his wife Phyllis and Debbie Delano, through which he edited and self-published ARRGH! (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia) (graph anth 1988). Subsequent work has tended to move away from genre concerns, though A Small Killing (graph 1990) illus Oscar Zarate is fantasy, and From Hell (graph 1991) begins a long fictional investigation of Jack the Ripper; two instalments of his major project, the non-genre Big Numbers, appeared in 1990. Lost Girls, a psychosexual study of Wendy, Dorothy and Alice, who meet around the time of WWI, began in Taboo #5 (1992). For sf, AM remains of central importance for Watchmen, where the long history of sf visual material in comics form was finally connected to an sf plot of great interest. [RH/JC] MOORE, BRIAN (1921- ) Irish-born Canadian novelist, in the USA from 1959, best known for non-genre works like The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960); he has published detective thrillers under the names Michael Bryan and Bernard Mara. Several of his novels contain strong elements of fantasy, like Fergus (1970) and Cold Heaven (1983), two tales linked by their preoccupation with the dead - dead parents visiting their child; dead husband haunting a widow and challenging the terms of her faith. The Great Victorian Collection (1975) somewhat resembles sf in its allegorical treatment of a professor who dreams into reality a collection of Victorian antiques, which survive his death. The Mangan Inheritance (1979) involves a borderline use of Doppelganger themes. BM's only sf novel proper, Catholics (1972 Canada), set at the end of the century, describes the conflict between fashionable ecumenism and disillusioned conservatism in the Roman Catholic Church. [JC]See also: CANADA. MOORE, C(ATHERINE) L(UCILLE) (1911-1987) US writer who achieved instant fame with her first story, "Shambleau" for Weird Tales in 1933, a femme fatale story set on MARS. She continued to chronicle the exploits of its hero Northwest Smith, most of the series ultimately being assembled in Scarlet Dream (coll of linked stories 1981; vt Northwest Smith 1982); the exceptions are "Nymph of Darkness" (1935) with Forrest J. ACKERMAN, "Quest of the Starstone" (1937) with Henry KUTTNER and "Werewoman" (1938). 4 of the 10 stories in Scarlet Dream had earlier appeared in Shambleau and Others (coll 1953; with 3 of 7 stories cut, vt Shambleau 1958; with 1 story cut, also vt Shambleau UK 1961) and 5 in Northwest of Earth (coll 1954); the remaining stories in these collections, comprising the first SWORD-AND-SORCERY series to feature a female HERO, Jirel, were recombined in Jirel of Joiry (coll of linked stories 1969; vt Black God's Shadow 1977). Jirel also appears in the Northwest Smith story "Quest of the Starstone" (1937), CLM's first collaboration with Henry Kuttner, whom she married in 1940.Most of CLM's and Kuttner's works after this were to some extent collaborations; each writer could reportedly pick up any story where the other had left off. They used a wide diversity of pseudonyms ( KUTTNER for a listing). Kuttner's wit, deftly audacious deployment of ideas and neat exposition well complemented CLM's perhaps greater talents of fluency and assiduity. When they became part of the stable of writers working for John W. CAMPBELL Jr's ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION during WWII they devised their most famous pseudonyms, Lewis Padgett and Laurence O'Donnell, under which they did much of their best work. Kuttner was the primary user of the Padgett name (for details of which see his entry) but the O'Donnell stories were more often CLM's. These include the remarkable "Clash By Night" (1943), whose sequel Fury (1947 as by O'Donnell; 1950; vt Destination Infinity 1958) was a collaboration (although often reprinted as by Kuttner alone); the stories are set in CITIES located UNDER THE SEAS of VENUS after nuclear war has destroyed life on Earth. "Clash by Night" has been reprinted with an alternative sequel by David A. DRAKE in The Jungle (1991). 4 O'Donnell stories were combined with the title short novel (originally signed CLM) in Judgment Night (coll 1952; title novel only 1965), but these did not include the excellent "The Children's Hour" (1944) and the classic Vintage Season (1946; 1990 chap dos with a sequel, In Another Country by Robert SILVERBERG), about time-travelling tourists ( TIME TRAVEL); Vintage Season was intelligently filmed for cable tv in the USA as DISASTER IN TIME (1991, vt Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, vt TIMESCAPE), director David N. Twohy, later released on videotape. CLM's other classic story of the 1940s was "No Woman Born" (1944 as by CLM), about a badly burned dancer who is given a ROBOT body and becomes a CYBORG. In these stories CLM's sometimes extravagant style is carefully controlled and combined with an earnest sentimentality which was underappreciated at the time.CLM and Kuttner wrote a series of novels for STARTLING STORIES in the late 1940s which continued the colourful tradition of the Northwest Smith stories to become archetypes of the hybrid genre of SCIENCE FANTASY, neatly fusing the strengths of CLM's romanticism and Kuttner's vigorous plotting. The Dark World (1946 as by Kuttner; 1965 as by Kuttner) is a pastiche of A. MERRITT's Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) and was itself pastiched in Marion Zimmer BRADLEY's Falcons of Narabedla (1957; 1964); other novels in the same vein are Valley of the Flame (1946 as by Keith Hammond; 1964 as by Kuttner), "Lands of the Earthquake" (1947 as by Kuttner), The Mask of Circe (1948 as by Kuttner; 1971), The Time Axis (1949 as by Kuttner; 1965 as by Kuttner), Beyond Earth's Gates (1949 as "The Portal in the Picture" by Kuttner; 1954 dos as by Padgett) and Well of the Worlds (1952 as by Kuttner; 1953 as by Padgett; vt The Well of the Worlds 1965 as by Kuttner). The first, second and fifth of these were combined in The Startling Worlds of Henry Kuttner (omni 1987). Earth's Last Citadel (1943 Argosy; 1964), with Kuttner, also belongs to this sequence, although one other Startling Stories novel, "Lord of the Storm" (1947 as by Hammond) does not. The attribution of these science-fantasy novels has rarely given CLM the credit which she deserves for her contribution to them.In 1950 Kuttner and CLM went to study at the University of Southern California; although they wrote a number of mystery novels, there were few more sf stories. CLM did one solo sf novel in this period, Doomsday Morning (1957), a futuristic thriller which did not exploit her greatest strengths as a writer. Having graduated in 1956, CLM moved after Kuttner's death into writing for tv, doing scripts for such series as Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip until she remarried in 1963 and abandoned writing for good.CLM was the more prestigious writer by far when she married Kuttner, and remained the better half of their partnership, although unthinkingly sexist reportage has always lavished the greater praise on her husband. Her true status can be accurately judged from the collection The Best of C.L. Moore (coll 1975) ed Lester DEL REY. Other collections in which her work appears include: A Gnome There Was (coll 1950) as by Padgett; Robots Have No Tails (coll 1952 as by Padgett; 1973 as by Kuttner; vt The Proud Robot: The Complete Gallegher Stories 1983 UK); Line to Tomorrow (coll 1954) as by Padgett; No Boundaries (coll 1955) with Kuttner; Clash by Night and Other Stories (coll 1980 UK) with Kuttner, not to be confused with Clash by Night (1952 chap Australia) as by Lawrence O'Donnell; and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and The Fairy Chessmen (coll 1951), as by Padgett, containing 2 full-length tales, the second of which was also published as Chessboard Planet (1956; vt The Far Reality 1963 UK), also as by Padgett. Another collaborative text was MUTANT (fixup 1953 as by Padgett; 1954 UK as by Kuttner). Many collections signed Kuttner or Padgett (for which see KUTTNER) include work on which CLM collaborated with Kuttner. [BS/MJE]Other works: There Shall be Darkness (1954 chap Australia) with Kuttner; most remaining titles as by Kuttner alone (see his entry) have anon contributions by CLM.About the author: Catherine Lucille Moore & Henry Kuttner, a Marriage of Souls and Talent: A Working Bibliography (last rev 1989) by Gordon BENSON Jr and Virgil S. Utter.See also: ARTS; AUTOMATION; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; DIMENSIONS; ECONOMICS; FANTASY; FAR FUTURE; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GAMES AND SPORTS; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; MONSTERS; MUTANTS; PARALLEL WORLDS; RECURSIVE SF; SEX; SPACE OPERA; WOMEN SF WRITERS; WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST. MOORE, HARRIS Joint pseudonym of Alf Harris (1928- ), a Canadian, and Arthur Moore (? - ), whose nationality is not known. Together they wrote two sf novels: Slater's Planet (1971 US), in which a spaceship looks for and finds alien life, and The Marrow Eaters (1972 US), a garish adventure. [JC] MOORE, PATRICK (ALFRED) (1923- ) UK astronomer, scientific journalist, popular tv personality (presenter of The Sky at Night BBC tv series from 1957) and writer, a composer, a Squadron Leader in the R MOORE, RAYLYN (1928- ) US writer who began publishing with "Death is a Woman" for Esquire in 1954. Her one novel of genre interest is What Happened to Emily Goode after the Great Exhibition? (1978). [JC] MOORE, ROBERT Robert Moore WILLIAMS. MOORE, WALLACE Gerard F. CONWAY. MOORE, (JOSEPH) WARD (1903-1978) US writer, initially as well known for his works outside the sf field - like the picaresque Breathe the Air Again (1942) - as for those within. Although he contributed only infrequently to the field, each of his books became something of a classic. His first sf publication was Greener Than You Think (1947; cut 1961), a successful comic SATIRE about a mutated form of grass which absorbs the entire world while governments dither. His second and most famous sf tale, BRING THE JUBILEE (1953), became the definitive ALTERNATE-WORLDS novel (also a TIME-TRAVEL story) in which the South wins the American Civil War. After describing his depressed world, an eminent historian from the disinherited Northern States is given the chance to travel back in time to the vital moment of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, victory in which had won the entire conflict for the South. At this crucial point, the narrator's own actions change history, the South loses the battle, and he is caught in the "past" (because his time machine will not be invented in the new future that has been created); in our own 1877 he writes out his narrative of the history he has changed, and the manuscript is discovered and published in 1953. Concise and elegiac, BRING THE JUBILEE has generated dozens of successor tales in which the Civil War is manipulated for reasons of controversy or nostalgia. WM's third novel, Caduceus Wild (1959 Science Fiction Stories as with Robert Bradford; rev 1978) is a medical DYSTOPIA whose book publication was long delayed. His final book, Joyleg (1962) with Avram DAVIDSON, returns to a nostalgic view of the USA, this time to comic effect, through the story of the eponymous immortal, who is found in this century living deep in the Appalachians because he claims to remain entitled to his Revolutionary War pension. His discoverers learn that a special brew keeps him young, from which point in the novel bureaucratic complications become tedious. WM was not a professional genre writer, and as a possible consequence much of his work seemed to have been written (and certainly it read) as though carefully and leisurely composed for his own pleasure.WM also wrote two of the most notable stories describing nuclear HOLOCAUST and its consequences, "Lot" (1953) and "Lot's Daughter" (1954), featuring a great motorized exodus from a doomed Los Angeles, seen through biblical parallelism as the city of Sodom. The hero jettisons his irredeemably suburban wife and his sons and goes on to make a new and incestuous life with his daughter in the mountains. The ironies attached to his monstrous SURVIVALISM are savage. The stories were used as an uncredited basis for the film PANIC IN YEAR ZERO (1962), losing much of their power in the cleaning-up process. [JC/PN]See also: DISASTER; ECOLOGY; END OF THE WORLD; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MARS; PASTORAL; TABOOS. MOORE-BENTLEY, MARY ANN [r] AUSTRALIA. MORAN, DANIEL Robert E. VARDEMAN. MORAN, DANIEL KEYS (1962- ) US writer who began publishing sf with, for IASFM in 1982, "All the Time in the World", a tale which on expansion became his first novel and the first volume of his projected Tales of the Great Wheel of Existence series, The Armageddon Blues (fixup 1988). The story begins in an unremarkable post- HOLOCAUST USA and features a not unusual mutant barbarian female who hunts for a living; but, on her discovery of a time machine left by aliens, the plot soon begins to move in complicated leaps through time and space, engaging both the protagonist and an entropy-reversing long-lived SUPERMAN (whom she discovers in 1968) in a long arduous campaign to prevent the end of civilization. A second series, Tales of the Continuing Time, is projected to extend to 33 vols, although only 3 have appeared to date, Emerald Eyes (1988),The Long Run (1989) and The Last Dancer (1993). They feature the campaign - which again might be described as long and arduous - of a group of genetically engineered telepaths ( ESP) to maintain their existence in a world of hostile normals. The sequence as a whole is planned to deal with the descendants of the last telepath still to be alive at the close of The Last Dancer. A singleton, The Ring * (1988), tied to a projected film version of Wagner's Ring cycle, places its GODS (rationalized as genetically engineered superbeings) in a SPACE-OPERA venue. DKM displays very considerable energy and some humour, shows a fine VAN VOGT-style recklessness with superman plots, and has demonstrated a copious ambition. [JC] MORE, [Sir] THOMAS (1478-1535) UK writer, lawyer, diplomat and politician. The son of a barrister, he was first educated for the Church, but soon decided upon a secular career; he sat in Parliament and gained steadily in political influence, being knighted in 1521 and occupying several posts under Henry VIII until that king's proposed divorce from Catherine of Aragon; TM's subsequent refusal to swear to the Act of Supremacy led to his execution. He was canonized in 1935. Throughout his career he was intellectually involved with the kind of humanism best exemplified by his friend Erasmus (1466-1536), who spent some time in England, and the work by which TM is popularly remembered, Utopia (Part 2 1516 in Latin; trans Ralphe Robynson including Part 1, written after Part 2, 1551), can be seen as the first substantial humanistic work written by an Englishman.In Part 1, TM, as a character, comes across Raphael Hythloday, a Portuguese seaman who went with Amerigo Vespucci to the New World. Hythloday, having discovered the ISLAND of Utopia on his travels, compares the corrupt state of European society with the ideal world of Utopia. In Part 2, Utopia is described in detail. It is a humanistic reversal of English society: all goods are held in common; the island's 54 shires are constructed and run rationally by citizens who participate fully in the government, though there are also slaves; arms are borne in self-defence only; there is religious tolerance, though not for atheists. Most of the rational ingredients of the hundreds of UTOPIAS (a word which, in TM's usage, is a pun on ou-topos, nowhere, and eu-topos, good place) that followed TM's initiative can be found in Utopia; what many of its successors lacked, however, was TM's insistence that his humanistic, rationally governed world was amenable to change, and that his picture of Utopia had caught only a moment in its evolution towards a more perfect constitution for the life of men on Earth.While the majority of readers of Utopia seem to have assumed that TM was recommending the kind of society he would have liked to live in himself, a number of critics have pointed out that some of his suggestions may have been SATIRE; since irony is largely a matter of tone, and since it is difficult for most modern readers to evaluate the tone of a Latin text, it is almost impossible to prove the case one way or the other. Certainly some aspects of TM's Utopia seem, to the modern reader, rigid and even cruel, but to impute similar emotions to TM himself may be anachronistic sentimentality. However, at least in translation, the book has a kind of dry, ambiguous wit which suggests that to read it as a straightforward prospectus of the good life may be simplistic.The degree to which Utopia and utopias in general can be thought of as relevant to sf, particularly GENRE SF of the 20th century, is controversial; it can be argued that the utopian tradition has contributed only minimally to the fundamentally Romance nature of modern sf (but see PROTO SCIENCE FICTION).The amount of available reading on TM and on utopias is huge; some relevant works are listed under UTOPIAS. [JC/PN]See also: ECONOMICS; FUTUROLOGY. MORE WILD, WILD WEST The WILD, WILD WEST . MOREY, LEO (? -1965) US illustrator, born into a well-to-do family in Peru, educated in the USA, where he studied engineering at Louisiana State University; he worked as an artist in New Orleans before entering sf ILLUSTRATION. He took over from Frank R. PAUL as cover illustrator for AMAZING STORIES after it changed hands in 1929 (his first cover was Feb 1930), and painted 77 covers and many interior black-and-white illustrations for that magazine, and another 12 for Amazing Stories Quarterly. When these magazines were sold again he freelanced, doing covers for small magazines like Super Science Stories and quite a few interiors for Thrilling Wonder Stories, then worked mostly in COMICS. His archetypal PULP-MAGAZINE-style covers used a wider range of colours than Paul's; and, though naive and crudely executed, they were vigorous and dramatic. His imaginary technology was not as interesting as Paul's but his rendering of people was superior. Though perhaps a better artist than Paul - some of his black-and-white work was very imaginative - he was never as popular. [JG/PN] MORGAN, CHRIS (1946- ) UK editor, critic and writer who began publishing sf with "Clown Fish and Anemone" for Science Fiction Monthly in 1975. His fiction is generally unexceptional, though some stories - such as "Losing Control" (1989), about the crew of a crashed starship surviving by means of incestuous marriage and a strange form of symbiosis with an ALIEN species - involve interesting and innovative ideas. CM's main contribution has been as a critic, notably in The Shape of Futures Past: The Story of Prediction (1980), a comprehensive and valuable survey of pre-1945 PREDICTIONS about the future. Future Man (1980) is a history of sf speculations on possible biological and behavioural changes in humanity. [NT]Other works: Fritz Leiber: A Bibliography 1934-1979 (1979 chap); Facts and Fallacies: A Book of Definitive Mistakes and Misguided Predictions (1981) with David LANGFORD; Dark Fantasies (anth 1989), collecting original stories.See also: PSEUDO-SCIENCE. MORGAN, DAN (1925- ) UK writer and professional guitarist, about which instrument he wrote 2 successful manuals, Guitar (1965) and Spanish Guitar (1982). He began publishing sf with "Alien Analysis" for NW in 1952. His first sf novels, Cee-Tee Man (1955) and The Uninhibited (1957 NW; 1961), were routine adventures, but The Richest Corpse in Show Business (1966) stood out for its slapstick guying of sf conventions. He published the Venturer Twelve SPACE-OPERA series - A Thunder of Stars (1968), Seed of Stars (1972 US) and The Neutral Stars (1973 US) all with John KIPPAX - and the much more interesting Sixth Perception series: The New Minds (1967), The Several Minds (1969), The Mind Trap (1970 US) and The Country of the Mind (1975). In this latter series, which contains his most effective work, a band of people linked by their PSI POWERS solve problems, often in opposition to the world at large. Though not a powerful writer by any means, and though he has never transcended the US action-tale conventions to which he is so clearly indebted, it is all the same surprising that DM is so ignored. [JC]Other works: Inside (1971); The High Destiny (1973 US); The Concrete Horizon (1976).See also: ESP; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MUSIC. MORGAN, DAVE [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. MORGAN, J.M. (? - ) US writer known only for her/his Eden sequence of post- HOLOCAUST tales set in a world devastated by a biological-warfare experiment ( Hyperlink to: BIOLOGY) gone awry. Volumes to date are Desert Eden (1991),Beyond Eden (1992) and Future Eden (1992). Between the Devil and the Deep (1992) is horror featuring the Loch Ness monster. [JC] MORGAN, SCOTT [s] Henry KUTTNER. MORK AND MINDY US tv series (1978-82). Miller-Milkis Productions and Henderson Production Co. in association with Paramount Television/ABC. Created Garry K. Marshall, Dale McRaven, Joe Gauberg. Prod Marshall. Writers included McRaven, April Kelly, Tom Tenowich, Ed Scharlach, Bruce Johnson. Dirs included Howard Storm, Bob Claver. 1 50min pilot episode followed by 92 25min episodes. Colour.Filling the gap in sitcoms about aliens viewing Earth between MY FAVORITE MARTIAN (1963-6) and ALF (1986-current), although its premise is more in line with Gore VIDAL's Visit to a Small Planet (1956; 1960), MAM was a spin-off from Happy Days (1974-83); Mork from Ork (Robin Williams) first appeared in the 1950s-set sitcom in an episode entitled "My Favorite Orkan". Response to the character - an innocent in very 1970s multicoloured braces, bewildered and amazed by the entire Universe, and given to cries of "nanu nanu"-was so positive that Garry K. Marshall developed a series around him, in which he arrived on Earth in a giant-egg spaceship and went to Boulder, Colorado, where he moved in with the family of Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) and got a job in their music store. Although early episodes present Mork as a childlike, presexual character, the writers eventually had the couple marry and Mork give birth, in the backwards Orkan fashion, to the middle-aged Mearth (Jonathan Winters), who grew younger. Regular players included Conrad Janis and Elizabeth Kerr (as Mindy's father and grandmother), Robert Donner, Tom Poston, and the voice of Ralph James as Orson, Mork's Orkan leader. Often trite in its moralizing, the show was sometimes inspired in its skewed vision of life on Earth; and Williams, not yet the major screen personality he has become, was allowed to demonstrate his versatility as a clown. [KN]See also: SATIRE. MORLAND, DICK Pseudonym used by UK writer and academic Reginald Hill (1936- ) for his sf. Both of his sf novels as DM, Heart Clock (1973) and Albion! Albion! (1974), use DYSTOPIAN techniques to describe visions of repellent future UKs. In the first, citizens are fitted with termination devices for the government to use according to actuarial needs; in the second, England has been literally taken over by soccer rowdies and is divided into competing clubs with the citizenry as violent supporters. Both books are heavy-handed but enjoyably sharp-tongued. Hill, who also writes detections under his own name and as Patrick Ruell and Charles Underhill, has published one sf novel under his own name, One Small Step: A Dalziel and Pascoe Novella (1990), a detection set on the Moon in AD2010. [JC] MORLEY, CHRISTOPHER (DARLINGTON) (1890-1957) US man of letters and novelist who remains best known for mildly fantasticated (but not fantasy) tales like Parnassus on Wheels (1917) and The Haunted Bookshop (1919), and for Kitty Foyle (1939), a sentimental romance. Where the Blue Begins (1922), a beast-fable, mildly satirizes human life in New York City by substituting dogs for people, deadpan.Thunder on the Left (1925), though also essentially a fantasy, uses its TIME-TRAVEL theme to transport its child protagonist into a taxing future. The Trojan Horse (1937) employs the Homeric tale to satirize modern life. The narrator of The Swiss Family Manhattan (1932), victim of a Zeppelin crash which deposits his family atop a New York skyscraper under construction, at first thinks Americans are "anthropoids" ( APES AND CAVEMEN), but the text soon becomes a mundane SATIRE. [JC]Other work: The Arrow (1927 chap; exp vt as coll The Arrow, and Two Other Stories 1927 UK). MORLEY, FELIX (1894-1982) US writer whose Gumption Island (1956) features a Russian superweapon which knocks some Americans on an island back millions of years in time. [JC] MORLEY, WILFRED OWEN [s] Robert A.W. LOWNDES. MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE Film (1985). Dir Mike Hodges, starring Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones, Joanne Pearce, Jimmy Nail, Paul Bown, Dinsdale Landen. Screenplay Jones, Smith, developed Bob Mercer. 97 mins, cut to 91 mins. Colour.Very stupid ALIENS (identical in appearance and behaviour to humans) have rented a spaceship to go on holiday. They crashland on a UK motorway and later become media stars. This remarkably unfunny film, written by and starring two tv comedians - it looks like a tv sketch blown up out of all proportion - is partly set in the USA in an attempt to broaden its appeal, but what humour it has is impenetrably English; the satirical possibilities are barely explored (in contrast to EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY [1988]). MFOS was a comedown for director Hodges, whose previous sf movies were The TERMINAL MAN (1974) and FLASH GORDON (1980). [PN] MORRESSY, JOHN (1930- ) US writer and professor of English at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire. He began his sf career in 1971 - after 2 non-genre novels - with "Accuracy" for FSF, where most of his short fiction has since appeared. JM's early books were generally SPACE OPERA, through which medium he constructed a series of interesting ALIEN societies, and most of them shared a common galactic background: a somewhat disordered polity still dominated by humans, though with no imperial government. Within this scenario, his stories tended to the dark and extravagant end of the sf-epic spectrum, as in the Del Whitby trilogy - Starbrat (1972), Nail Down the Stars (1973; vt Stardrift 1975) and Under a Calculating Star (1975) - which intriguingly tells the same tale of interstellar intrigue and revolution from three partial points of view; none of the protagonists (orphans or impostors all) knows the whole story. Also set explicitly in the same galactic scene were A Law for the Stars (1976 Canada) and Frostworld and Dreamfire (1977). The latter is a strongly constructed and occasionally rousing epic of a metamorphic humanoid's search for a breeding-partner; the last of his race on his native planet, he must find her elsewhere or the race dies. Later sf works, like The Mansions of Space (1983), continue to inhabit the same loosely defined, dark-textured milieu, but JM's 1970s juveniles were not identifiably set there: The Windows of Forever (1975) is an effective TIME-TRAVEL tale, and The Humans of Ziax II (1974 chap) and The Drought on Ziax II (1978 chap) apply the concerns of ECOLOGY to a planet colonized by humans, though the natives of Ziax survive in the jungles. In the 1980s JM concentrated mainly on two fantasy sequences: the Iron Angel series - Ironbrand (1980), Graymantle (1981), Kingsbane (1982) and The Time of the Annihilator (1985) - and the Kedrigern series, about a wizard - A Voice for Princess (1986), The Questing of Kedrigern (1987), Kedrigern in Wanderland (1988), Kedrigern and the Charming Couple (1990) and A Remembrance for Kedrigern (1990). This latter series, in strong contrast to JM's early work, is determinedly light-hearted. His first novels are perhaps more likely to last. [JC]Other work: The Extraterritorial (1977 Canada). MORRILL, ROWENA ROWENA. MORRIS, A.G. [s] Katherine MACLEAN. MORRIS, ALFRED (? -? ) UK writer whose Looking Ahead!: A Tale of Adventure (Not by the Author of "Looking Backward") (1892) conveys its anti-Edward BELLAMY and anti-socialist argument through a ROBINSONADE plot which involves its young protagonist, shipwrecked with his crew on a desert island, in a series of political experiments. Socialism does not work; monarchy serves well. After half a century, he returns to England, which has gone to ruin after a socialist coup of 1905. [JC] MORRIS, CHRIS Working name of US rock musician and writer Christopher Crosby Morris (1946- ); he is married to Janet E. MORRIS, who played bass in his band and with whom he has written several sf novels (see her entry). [JC] MORRIS, GOUVERNEUR (1876-1953) US banker and writer, great-grandson of the Founding Father Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) and extremely prolific in his day as an author of short fiction. Some of his work is sf and fantasy, beginning with a prehistoric tale, The Pagan's Progress (1904), in which the hero begins to acquire spiritual values. The Voice in the Rice (1910) is a lost-race novel whose contemporary narrator discovers an Antebellum society in a swamp. Other titles include The Footprint and Other Stories (coll 1908), It and Other Stories (coll 1912) - which includes "Back There in the Grass" (1911 Colliers), an enduring demonstration of the terrors of BIOLOGY in early sf-If You Touch Them They Vanish (1913) and, with Charles W. Goddard, The Goddess (1915). [JC]See also: ORIGIN OF MAN. MORRIS, JANET E(LLEN) (1946- ) US writer who gained some note as bass player 1972-5 in the band named after her husband, Chris MORRIS; he subsequently collaborated with JEM on several sf novels, always as Chris Morris. She herself began writing with the ambitious Silistra sequence, comprising High Couch of Silistra (1977; rev vt Returning Creation 1984), The Golden Sword (1977), Wind from the Abyss (1978) and The Carnelian Throne (1979). Toughly told and intellectually extremist, the sequence (prematurely) proclaimed an ambition on her part to write at the highest possible level; it cannot be said that she has quite fulfilled this ambition. Silistra intriguingly presents a society complexly conceived in terms of patterns (some literal) of cultural and biological bondage. Already, a sense of historical analogies pervades the texts, and in the Dream Dancer trilogy - Dream Dancer (1980 UK), Cruiser Dreams (1981) and Earth Dreams (1982) - this becomes explicit; wafted away from Earth, the young protagonist of the series climbs into the upper echelons of a culture whose assumptions about behaviour reflect the world of Hellenistic Greece. The main sf instrument deployed in these books - starships run by AIs which establish symbiotic relationships with humans - prefigures JEM's growing interest in the combat side of history, and the sequence itself becomes nightmarishly complicated in its traversal of implied analogies from the past. In the Tempus fantasies, based on the Thieves' World SHARED-WORLD enterprise - Beyond Sanctuary * (1985), Beyond the Veil * (1985), Beyond Wizardwall * (1986), Tempus * (coll of linked stories 1987), City at the Edge of Time * (1988) with Chris Morris, Tempus Unbound * (1989) with Chris Morris, and Storm Seed * (1990) with Chris Morris - the traversals of historical material become even more hectic. In the Heroes in Hell shared-world enterprise, which JEM co-created with C.J. CHERRYH - Heroes in Hell * (anth 1986) with Cherryh, Rebels in Hell * (anth 1986) with Cherryh, The Gates of Hell * (fixup 1986) with Cherryh, Masters in Hell * (anth 1987), Kings in Hell * (1987) with Cherryh, Angels in Hell * (anth 1987), War in Hell * (anth 1988), The Little Helliad * (1988) with Chris Morris, Explorers in Hell * (1989) with David A. DRAKE and Prophets in Hell * (anth 1989) - the result is something like chaos. In these works, which occupy much of JEM's bibliography, the sharp cognitive focus has softened, and the use of female protagonists whose sexual natures are controversially foregrounded has also become somewhat routinized.More interesting are some of the singletons, almost always written in collaboration; they are deeply engaged in military matters, violent, often extremely bloody, and profoundly cynical about all governments and their agencies. The 40-Minute War (1984) with Chris Morris presents an utterly disastrous nuclear HOLOCAUST brought about by stupidity; only by changing history through a commandeered TIME-TRAVEL device is the world saved. Active Measures (1985) with David A. Drake involves spying activities in the NEAR FUTURE. M*E*D*U*S*A (1986) with Chris Morris describes Sky War activities in a similar venue. Outpassage (1988) with Chris Morris is ableak military adventure, and the Threshold Terminal sequence -Threshold (1990),Trust Territory (1992) and The Stalk (1994), all with Chris Morris - generates a similarly bleak vision of a Solar System engaging in agonistic conflicts and interstellar diplomacy within the confines of the eponymous space artifact. Throughout her career, JEM has consistently worked to strip her language and plots of ornateness and idiosyncracy, and her collaborative works are, at times, vividly efficient. At other times, however, little sense of JEM's individual gifts as a writer with strong convictions survives the impersonality. [JC]Other works: I, the Sun (1983), historical novel; Afterwar (anth 1985); Warlord! (1987); Kill Ratio (1987) with David A. Drake; Target (1989) with Drake; the two Hawkeye novels: Hawkeye (1991) and Cobra (1991), both as by Daniel Stryker.See also: ESCHATOLOGY; REINCARNATION. MORRIS, JIM (1940- ) US writer whose The Sheriff of Purgatory (1979; rev vt Spurlock: Sheriff of Purgatory 1987) describes, with moments of sharpness, a conflict between the sheriff and the Mafia, after the HOLOCAUST, in the eponymous Arkansas county. The action soon moves to a devastated New York City. [JC]Other works: Breeder (1988). MORRIS, RALPH Probably pseudonymous author of the ROBINSONADE A Narrative of the Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel . . . Taken from his own Mouth, by Mr Ralph Morris (1751), which involves a voyage to the MOON and the discovery of unearthly creatures there. The protagonists are unaware of where they are marooned, although the reader is allowed to know. [JC] MORRIS, WILLIAM (1834-1896) UK artist and writer whose greatest fame rests on his work as a designer of furniture and fabrics. His efforts to reform the prevalent vulgarity of mid-Victorian taste and to preserve standards of craftsmanship placed him in radical and irresolvable conflict with the basic tendencies of the industrial era, then in the first vigour of its youth. This conflict was variously expressed in his writing. In his early poems, collected in The Defence of Guenevere (coll 1858) and The Earthly Paradise (coll in 3 vols 1868-70), WM created the literary equivalent of Pre-Raphaelite paintings: romances of febrile charm and phthisic delicacy. The relation of these poems to their own time is one of studied and disdainful avoidance. In life such avoidance was to be denied him. He was - at least emotionally-cuckolded on an Arthurian scale by his friend and mentor, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). He became involved in POLITICS through his efforts, beginning in 1878, to save historical buildings from demolition and unwise "restoration". This involvement led him, remarkably quickly, to an active and enduring commitment to socialism.It was from this unusual (for its day) perspective of orthodox Marxism that WM wrote his UTOPIA, News from Nowhere, or An Epoch of Rest (1890 US; rev 1891 UK). Written in immediate response to Edward BELLAMY's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), the novel propels its dreaming narrator from the England of WM's day into a perfected England from which all traces of poverty, squalor and industrial unsightliness have been effaced, an England that bears notable similarities to the bucolic dream-landscapes of his early poetry. As a work of fiction, this most translucent of utopias exhibits all the clarity, grace - and narrative force - of WM's best wallpaper designs. Where the book is most visibly Marxist in inspiration, as in the capsule history of a proletarian revolution in Chapter XVII, it is also most densely and compellingly imagined. Its influence on later utopian writing has been negligible, and on GENRE SF still less, since WM's vision is so relentlessly PASTORAL, looking back to an idealized Middle Ages - which he also represented in the earlier and structurally related socialist romance, "A Dream of John Ball" (in A Dream of John Ball, and A King's Lesson [coll 1888], later issued in its own right as A Dream of John Ball [1915 US]) - rather than to the urban, technologically advanced "future" of common consensus.During the composition of News from Nowhere the Socialist League, which WM had founded in 1884 and funded thereafter, dissolved as a result of an excess of democracy. This event encouraged, by reaction, WM's tendency to make his later writing into a species of highly ornamented wish-fulfilment from which the less savoury odours of daily life were artfully exorcized. The prose romances of his last years - such as The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896) - have the same reluctantly valedictory air as his most defiantly escapist poetry but little of the poetry's hypnotic harmony. He had become, once more, "the idle singer of an empty day". It is these late romances, however, through their acknowledged influence on C.S. LEWIS, J.R.R. TOLKIEN and lesser writers of the SWORD-AND-SORCERY subgenre, that have most impinged on sf.WM also translated Icelandic sagas and several Greek and Roman classics. [TMD]Other works: The Life and Death of Jason (1867), a poem; A Tale of the House of the Wolfings, and All the Kindreds of the Mark (1889), an historical romance with fantasy elements; The Roots of the Mountains (1889); The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891); Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895); The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897); The Sundering Flood (1898). Alfred NOYES assembled WM's early work in poetry and prose as The Early Romances of William Morris (coll 1907), ; with poetry cut, vt Golden Wings, and Other Stories 1976 US including the eight stories which originally appeared in Oxford and Cambridge Magazine throughout 1856, some being separately published after his death: The Hollow Land (1856; 1897 chap US), Golden Wings (1856; 1904 chap US) and Gertha's Lovers (1856; 1905 chap US). Later collections include: Prose and Poetry (1856-1879) (coll 1913); Early Romances (coll 1924); Selections from the Prose Works (coll 1931), Three Works by William Morris: A Dream of John Ball, The Pilgrims of Hope, News from Nowhere (omni 1968 US); Svend and his Brethren (coll 1909 chap US); The Juvenilia of William Morris, with a Checklist and Unpublished Early Poems (coll 1983 US).About the author: Much has been written about WM. Studies of interest include: William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955) by E.P. THOMPSON; William Morris, the Marxist Dreamer (trans 1978) by Paul Meier; William Morris: A Reference Guide (1985) by G.L. Aho.See also: ARTS; HISTORY OF SF; SLEEPER AWAKES. MORRISON, RICHARD and ROBERT Robert A.W. LOWNDES. MORRISSEY, J(OSEPH) L(AWRENCE) (1907-1981) UK-born writer, almost certainly a US resident in his later years, who began publishing thrillers in the 1930s and 1940s. His sf was restricted to the 1960s. City of the Hidden Eyes * (1960 UK) with Philip Levene was adapted from the latter's BBC radio serial about underground monsters threatening the surface world. As Richard Saxon JLM wrote several volumes of inconspicuous but not entirely negligible sf, including The Stars Came Down (1964 UK), which is a UTOPIA, The Hour of the Phoenix (1964 UK; 1965 US as by Henry Richards), Cosmic Crusade (1964 UK) and Future for Sale (1964 UK). [JC] MORROW, GRAY Working name of US illustrator Dwight Graydon Morrow (1934- ). Like a number of sf artists, GM began in COMICS, working with Atlas, Warren and other companies, although he did some sf covers for If and Gal in 1959 and through the 1960s produced covers and black-and-white interiors for these two - carrying over much of his lively (if sometimes crude) comics style and often using a distinctive "pen and wash" - as well as for AMZ, FSF and Fantastic. During the mid-1960s he began painting book covers also, especially for Avon Books, BALLANTINE BOOKS and ACE BOOKS, doing over 100 PERRY RHODAN covers for the latter. His comics work has never completely stopped: he contributed to HEAVY METAL and in the 1980s took over illustration of the FLASH GORDON comic strip. The Illustrated Roger Zelazny (1978) by ZELAZNY and GM gives a good idea of his style. He has 3 times been nominated for a HUGO. [PN]See also: MARVEL COMICS. MORROW, JAMES (KENNETH) (1947- ) US writer who lectured and taught in the 1970s, served as a contributing editor to Media and Methods magazine 1978-80, and produced material for Boston tv 1979-84. His first book was Moviemaking Illustrated: The Comicbook Filmbook (1973). Through the 1980s he produced several textbooks for children, along with at least 5 children's novels beginning with The Quasar Kids (1987). Unsurprisingly, his first sf novel, The Wine of Violence (1981), shows in its smooth competence clear signs of JM's wide experience, though even here can be sensed a tendency, which has increased over the years, for his control over the suspension of disbelief to falter - quite deliberately, perhaps - at rhetorical high-points. That these slippages almost invariably occur at moments when JM wishes to convey an intense ethical concern for the human race does not alter the fact that, for some readers, they weaken the fictional context from which they derive their specific meaning. The Wine of Violence is set on a planet long colonized by humans, who have divided into two societies, the nomad Brain-Eaters, who do precisely that, and the Quetzalians, who discharge their human aggressiveness into a symbolic conduit which encircles their city walls. Chances to engage in humanist sarcasms - witness the very name Brain-Eaters - are rarely missed as the plot develops, and the Quetzalians are forced by a group of human visitors to the planet to come to grips, pyrrhically, with the vile nomads. JM's second novel, The Continent of Lies (1984), also set on a planet settled by humans, is less shaken by rhetorical overlays. With wit and concision it traces the attempts of its protagonist to track down an evil category of "dreambean" - good dreambeans being fruits which generate innocuous entertainment-hallucinations when eaten - before it can madden its victims into thinking of it as a god. Some moments of existential doubt intervene, but all comes right in the end.With THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS (1986) JM abandoned the galactic stage, for which he clearly felt only muted sympathy, and came to Earth; as the book begins, a nuclear HOLOCAUST kills all but a few, who are then transported via submarine to Antarctica, where they are put on trial by the "unadmitted" - those souls who will now never be born. As an idea it is perhaps more effective in paraphrase than within the constraints of a fictional narrative, though the decency of the book clearly transcends the inevitable disembodiedness of its message. Only Begotten Daughter (1990) tells the story of Christ's sister, Julie Katz, whose virgin birth derives from the fact that her father has contributed to a sperm bank and whose life in other ways mirrors and affectionately spoofs the Christian version. Counterpointed to that life, which is told with sympathy and verve, are the stories of Satan and a fundamentalist minister, the former being perhaps the more plausible creation; Julie's preordained destiny plays out against these figures. Short stories - JM has not been a prolific writer of them - are assembled in Swatting at the Cosmos (coll 1990), which includes the NEBULA-winning "Bible Stories for Adults, No.17: The Deluge" (1988). City of Truth (1991 UK), a novella, conveys in parable form some sharp lessons about the nature of art and the subtle virtues of untruth, with considerable wit; it won the 1992 Nebula for Best Novella. Towing Jehovah (1994), in which the body of God is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean and its towing arranged by the Catholic Church, carries on JM's long satirical examination of the visions of destiny which have governed, and distorted, Western civilization.JM's work has been likened to that of Kurt VONNEGUT Jr, and similarities are indeed very evident. JM could easily be seen as a more attractive author than his mentor, and certainly he couches his vision of the world's plight more happily than Vonnegut has ever done. But, while Vonnegut never disbelieves in the medium of his art, JM has great difficulty giving credence to the artifices of fiction. This may be the price paid for passion and clarity of mind; and it may be a price worth paying. [JC]Other work: The Adventures of Smoke Bailey * (1983 chap), a computer-game tie; 3 NEBULA anthologies: Nebula Awards 26 (anth 1992), Nebula Awards 27 (anth 1993) and Nebula Awards 28 (anth 1994).See also: ARTS; DISASTER; END OF THE WORLD; LEISURE; MESSIAHS; PERCEPTION; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION. MORSELLI, GUIDO [r] ITALY. MORT EN DIRECT, LA (vt Death Watch) Film (1979). Selta Film/Little Bear/Sara Film/Gaumont/Antenne 2/TV 15. Coprod and dir Bernard Tavernier, starring Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max Von Sydow. Screenplay David Rayfiel, Tavernier, based on The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974; vt The Unsleeping Eye) by D.G. COMPTON. 130 mins. Colour. This French/West German coproduction chose, perhaps eccentrically, to locate its DYSTOPIAN city of the future in Glasgow, and the film was shot in English. In a bored NEAR FUTURE where illness has been almost eradicated, death has an obscene fascination. A tv station, keen to broadcast a real-life soap opera, sends cameraman Roddy (Keitel) to film, without her knowledge, the last days of Katherine (Schneider), who helps computers write romantic novels and who is dying of a rare disease; this is achieved by surgically implanting in his skull a camera that operates through his eyes. The evocation of the future is perfunctory: just a dash of urban blight. Attention is tremulously on the morbid relationship of invalid and cameraman. He blinds himself; she (who, we and she discover, is not really dying at all) commits suicide. As an attack on MEDIA invasion of privacy - a popular subject in sociological sf - this suffers from morbid overkill, itself reminiscent of soap opera. [PN] MORTON, J(OHN CAMERON AUDRIEU) B(INGHAM MICHAEL) (1893-1979) UK writer primarily known as Beachcomber, a house name of which he had sole use for half a century, and under which he wrote a comic column for the London Daily Express 1924-75. He specialized in long, serialized fantastical spoof narratives whose protagonists were themselves hyperbolic comic types, this material being re-sorted in several collections from Mr Thake (coll 1929) to Beachcomber: The Works of J.B. Morton (coll 1974; vt The Bumper Beachcomber) ed Richard Ingrams. Of his actual novels, Drink Up, Gentlemen (1930), a near-future SATIRE on English mores after the fashion of his mentor Hilaire BELLOC, is sf. The borderline Skylighters (1934) mocks a new religion. 1933 and Still Going Wrong (coll 1932) assembles verse satires, and The Death of the Dragon: New Fairy Tales (coll 1934) assembles fantasies. [JC] MOSKOWITZ, SAM (1920- ) US sf historian and anthologist; he also worked, as Sam Martin, as an editor of trade magazines for the frozen-foods industry, retiring in 1985. For a long time SM, a prominent member of sf FANDOM since 1936, has been among the best known of all historians and commentators from within GENRE SF; his work in this field antedates that of nearly all non-genre historians of the field, with the notable exception of J.O. BAILEY. His first book was The Immortal Storm (1951 mimeographed; 1954), a history of early sf fandom which recounted the feuds of the late 1930s among the then-tiny group of sf fans with a passion and detail quite unabraded by the passing years, and which won a 1955 HUGO. More important were SM's profiles of sf authors and discussions of sf themes, which appeared in various sf magazines, primarily AMZ, from 1959. Many of these were collected (and revised) in 3 vols: Explorers of the Infinite (coll 1963), which concentrates on the period up to 1940; Seekers of Tomorrow (coll 1966), which concentrates on writers 1940-65; and Strange Horizons (coll 1976), about such sf themes as RELIGION, women ( WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION), Blacks and antisemitism in sf. SM's scholarship and criticism were not to everybody's taste, and these works have at times been criticized within the genre and by academics for inaccuracies and a not always fluent style. But the fact remains that, though some of his data and conclusions have been argued, SM did more original research in this field than any other scholar of his period and few since; no later history of sf has not made use of SM's painstaking work, especially his research into the early HISTORY OF SF in periodical publications. Much of this work appeared in 3 further vols which gave long historical introductions to collections of stories: Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 (anth 1968), Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (anth 1970) and The Crystal Man (coll 1973) by Edgar Page MITCHELL, ed SM. 3 later books in the same vein are Far Future Calling: Uncollected Science Fiction and Fantasies (coll 1980) by Olaf STAPLEDON, ed with a long biographical study by SM, Science Fiction in Old San Francisco: Vol. 1, History of the Movement from 1854 to 1890 (anth 1980) ed SM, and Into the Sun and Other Stories: Science Fiction in Old San Francisco, Vol 2 (coll 1980) by Robert Duncan MILNE, ed SM. Although SM is not an academic, and does not always lay out his findings as carefully as academics might like - being sometimes rather cavalier in withholding his sources of information - the above books are a major contribution to sf scholarship. This contribution won him a PILGRIM AWARD in 1981.SM's professional connection with sf includes a brief stint as a writer, with 3 stories in 1941, the first being a SPACE-OPERA novella of distant galaxies, "The Way Back" for Comet Stories, and a couple more in the mid-1950s. He was an sf literary agent 1940-41, and managing editor for the last GERNSBACK magazine, SCIENCE FICTION PLUS, 1952-4. He also edited a brief, 4-issue revival of WEIRD TALES 1973-4. He ghost-edited a number of ANTHOLOGIES, including 4 which appeared as ed Leo MARGULIES, 2 as ed Roger ELWOOD and 3 as ed Alden H. Norton. He was special consultant on and largely responsible for Contact (anth 1963) ed Noel Keyes and The Pulps (anth 1970) ed Tony Goodstone.SM also ed the following: Life Everlasting (coll 1947) by David H. KELLER with intro by SM; Editor's Choice in Science Fiction (anth 1954); The Coming of the Robots (anth 1963); Exploring Other Worlds (anth 1963); A Martian Odyssey and Other Classics of Science Fiction (coll 1966) by Stanley G. WEINBAUM with intro by SM; Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction (anth 1966; vt in 3 vols Doorway into Time 1966, Microcosmic God 1968 and The Vortex Blasters 1968; vt in 2 vols as Doorway into Time 1973 and The Microcosmic God 1975); Strange Signposts (anth 1966) with Roger Elwood; Three Stories (anth 1967; vt A Sense of Wonder 1967 UK with intro severely cut; vt The Moon Era 1969 US); The Human Zero (anth 1967) with Elwood; Masterpieces of Science Fiction (anth 1967); The Time Curve (anth 1968) with Elwood; The Man who Called Himself Poe (anth 1969; vt A Man Called Poe 1972 UK), a collection of essays, poems and stories about Edgar Allan POE, plus 2 stories arguably by Poe; Other Worlds, Other Times (anth 1969) with Elwood; Alien Earth (anth 1969) with Elwood; Great Untold Stories of Fantasy and Horror (anth 1969) with Alden H. Norton; Futures to Infinity (anth 1970); The Citadel of Fear (1970) by Francis STEVENS, intro by SM; Ghostly by Gaslight (anth 1971) with Norton; The Space Magicians (anth 1971) with Norton; Ultimate World (1971) by Hugo GERNSBACK, intro by SM, a late and dreadful novel by Gernsback ed to half manuscript length by SM; Horrors Unknown (anth 1971); When Women Rule (anth 1972); Horrors in Hiding (anth 1973) with Norton; Horrors Unseen (anth 1974); The Raid of "Le Vengeur" (coll 1974), hitherto uncollected stories by George GRIFFITH, intro by SM; Out of the Storm (coll 1975) by William Hope HODGSON with a 25,000-word critical biography by SM; "A Dream of X" (1977) by Hodgson, illus Stephen E. FABIAN, a short version of The Night Land (1912), intro by SM; A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool (coll 1985), Merritt marginalia, with long biographical intro by SM; Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Nils Helmer Frome: A Recollection of One of Canada's Oldest Science Fiction Fans (anth 1989), letters, articles, etc., by and about Frome, many about his relationship with Lovecraft.SM's other work includes his editorship of the 2 useful HYPERION PRESS series of reprints of sf classics in 1974 and 1976; the Hyperion series includes also reprints of 6 of SM's most important historical works. [PN]Other works: Peace and Olaf Stapledon (1949), Hugo Gernsback: Father of Science Fiction (1959), A Canticle for P. Schuyler Miller (1975) and Charles Fort: A Radical Corpuscle (1976), four privately printed pamphlets.See also: COLLECTIONS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DEFINITIONS OF SF; GENERATION STARSHIPS; NEW WAVE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; SF IN THE CLASSROOM; SOCIOLOGY. MOST DANGEROUS MAN ALIVE, THE Film (1958). Trans-Global/Columbia. Dir Allan Dwan, starring Ron Randell, Debra Paget, Elaine Stewart, Anthony Caruso. Screenplay James Leicester, Phillip Rock, based on a story by Rock, Michael Pate. 82 mins, cut to 76 mins. B/w.In this unusual blend of sf and crime movie, a framed gangster (Randell) escapes from prison and hides out in the desert, where he is caught up in a nuclear test. He survives but discovers that he is slowly turning to steel. This enables him to exact revenge on those who framed him - he can absorb bullets - but the process gradually robs him of humanity, which worries the woman who loves him (Stewart) and renders his seduction by his two-timing ex-mistress (Paget) rather difficult. He is eventually destroyed by soldiers wielding flame-throwers. The film is cheaply made and its script banal, but veteran director Dwan imbues it with a certain harsh power. [JB/PN] MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD, THE (vt The Chairman) Film (1969). Apjac/20th Century-Fox. Dir J. Lee Thompson, starring Gregory Peck, Anne Heywood, Arthur Hill, Conrad Yama. Screenplay Ben Maddow, based on The Most Dangerous Man in the World by Jay Richard Kennedy. 104 mins. Colour.A distinguished SCIENTIST (Peck) has a transmitter implanted in his head and is sent to China with the object of convincing Chairman Mao that he is a political defector. It is hoped he will learn the formula of a new enzyme, developed by the Chinese, that will enable crops to grow anywhere in the world; everything he says or hears goes via satellite to the intelligence team in London - who, unknown to him, have also implanted a small bomb in his head as insurance. This thriller is no more than mildly effective, its main oddity being the role, at the end, of the Russian army as valiant rescuers. [JB/PN] MOST THRILLING SCIENCE FICTION EVER TOLD, THE One of the many reprint DIGEST-size magazines published by Sol Cohen's Ultimate Publishing Co., using reprint rights acquired when he bought AMAZING STORIES and FANTASTIC. 42 issues early 1966-July 1975. Issues #1-#13 and #18 appeared as The Most Thrilling SF Ever Told, other issues as Thrilling Science Fiction Adventures (#14-#17) and Thrilling Science Fiction (#19 to the end). The publishing schedule was rather irregularly quarterly. The first 6 issues were undated; the first 25 issues were numbered consecutively, but thereafter only month/year was used. Most issues used stories of medium to good quality by well known names from the period when Cele GOLDSMITH edited AMZ and Fantastic, but in #14-#25 older (and dreadful) stories by obscure authors were published, probably because of a dispute between Cohen and the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA regarding payment for the reprints. Another Ultimate magazine, SCIENCE FICTION (ADVENTURE) CLASSICS, merged with Thrilling Science Fiction for its last 2 issues in 1975. [BS] MOSURA (vt Mothra) Film (1961). Toho. Dir Inoshiro Honda, starring Frankie Sakai, Hiroshi Koizumi, Kyoko Kagawa and the twins Emi and Yumi Ito. Screenplay Shinichi Sekizawa, based on a story by Shinichiro Nakamura, Takehido Fukunaga, Yoshi Hotta. 100 mins. Colour.Aficionados of Japanese MONSTER MOVIES find their delight not only in the monsters themselves: the attraction depends also on the sheer bizarreness, to Western eyes and ears, of the stories and dialogue. M is perhaps the most notably grotesque of all in this respect, its relatively mundane giant moth being amply compensated for by the eccentricities of the story. Two 6in (15cm) women (the Ito twins), kidnapped from an island whose inhabitants have been mutated by radiation, are used as nightclub singers by an evil "Rosilican" (i.e., US) showman (Kagawa). Back on the island a huge, venerated egg hatches in response to prayers from the local natives, and the giant caterpillar that emerges swims off to Japan to save the dwarf-girls, whose piping singing voices act as a homing signal. It makes a mess of Tokyo and spins a cocoon; the giant moth that emerges goes off to Rosilica (where the showman has retreated) and saves the girls. This is Toho's most sophisticated MONSTER MOVIE; its imagery, though lunatic, is surprisingly poignant.Mosura never developed the following of GOJIRA (Godzilla) and GAMERA, but did reappear 4 times, in Mosura Tai Gojira (1964; vt Gojira Tai Mothra; released in English as Godzilla Vs. The Thing; vt Godzilla Vs. Mothra), where, called by the tiny twins, she saves Tokyo from Gojira; Ghidorah Sandai Kaiju Chikyu Saidai No Kessan (1964; vt Chikyu Saidai No Kessan; released in English as Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster), in which she defends Earth from an alien monster, helped out by Gojira and RADON (Rodan) when she can't do the job on her own; Nankai No Daiketto (1966; released in English as Ebirah, Horror of the Deep; vt Godzilla Vs. the Sea-Monster) dir Jun Fukuda, the first of the series not to be dir Honda, in which Mosura takes part in an aerial evacuation of people from an island about to explode; and Kaiju Soshingeki (1968; released in English as Destroy All Monsters; vt Operation Monsterland; vt The March of the Monsters) dir Honda, a poor film in which all 11 Toho monsters get together. [PN] MOSURA TAI GOJIRA GOJIRA; MOSURA. MOSZKOWSKI, ALEXANDR (1851-1934) German writer. In his excellent and encyclopedic SATIRE of UTOPIAS Die Inselt der Weisheit (1922 Germany; trans H.J. Stenning as The Isles of Wisdom 1924 UK) the protagonists are guided by Nostradamus through an archipelago which features a Platonic ( PLATO) ISLAND, a Buddhist utopia, an Island of Fine ARTS, pacifist islands, reactionary islands, and so on. Of particular interest is Sarragalla, the "Mechanized Island", where the technological utopianism of Walther Rathenau (1867-1922) is mercilessly satirized. The characters conclude that "every principle is bound to break down, somewhere, or, if its application is enforced, it is transformed into a caricature of itself". [BS]Other work: Der Venuspark ["The Venus Park"] (1923).See also: AUTOMATION. MOTHRA MOSURA. MOTTRAM, R(ALPH) H(ALE) (1883-1971) UK writer and banker who began his long and prolific writing career as a chronicler of his WWI experiences in the famous Spanish Farm trilogy, beginning with The Spanish Farm (1924). In his sf novel, The Visit of the Princess: A Romance of the Nineteen-Sixties (1946), a joyless UK is galvanized by the visit of a European princess. Fantasy titles are The Old Man of the Stones: A Christmas Allegory (1930 chap), The Ghost and the Maiden (1940), The Gentleman of Leisure (1948), in which the Gentleman travels to Heaven, and To Hell, with Crabb Robinson (1962), which takes its protagonist elsewhere. [JC/PN] MOUDY, WALTER (FRANK) (1929-1973) US writer, author of a few sf stories after his sole novel, No Man on Earth (1964), a rather compellingly told story in which a man born of a human mother and an alien father must seek out his destiny. [JC] MOUNDS, MONICA Robert E. VARDEMAN. MOXLEY, F(RANK) WRIGHT (1889-1937) US writer whose interesting Red Snow (1930) tells of a snowlike precipitation which causes worldwide sterility, and of the subsequent social breakdown, lovingly elaborated. One survivor is rescued by what may be an enigmatic alien but - as the vessel from the heavens is drawn by horses - is more likely to be Helios. But this fantasy-like ending does little to dispel the sf materiality of the preceding events. [JC/PN] MOYLAN, TOM [r] POSTMODERNISM AND SF. MR To avoid confusion over variant spellings, entries whose first word is "Mr" are listed as if that title were spelt out in full as "Mister". MROZEK, SLAWOMIR (1930- ) Polish writer, mainly of absurdist plays ( FABULATION), several of which are assembled in Six Plays (trans N. Bethell 1967 UK); a further play, Vatzlav (1970; trans Ralph Manheim 1970 chap US), is set in a mythical metamorphosis-engendering territory. The short stories in Slon (coll 1957; trans Konrad Syrop as The Elephant 1962 UK) and The Ugupu Bird (coll trans Konrad Syrop 1968 UK) - the latter derived from Wesele w Atomicach (coll 1959), Deszcz (coll 1962) and Ucieczka na Poludnie (coll 1965) - satirically mix fantasy and absurdist elements in a manner similar to that of Italo CALVINO. [JC] MUDD, STEVE (? - ) US writer whose sf novels, Tangled Webs (1989) and its sequel The Planet Beyond (1990), are adventures set in a totalitarian interstellar venue. [JC] MUDDOCK, J(OYCE) E(MMERSON) PRESTON (1843-1934) UK writer, much travelled in early life, who published prolifically under his own name and as Dick Donovan, generally restricting his pseudonym to juveniles and thrillers, including Tales of Terror (coll 1889) and The Scarlet Seal (1902), the latter a witchcraft fantasy. As JEPM he published considerable nonfiction as well as Stories Weird and Wonderful (coll 1889) and The Sunless City (1905), in which a submarine explores a seemingly bottomless lake in the Rockies and comes upon a lost race ( LOST WORLDS). [JC] MUDGETT, HERMAN W. [s] Anthony BOUCHER. MUIR, WARD (1878-1927) UK writer whose "Further East than Asia" (1919) is set in a LOST WORLD whose inhabitants gain longevity through bathing in a radioactive pool, which also disfigures them. [JC] MULISCH, HARRY [r] BENELUX. MULLALLY, FREDERIC (1920- ) UK writer whose only sf novel - after the borderline Oh! Wicked Wanda (1970) - isHitler Has Won (1975), a competent presentation of what has become a very common ALTERNATE-WORLD vision of history ( HITLER WINS). FM's particular explanation for Hitler's victory involves an early assault on Russia. He was also the author of Oh! Wicked Wanda (1970). [JC] MULLEN, R(ICHARD) D(ALE) (1915- ) US sf critic and scholar, now emeritus professor of English at Indiana State University. RDM was a founding member of the SCIENCE FICTION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION. In 1973 he established SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES and was its publisher and, with Darko SUVIN, its co-editor through 1978; he returned to the journal as an editor in 1991 and managing editor from the Nov 1991 issue. He and Suvin also ed Science-Fiction Studies: Selected Articles on Science Fiction 1973-75 (anth 1976) and Science-Fiction Studies: Selected Articles on Science Fiction 1976-77 (anth 1978). RDM's editorial personality is relaxed, sensible, meticulous, and always eager to get the facts straight, qualities which also permeate his interesting criticism, mostly published in EXTRAPOLATION and Science-Fiction Studies. [PN] MULLEN, STANLEY (1911-1973) US artist, museum curator and pulp writer. He wrote over 30 sf and fantasy stories, many SPACE OPERA, in a variety of magazines, including PLANET STORIES, 1949-59. His 3 books, from SMALL PRESSES, are Kinsmen of the Dragon (1951), which pits the hero against a secret society whose magical science has roots in a PARALLEL WORLD, Sphinx Child (1948 chap), a fantasy short story, and Moonfoam and Sorceries (coll 1948). [PN]See also: ASTEROIDS. MULLER, JOHN E. House name used on many sf and supernatural novels published by BADGER BOOKS. The great majority of these were the work of R.L. FANTHORPE (31 titles), with 3 by John S. GLASBY and 1 by A.A. GLYNN (for titles see those authors). Works of unknown authorship are: Space Void (1960; 1965 US as by Marston Johns), Edge of Eternity (1962), Night of the Big Fire (1962) and In the Beginning (1962). [JC] MULLER, PAUL Paul CONRAD. MULLER, PAUL ALFRED [r] GERMANY. MULLIN, CHRIS Working name of UK politician and writer Christopher John Mullin (1947- ), whose A Very British Coup (1982), adapted for tv in 1990, depicts with fixated clarity successful NEAR-FUTURE US efforts to subvert a potential change for the better in the UK Government. [JC] MULTIVERSE PARALLEL WORLDS. MUNDY, TALBOT Pseudonym of UK-born writer William Lancaster Gribbon (1879-1940), who emigrated to the USA in 1909 after his early life as a confidence man, ivory poacher and all-round rogue in British Africa had culminated in a prison sentence. He soon became a professional author, with most of his work first appearing in Adventure magazine, where he became the star writer; after 1935 he left PULP-MAGAZINE fiction and wrote scripts for the radio series Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. TM's fiction is sometimes difficult to classify. In his early stories he tried to combine MAINSTREAM standards with exotic adventure in Africa and the Near East; his later work often carried a didactic message and might be called philosophic adventure fiction. From the first his sf stood apart from US GENRE SF in its narrative structure, characterization and situation, having grown out of the adult adventure-fiction models to be found in Adventure, with tight, complex plotting, well handled ethnic types and exotic locales, and a strong influence from Rudyard KIPLING. He commonly used quest themes, stressing loyalty, honour and spiritual self-development. The fantastic element derived in large part from occultism, with ideas drawn from a schismatic branch of the Theosophical Society to which he belonged. Such motifs - which included various PSI POWERS, fantastic archaeology, incredible WEAPONS, strange drugs, ANTIGRAVITY, atomic energy, Atlantean science, SUPERMEN (mahatmas), transmutation of elements and vibratory phenomena - were conceived rationally and "scientifically" as part of the ancient wisdom, a body of knowledge once possessed by mankind but since lost.Most of TM's sf can be found in the large group of associated novels known as the Jimgrim/Ramsden sequence, though the interconnections are sometimes slender. Chief characters include Jimgrim (James Schuyler Grim), a US soldier of fortune, Athelstan King, an Anglo-Indian career officer, Jeff Ramsden, a US engineer, Narayan Singh, a Sikh soldier, and Chullunder Ghose, an unscrupulously brilliant Bengali babu. TM's more important works in this series are: The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb (1922 Adventure as "Khufu's Real Tomb"; 1933), fantastic archaeology based on Ancient Egyptian superscience; Caves of Terror (1922 Adventure as "The Gray Mahatma"; 1924), in which a vibratory superscience possessed by Jain adepts is in danger of falling into the hands of an adventuress; Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley (1924), which is ultimately concerned with a jade sphere from a great past civilization, but is noteworthy for its description of a travelling Indian dramatic group; The Nine Unknown (1924), in which an investigation into the disappearance of gold in India uncovers both a benevolent secret organization that disintegrates the gold for atomic power and an evil Shaktist order that uses secrets from the Ancient Wisdom as "magic"; Jimgrim (1930-31 Adventure as "King of the World"; 1931; vt Jimgrim Sahib 1953), featuring an attempt at world conquest using scientific secrets from ATLANTIS deciphered from golden plates found in buried cities in the Gobi; and There Was a Door (1933 UK; vt Full Moon 1935 US), with Fortean elements ( Charles FORT), disappearances into another DIMENSION, fantastic archaeology and superscience of the past. Some of TM's novels - like The Devil's Guard (1926; vt Ramsden 1926 UK), Black Light (1930) and Old Ugly-Face (1939 UK) - gradually moved toward religious occultism.TM remains best known for the Tros of Samothrace books, a sequence of minimally fantastic, essentially mainstream historical stories set in Britain, Gaul and the Mediterranean world just before the beginning of the Christian Era, with debunking portraits of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and others. First appearing irregularly 1925-35 in Adventure, these stories were published in book form as Queen Cleopatra (1929), Tros of Samothrace (1934; vt in 4 vols as Tros 1967, Helma 1967, Liafall 1967 and Helene 1967; vt in 3 vols as Lud of Lunden 1976, Avenging Liafall 1976 and The Praetor's Dungeon 1976) and The Purple Pirate (1935). For sf readers, however, the Jimgrim/Ramsden books are of greater interest. At his best, TM was a highly competent writer who produced the finest stories of Oriental adventure to appear in the pulps. [EFB]Other works: King - of the Khyber Rifles (1916); The Thunder Dragon Gate (1937). About the author: Talbot Mundy: Messenger of Destiny (1983) by Donald M. Grant (1927- ) et al.; Last Adventurer: The Life of Talbot Mundy (1984) by Peter Berresford Ellis (1943- ); An Index to Adventure Magazine (2 vols 1990) by Richard BLEILER. MUNKACSY, JANOS [r] HUNGARY. MUNRO, DUNCAN H. [s] Eric Frank RUSSELL. MUNRO, H.H. [r] SAKI. MUNRO, JOHN (1849-1930) UK engineer, professor of mechanical engineering at Bristol, and author of 2 short stories, "Sun-Rise in the Moon" (1894) and "A Message from Mars" (1895), in Cassell's Magazine. The latter was revised to form the first chapter of A Trip to Venus (1897), an unexceptional account of a journey by ROCKET to an idyllic UTOPIA on VENUS, with a brief excursion to MERCURY. [JE] MUNSEY, FRANK A(NDREW) (1854-1925) US newspaper and magazine publisher and writer. He began publishing in 1882 with The Golden Argosy, a weekly BOYS' PAPER, later transformed into The ARGOSY . FAM expanded his titles to include MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, The SCRAP BOOK , The ALL-STORY , CAVALIER and later, after a complex series of mergers and title changes, All-Story Weekly and Argosy All-Story Weekly. A self-made millionaire, FAM was reviled for his heavy-handed treatment of the newspapers under his control. Under the editorship of Robert Hobart Davis, his magazines became the most important pre-sf PULP MAGAZINES, publishing many works by prominent sf and fantasy authors, including Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, Ray CUMMINGS, George Allan ENGLAND, Ralph Milne FARLEY, Homer Eon FLINT, Austin HALL, Otis Adelbert KLINE, A. MERRITT and Sax ROHMER. [JE]See also: HISTORY OF SF. MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE US magazine published by the Frank A. MUNSEY Corp.; ed Richard H. Thitherton (with Robert Hobart Davis as fiction editor) and others. Appeared from 2 Feb 1889 as Munsey's Weekly, then as MM Oct 1891-Oct 1929, when it merged with Argosy All-Story Weekly ( The ARGOSY ) to form 2 magazines, Argosy Weekly and All-Story Love Tales.Although MM was contemporary with The ALL-STORY it published little sf, and that little was not of any lasting quality. Most notable was its publication of stories by E.F. BENSON, Ray CUMMINGS, George Allan ENGLAND and Sax ROHMER. It also published the borderline-sf The Green Ray (1922-3; 1924) by Vance THOMPSON. [JE] MUNSEY'S WEEKLY MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. MURAKAMI, HARUKI (1949- ) Japanese writer of very considerable popularity whose Hitsuji o meguru boken (1982; trans Alfred Birnbaum as A Wild Sheep Chase 1989 US) tumbles a bevy of eccentric protagonists into a chase for a fabricated sheep in a style that mixes FABULATION and nightmare; the sequel is Dansu Dansu Dansu (1988; trans Alfred Birnbaum as Dance Dance Dance 1994 US). Sekai no owar to hard-boiled wonderland (1985; trans Alfred Birnbaum as Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World 1991 US), which is marginally more conventional, depicts a WAR for data in a NEAR-FUTURE Japan that has become definable as a nest of information. The Elephant Vanishes (coll trans Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin 1993 US) assembles shorter works. [JC] MURDOCK, M(ELINDA) S(EABROOKE) (1947- ) US writer who began writing sf with a STAR TREK tie, Web of the Romulans * (1983), and who later continued in much the same vein with her BUCK ROGERS sequence: Rebellion 2456 * (1989), Hammer of Mars * (1989), Armageddon Off Vesta * (1989) and Prime Squared * (1990). In between, MSM composed a SPACE-OPERA series of her own - Vendetta (1987) and Dynteryx (1988) - but this did little to modify a sense that her use of the conventions of 1980s adventure sf, though professional, lacked a personal touch. [JC] MURNANE, GERALD (1939- ) Australian writer, highly regarded in his native land for his experimental short stories and novels, such as Tamarisk Row (1974). GM's meditative style bears comparison with that of Jorge Luis BORGES. He disclaims any connection with sf, but has written several fictions about ALTERNATE WORLDS. In The Plains (1982) the narrator enters an alternate Australia: an inland feudal society, whose landowners, devoted patrons of the arts, take part in elaborate games and rituals. The narrator is hired to make a film about this society, but in the end accepts its solipsistic ideals and abandons his project. "The Battle of Acosta Nu" (1985), which can be found in Landscape with Landscape (coll of linked novellas 1985), tells of a man living in Melbourne, Australia, who all his life believes himself to be living in New Australia, the (actual) Australian colony founded in Paraguay in the early 1900s. Or perhaps it is the other way around. [BG] MURPHY, DENNIS JASPER Charles MATURIN. MURPHY, PAT (1955- ) Working name of US writer Patrice Ann Murphy (1955- ), who began publishing sf in the 1970s, her first acknowledged story being "Nightbird at the Window" in Chrysalis 5 (anth 1979) ed Roy TORGESON. Her first novel was the obscurely published The Shadow Hunter (1982), in which a Stone-Age man is displaced by a TIME-TRAVEL device into a cruelly alienating future. The theme of displacement, whether through time or across the gulf of species, significantly shapes PM's two most famous works. Rachel in Love (1987 IASFM; 1992 chap), which won a NEBULA and a THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD, tells from her point of view the story of a chimpanzee with enhanced INTELLIGENCE (see also APES AND CAVEMEN) who escapes an impersonally horrific research institute. Nothing in the tale, with the exception of Rachel's cognitively enhanced responses, is in any sense sf, or even unlikely. The Falling Woman (1986), which won PM another Nebula in the same year, concentrates upon a contemporary woman archaeologist who is capable of perceiving, through palimpsests of midden and artifact, figures from the period being investigated at a dig in Mexico, and can observe their ghostlike maintenance of their ancient daily endeavours. A triangle of implications develops intriguingly between one of the Mayans, who speaks to the protagonist, and her estranged daughter, and climaxes in a kind of healing transtemporal embrace.After editing and producing environmental reports and graphics for various Pacific Coast organizations, PM began in 1982 to edit the Exploratorium Quarterly, the journal of the Exploratorium, a San Francisco museum designed to promote a hands-on relationship between human perception and the arts and sciences. Elements of her next novel, The City, Not Long After (1984 Universe 14, anth ed Terry CARR as "Art in the War Zone"; much exp 1988), clearly extrapolate some of the Exploratorium agenda. Set after a plague HOLOCAUST in a physically intact San Francisco, the tale presents its protagonists' capacity to make ART analogous to the shaping of a new reality. If there is a slight air of local patriotism in the book's apotheosis of San Francisco, it is at the same time perhaps something of a relief to participate in a vision of the future not bound by CYBERPUNK shibboleths. PM, like Kim Stanley ROBINSON, had been described in the course of the 1980s as a Humanist writer, in a formulation which opposed Cyberpunk to Humanism, generally to the discredit of the latter; also like Robinson, she resisted the labelling, which she clearly found procrustean. Her stories have been assembled as Points of Departure (coll 1990), which won a PHILIP K. DICK AWARD, and in Letters from Home (coll 1991 UK) with Pat CADIGAN and Karen Joy FOWLER, each author contributing solo tales to the volume. Though PM's career seems to be edging away from sf, it can be predicted that, from her coign of vantage, she will continue to fertilize the genre. [JC]See also: FANTASY; INTERZONE. MURPHY, WARREN (B.) (1933- ) US writer known largely for the Destroyer sequence, a long series of spoof thrillers, many with Richard Ben SAPIR, featuring the Doc Savage-like adventures of Remo Williams, a White man (and avatar of Shiva the Destroyer) trained in the paranormal combat arts of Sinanju, which allow him (for instance) to interpenetrate his body with other matter. The first titles were written mostly by WBM and Sapir, who died in 1987, but later titles - sometimes listed as by these two, sometimes by one alone - are by various hands including WBM. The most prolific recent author of Destroyer titles is Will MURRAY, who also wrote The Assassin's Handbook (coll 1982; rev vt Inside Sinanju 1985) as by WBM and Sapir, an amused (and amusing) companion to the sequence; other authors include WBM's wife Molly Cochran, Ed Hunsburger, William Joy, Ric MEYERS and Robert Randisi. A detailed presentation of titles, listing ascribed and actual authors, can be found in R. REGINALD's Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: a Checklist, 1975-1991 (1992). Here we pay no attention to ascribed author (always, in any case, WBM and/or Sapir); up to #74, unless otherwise indicated, the actual author is WBM, alone or with Sapir; from #74 on the author is Murray.The sequence began, rather inauspiciously, with Created, the Destroyer (1971) with Sapir (who collaborated on all but one through #24) and Destroyer #2: Death Check (1972), ponderous imitations of James Bond; but with #3: Chinese Puzzle (1972) it took off with remarkable panache, some instalments coming close to SPACE OPERA, others engaging with SUPERMAN themes, and most indulging in raucous SATIRE of US politics and mores. The sequence then runs: #4: Mafia Fix (1972), #5: Dr Quake (1972), #6: Death Therapy (1972), #7: Union Bust (1973), #8: Summit Chase (1973) by Murphy alone, #9: Murder's Shield (1973), #10: Terror Squad (1973), #11: Kill or Cure (1973), #12: Slave Safari (1973), #13: Acid Rock (1973), #14: Judgment Day (1974), #15: Murder Ward (1974), #16: Oil Slick (1974), #17: Last War Dance (1974), #18: Funny Money (1975), #19: Holy Terror (1975), #20: Assassin's Play-Off (1975), #21: Deadly Seeds (1975), #22: Brain Drain (1976), #23: Child's Play (1976), #24: King's Curse (1976), #25: Sweet Dreams (1976) with Meyers, #26: In Enemy Hands (1977), #27: The Last Temple (1977) with Meyers, #28: Ship of Death (1977), #29: The Final Death (1977) with Sapir and Meyers, #30: Mugger Blood (1977), #31: The Head Men (1977), #32: Killer Chromosomes (1978), #33: Voodoo Die (1978), #34: Chained Reaction (1978), #35: Last Call (1978), #36: Power Play (1979), #37: Bottom Line (1979), #38: Bay City Blast (1979), #39: Missing Link (1980), #40: Dangerous Games (1980) with Randisi, #41: Firing Line (1980), #42: Timber Line (1980) with Joy, #43: Midnight Man (1981) with Randisi, #44: Balance of Power (1981) with Cochran, #45: Spoils of War (1981) by Cochran, #46: Next of Kin (1981) by Cochran, #47: Dying Space (1982) by Cochran, #48: Profit Motive (1982), #49: Skin Deep (1982) by Cochran, #50: Killing Time (1982) by Cochran, #51: Shock Value (1983) by Cochran, #52: Fool's Gold (1983), #53: Time Trial (1983) by Cochran, #54: Last Drop (1983) by Cochran, #55: Master's Challenge (1984) with Sapir and Cochran, #56: Encounter Group (1984) with Murray, #57: Date with Death (1984) with Cochran and Hunsburger, #58: Total Recall (1984) with Randisi, #59: The Arms of Kali (1984), #60: The End of the Game (1985), #61: Lords of the Earth (1985), #62: The Seventh Stone (1985) with Sapir and Hunsburger, #63: The Sky is Falling (1986) by Sapir and Murray, #64: The Last Alchemist (1986) with Murray, #65: Lost Yesterday (1986) by Sapir and Murray, #66: Sue Me (1986) by Sapir, #67: Look into my Eyes (1987) by Sapir, #68: An Old-Fashioned War (1987) by Sapir, #69: Blood Ties (1987) with Murray, #70: The Eleventh Hour (1987) with Cochran and Murray, #71: Return Engagement (1988) with Murray, #72: Sole Survivor (1988) with Murray, #73: Line of Succession (1988) with Murray, #74: Walking Wounded (1988) by Murray (who is responsible for the remaining titles listed), #75: Rain of Terror (1989), #76: The Final Crusade (1989), #77: Coin of the Realm (1989), #78: Blue Smoke and Mirrors (1989), #79: Shooting Schedule (1990), #80: Death Sentence (1990), #81: Hostile Takeover (1990), #82: Survival Course (1990), #83: Skull Duggery (1991), #84: Ground Zero (1991), #85: Blood Lust (1991), #86: Arabian Nightmare (1991), #87: Mob Psychology (1992) and #88: The Ultimate Death (1992) (we cannot trace #87, nor have we been able to monitor further publications, though we are aware of the release of #96: Infernal Revenue [1994]. An out-of-series Destroyer title, Remo: The Adventure Begins * (1985) by Sapir, is a film tie to Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985; vt Remo-Unarmed and Dangerous).Other genre adventures by WM include Grandmaster (1984) with his wife Molly Cochran, High Priest (1987) with Cochran, The Hand of Lazarus (1988) with Cochran, Scorpion's Dance (1990), and The Forever King (1992), again with Cochran. [JC] MURRAY, (GEORGE) GILBERT (AIME) (1866-1957) UK classical scholar, best known for his many translations from the Greek classic drama, for his UTOPIAN sense that contemporary society could be changed by persuasion (justified in the case of women's suffrage) and for seminal studies such as The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907) and Four Stages of Greek Religion (1912). His sf novel, Gobi or Shamo: A Story of Three Songs (1889), as by G.G.A. Murray, is a lost-race tale ( LOST WORLDS) featuring a race of Hellenes whose ethical precepts are unsparingly ancient but who have also mastered weapons of mass destruction. [JC] MURRAY, WILL Working name of US writer William Patrick Murray (1953- ), who has shown an interest throughout his career in pulp SUPERHEROES like DOC SAVAGE, about which figure he wrote the nonfiction Secrets of Doc Savage (1981 chap); as Kenneth ROBESON he began a new sequence of Doc Savage adventures comprisingPython Isle * (1991), White Eyes* (1992), The Frightened Fish* (1992), The Jade Ogre* (1992), Flight into Fear* (1993), The Whistling Wraith* (1993) and The Forgotten Realm* (1993). Under his own name he ed The Duende History of the Shadow Magazine (anth 1980). Writing as Warren MURPHY (whom see for titles) and/or Richard SAPIR, he has written many volumes of the Destroyer sequence, including all those from #74 to date (although forthcoming titles will, it seems, be by yet other hands). [JC] MURRY, COLIN MIDDLETON Richard COWPER. MUSIC This article is in 3 parts: 1, Science Fiction in Classical Music; 2, Science Fiction in Popular and Rock Music; 3, Music in Science Fiction. Because of the almost endless proliferation of popular and rock music, and because there are so many ways in which the latter (in particular) interpenetrates with sf and fantasy, section 2 is itself divided into 2 parts, from different hands: Maxim JAKUBOWSKI's comments focus on the pre-1980s period, while Charles Shaar Murray's concentrate on more recent work.1. Science fiction in classical music By historical necessity, sf being in the broad sense a 20th-century phenomenon, earlier classical music was generally unaffected by it, but there are exceptions: Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) in 1750 and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) in 1777 each wrote a comic opera with the title Il Mondo della Luna ["The World of the Moon"] to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793). More directly attributable to sf is the musical adaptation by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), as "Le Voyage dans la lune" (1875), of the Jules VERNE book known in English as From the Earth to the Moon (2 parts, 1865, 1870; trans 1873). The Moon is again the scene of the action in the first part of the opera The Excursions of Mr Broucek (1917) by Leos Janacek (1854-1928), based on the novel by Svatopluk Cech ( CZECH AND SLOVAK SF): the leading character dreams he has been transported there while in a drunken stupor. In The Makropoulos Secret (1925) Janacek adapted Karel CAPEK's play about IMMORTALITY. In the anthology Les soirees de l'orchestre (1853) Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) provides an interesting footnote in "Euphonia", a short sf tale of a musical city.Other musical works of the late 19th and early 20th century have taken on sf connotations because of their subsequent use, such as Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896) by Richard Strauss (1864-1949), which was featured in Stanley KUBRICK's film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968). The Planets suite (1918) by Gustav Holst (1874-1934) has often been used in sf contexts. Many compositions since 1950 have followed Holst's astronomical (in his case, astrological) lead, especially those for which avant-garde instrumental techniques or electronic music might make more traditional titles seem incongruous; thus numerous titles such as "Cosmos", "Galaxy", "Nebula" and "Orbit" can be found. Works are named after star charts (Atlas Eclipticalis [1961] by John Cage [1912-1992]), inspired by types of celestial objects (NEUTRON STAR [1968] by Jan W. Morthenson [1940- ] and Quasars [1980] by Christian Clozier [1945- ]) or by individual heavenly bodies (Sirius [1968] by Karlheinz Stockhausen [1928- ]), and dedicated to or illustrative of the journeys of early astronauts and cosmonauts: in the USSR many songs and ballads were composed in honour of Yuri Gagarin (1935-1968).Electronic music for illustrating "the music of the spheres" - a phrase that has been used of the work of Terry Riley (1935- ), Francois Bayle (1932- ) and others - and stories of outer space can be found not only in film soundtracks, especially Louis (1923- ) and Bebe (1928- ) Barron's pioneering score for FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) and the understated contributions by Eduard Artem'ev (1937- ) to Andrei TARKOVSKY's SOLARIS (1971) and STALKER (1979), but also in short pieces commissioned or adapted by music-hire libraries, like Desmond LESLIE's Inside the Space Ship and Music of the Voids of Outer Space (both c1957). Works with similar titles also appeared early on in concert programmes, with pieces such as Visions of Flying Saucers (1966 with Leo Nilsson) and Robot Amoroso (1978) by Ralph Lundsten (1936- ). The use of electric instruments permeates the avant-garde reaches of jazz and jazz-rock as with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report and Sun Ra's Arkestra (whose varied names, including Blue Universe Arkestra, Solar Myth Arkestra and Cosmo Love Arkestra, testify to a kind of sf allegiance).Another relationship is the direct linkage of a piece of music to an existing sf story. In rare cases this consists of a vocal work with an sf text, as with the song-cycle The Tentacles of the Dark Nebula (1969) by David Bedford (1937- ), from Arthur C. CLARKE's story "Transcience" (1949), and The Music and Poetry of the Kesh (1985) by Todd Barton, musical settings of the poems in Ursula LE GUIN's ALWAYS COMING HOME (1985). More often a purely electronic or instrumental composition was inspired by or evokes the atmosphere of the original story, as in Quatermass (1964; Nigel KNEALE) by Tod Dockstader (1932- ), Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1979; based on a 1961 story by Cordwainer SMITH) by Ralph Lundsten, the cycle Kristallwelt (1983-6; in homage to J.G. BALLARD's THE CRYSTAL WORLD [1966]) by Michael Obst (1955- ), and several further works by Bedford, including Jack of Shadows (1973; based on Roger ZELAZNY's 1971 novel), Star's End (1974; refers to Isaac ASIMOV's Foundation trilogy) and The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas (1976; based on the 1973 story by Le Guin). The Birthplace of Matter (1975) by Sten Hanson (1936- ) refers to sf concepts, while his The John Carter Song Book (1979-85) is more unusual: it is based, we are told, on the minimal information about Martian music in Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's novels supplemented by Hanson's direct contact with Carter; for lack of available recordings these examples of Martian music were perforce recreated by means of computerized vocal synthesis.Dramatic cantatas and music dramas concerned with sf subjects but without the involvement of an sf author include the RADIO drama Comet Ikeya (1966) by Joji Yuasa (1929- ) and Cometose (1987) by Kristi Allik (1952). In the latter, Samuel Clemens (Mark TWAIN), who was born and died during consecutive appearances of Halley's Comet, is transported with his house to the comet's core, returning to Earth's vicinity in 1985 only to have the Giotto satellite destroy the house. Halley's Comet is celebrated also in The Return (1985) by Morton Subotnick (1935- ). Deep concern over humanity's future can be found in the work of the composer and poet Lars-Gunnar Bodin (1935- ), such as his Cybo (as in CYBORG) trilogy (1967-8) and the cantata For Jon (Fragments of a Time to Come) (1977), the final section of which is called "Instruction Manual for Interdimensional Travel".Staging and costumes have emphasized sf elements in certain musico-dramatic works, including Licht ["Light"], Stockhausen's cycle of 7 full-length operas to his own scenarios (in progress since 1977), and the Surrealist Le grand macabre (1977) by Gyorgy Ligeti (1923- ), loosely based on the play by Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962). Among the operas for children by Gian Carlo Menotti (1911- ) are the tongue-in-cheek Help, Help, The Globolinks! (1968), which tackles alien INVASIONS, and A Bride from Pluto (1982), a modernized fairy tale. An ALIEN being provides a suitable updating of the role of deus ex machina in Michael Tippett's opera The Ice Break (1976), and three alien visitors play significant parts in his New Year (1988).The most substantial connection between sf and classical music can be found in recent operas based on sf stories. One of the most successful has been Aniara (1959) by Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916-1968), a musical version of Harry MARTINSON's epic starship poem featuring the Mima computer. Other operas that fall into this category include Vaclav Kaslik's Krakatit (1961; based on Karel Capek's 1924 novel), VALIS (1987; based on the 1981 novel by Philip K. DICK) by Tod Machover (1953- ), and two operas by Paul Barker, Phantastes (1986; based on George MACDONALD's 1858 fantasy) and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1987; based on Doris LESSING's 1980 novel). The composer who has had the greatest success in radicalizing and popularizing opera in the late 20th century, Philip Glass (1937- ), likewise selected Lessing's The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four and Five for an opera he has been working on since his 1988 setting of the same author's The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982). Another work by Glass, more music drama than opera, is 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988), involving TIME TRAVEL; the climax of his plotless first opera, Einstein on the Beach (1976), takes place on board a spaceship, as does a significant part of the action of his much later opera Christopher Columbus (1992). [HD/MJ]2. Science fiction in popular and rock music It was in the mid-1960s, with the widespread assimilation of sf into general Pop culture, that sf came into its own as a factor in popular music.Nowhere was this relationship more visible than with the San Francisco groups, where sf themes and imagery often became the subject matter of songs. The Steve Miller Band's early albums are titled Children of the Future (1968), Sailor (1968) and BRAVE NEW WORLD (1969), and feature songs like "Overdrive", "Song for our Ancestors" and "Beauty of Time"; a similar fealty was paid by The Grateful Dead - with Aoxomoxoa (1969), From the Mars Hotel (1974) and improvisatory pieces like "Dark Star" - and by Spirit - whose Future Games (1977) flirts with STAR TREK - Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Byrds, Moby Grape, Kaleidoscope and, in a satirical guise, The Mothers of Invention. But the Californian group most influenced was certainly Jefferson Airplane, spearheaded by Paul Kantner (1942- ), Grace Slick (1939- ) and Marty Balin (1942- ). Their early albums Surrealistic Pillow (1967), After Bathing at Baxter's (1968), Crown of Creation (1968) and Volunteers (1969) are consummate examples of dynamic melodies and furiously articulate lyrics often referring to sf (including Robert A. HEINLEIN and John WYNDHAM). Shortly after Balin's departure from the group, guitarist and songwriter Kantner recorded Blows Against the Empire (1970) with Jefferson Starship, an amalgam of the previous band with other outstanding San Francisco musicians. This concept album (nominated for a HUGO in 1971) is sometimes thought to have been the finest fusion of the genres, though the opposite opinion has also been published: it is a symphonic poem in the rock mode about the hijacking of a spaceship by a group of rebels in a fascist future USA, and their hopeful journey to the stars. Later albums by Jefferson Starship saw Kantner adopting a persistent revolutionary stance interlaced with stark depictions of a totalitarian planet; the return of Balin to the group in 1975 brought an end to the predominance of Kantner's sf situations.While the West Coast groups heartily embraced sf in the USA, the situation in the UK was more fragmented. Despite the early, arguably sf imagery of The Shadows' ethereal guitar style or The Tornados' "Telstar" (1962), Pink Floyd were the premier sf group to gain popularity. Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), A Saucerful of Secrets (1968), Ummagumma (1969) and Atom Heart Mother (1970) are among their many albums having sf subject matter contained in and illuminated by highly evocative music, using the quicksilver guitar and organ runs which have since become closely associated with the sf-music concept. Their style was widely imitated in Europe by Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Nektar and a score of supposed wizards of the synthesizer.Another important UK group was Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator, who were particularly adept at mapping the powerful, bleak vistas of post-nuclear desolation: The Aerosol Grey Machine (1969), The Least We Can Do is Wave to Each Other (1970), "After the Flood" (1970), "Pioneers over C", "Lemmings" and Hammill's solo album Chameleon in the Shadow of the Night (1973). One band to attempt a wholeheartedly sciencefictional concept album was the UK-based Nirvana (no relation to the much later US band), with The Story of Simon Simopath (1968), but it was fairly execrable on release and has not improved with age - although it caused some stir at the time. The composer/singer David Bowie (1947- ) enjoyed worldwide fame and showed a comprehensive understanding of sf in his work, ranging from the early "Space Oddity" and "Cygnet Committee" (both 1969) to the songs about Ziggy Stardust, the ultimate superstar of the apocalypse, on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), or Diamond Dogs (1974), an impressive jaunt through a DELANY-like city of fear. Other notable UK groups conversant with the use of sf concepts included: Yes (showing the influence of lyricist/singer Jon Anderson, who also used sf material in his solo albums); King Crimson; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970); The Incredible String Band; The Rolling Stones (notably on Their Satanic Majesties Request [1967]); Genesis; Man (whose guitarist Deke Leonard peppered his songs with sf references); and the Anglo-French group Gong, who evolved a complete mythology full of pixies and flying teapots. Hawkwind, with whom Michael MOORCOCK was associated, built songs around stories by Roger ZELAZNY, Ray BRADBURY and others, introducing many sf archetypes, while Moorcock's own group, Deep Fix, recorded the uneven New World's Fair (1975). A better use of aggressively high-energy music with sf connotations can be found in the US group Blue Oyster Cult.There have also been popular settings of sf classics. Though the style might not be called popular, Anthony BURGESS set his own A Clockwork Orange (1962) to music for a stage production. Notable (and controversial) was Giorgio Moroder's new 1984 score for the 1926 film METROPOLIS, and the songs are a basic feature of EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY. Other sf films were musicals in the first place, including BIG MEAT EATER, It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman ( SUPERMAN), JUST IMAGINE, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and TOOMORROW. [MJ/PN]2A. To the more adventurous pop fans of the late 1960s, sf was a literary and cinematic extension of fashionable interest in Eastern mysticism and psychedelic drugs, all three providing ways of taking the mind "where minds don't usually go", as Pete Townshend (1945- ) put it in The Who's Tommy (1969). Most rockers' 1960s favourites were 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (the movie - complete with "trip" sequence - rather than the 1968 Arthur C. CLARKE book) and J.R.R. TOLKIEN's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954-5; rev 1966; omni 1968). The former provided the most spectacular vision extant of the wondrously enigmatic nature of the Universe, and the latter offered a grand struggle between Good and Evil, with the heroes representing the purest of hippie virtues: bucolic gentleness and a fondness for pipeweed and munchies. It was tailor-made for Yes fans and admirers of Crosby, Stills & Nash, the latter's primary contribution to the apocalyptic end of rock's sf strain being "Wooden Ships" (1969), a collaboration with Jefferson Airplane (who also recorded their own version of the song) in which the hippies escape from a polluted, war-torn world in the wooden ships of the title; the song was highlighted as an anthem in the cinematic rock testament of hippiedom, Woodstock (1970).But the primary rock science-fictioneers of the hippie era were Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix; 1967-8 classics like the former's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", "Astronomy Domine" and"A Saucerful of Secrets" and the latter's "Third Stone from the Sun", "The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam's Dice" and "1983/Moon, Turn the Tides" graphically equated the explorations of INNER SPACE and outer space: a direct musical expression of the same concerns as the NEW-WAVE sf of the era. Yet pop's first real signpost to the future came not from the UK or the USA, but from the German quartet Kraftwerk, who during the first half of the 1970s not only pioneered the use of the then-exotic synthesizer but extended the process of computerized, digital music-making into a madly seductive vision of the romance of technology with records like Autobahn (1974) and, most significantly, We Are the Robots.The ever-alert David Bowie began a new age of sf-influenced rock when "Space Oddity" (1969), his comic-angsty tale of Major Tom, the astronaut who decides not to come back, was used as the theme for tv coverage of the first Moon landing. His later excursions into post-apocalyptic speculation included the albums The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), about a leper- MESSIAH rocker, and Diamond Dogs (1974), jointly derived from George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949) and Harlan ELLISON's "A Boy and his Dog" (1969). Bowie also helped to kick in yet another phase when he became an early devotee of Kraftwerk and, with the aid of Brian Eno (1948- ), himself a pioneer synthophile from his stint as a member of Roxy Music, helped to transform synthesizer technology from method to metaphor with Low (1977). This enabled the likes of Gary Numan (1958- ) to trivialize the new style into the superficial kitsch futurism which has all too often been rock's perception of sf. More to the point was the work of George Clinton (1940- ), the funk prankster and mastermind of such acts as Parliament, Funkadelic and Bootsy's Rubber Band. Parliament's Mothership Connection (1976), the stage version of which generally began with Clinton descending from the flies in a massive flying saucer, and The Clones of Dr Funkenstein (1976) used sf devices as an enhancement of meaning rather than a substitute for it. Grandiose concept albums like 2112 (1976) by the Canadian power-trio Rush rubbed shoulders with heavy-metal imagery drawn from horror (Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper [1948- ] being the "onlie begetters" of an entire school of contemporary death-metallists including Slayer, Metallica and Sabbath's own former lead singer Ozzy Osbourne [1948- ]) and SWORD-AND-SORCERY heroic fantasy of the Robert E. HOWARD variety (early-to-mid-1970s Led Zeppelin favourites like "Immigrant Song" and "Stairway to Heaven", drawing on, respectively, Nordic fantasies of rape'n'pillage and the most sentimental aspects of Celtic faerie). Chris de Burgh's "A Spaceman Came Travelling" (1974) blended the Christmas story with the Erich VON DANIKEN-esque notion that the infant Christ arrived by UFO, to produce one of the more memorable 1970s sf commercial pop songs.An important piece was Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation of H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898). The recording, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, was released in 1978.The advent of rock video in the early 1980s reemphasized the fact that much of sf's imagery enters rock music by way of the movies - like the "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll", "Martian Hop" and "Purple People Eater" of the 1950s - and the visual style of movies like BLADE RUNNER (derived from Philip K. DICK's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? [1968]), George MILLER's MAD MAX series and The TERMINATOR provided instant raw material for many of the rock videos of the 1980s. At worst, there was Duran Duran, mindlessly recycling the usual leather-jacket-apocalypse cliches; at the other end of the intelligence spectrum were Z.Z. Top, constructing elaborate sf mini-comedy-dramas in videos like "TV Dinners" (1983) and "Rough Boy" (1985).What was most apparent, however, was that the late 1980s and early 1990s saw an actual sf future arrive in pop's present. The 1970s experiments of Kraftwerk and Bowie bore genuine CYBERPUNK fruit in the shape of hundreds of "house" dance records produced, as often as not, in bedrooms and home studios rather than in the 24-track establishments of the previous decade. Their creators took full advantage of the proliferation of affordable sampling and sequencing technology to generate an authentic "cyberpop" which seemed to have sprung full-blown from the brows of William GIBSON and Bruce STERLING, and which rapidly achieved mass popularity. At the time of writing (late 1991) at least half the records in the UK pop charts were classifiable as "bleep" of one sort or another: records which made no attempt at all to sound human. For every synth record that attempted to mimic "real" drums, strings or keyboards, there were dozens that actively celebrated their digital origins: vocals or raps were sampled into digital keyboards and triggered on the stuttering electronic beat. "Robotic" dance moves were the norm, humans imitating machines rather than - as early sf visionaries had warned - machines imitating humans. An entire generation of pop fans embraced a futurist metaphor quite unselfconsciously, demonstrating that sf has, in this sphere at least, invaded and conquered the present.Rock bands of both the orthodox and synthesized varieties continue to name both themselves and their songs after their sf favourites, just as the fiction of sf writers like Howard WALDROP, Sterling, Jack WOMACK and Lewis SHINER reflects their preoccupation with rock and its attendant culture. William S. BURROUGHS still leads the field in this respect (groups like Soft Machine, Dead Fingers Talk and Steely Dan have borne witness to his influence); The Comsat Angels derived their name from a short story by J.G. BALLARD; the alter-ego KLF outfit Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu demonstrate their allegiance to Robert Anton WILSON and Robert SHEA's Illuminatus books; Level 42 drew their name from a reference in Douglas ADAMS' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series; while jazz-rock bass virtuoso Stuart Hamm has paid an entire series of tributes to William Gibson, most recently with the album Kings of Sleep. As long as both sf writers and rock musicians continue to share a vested interest in the hegemony of the imagination, the relationship is likely to remain a fruitful one. [CSM]3. Music in science fiction Of the ARTS, music is the one most commonly featured in sf - albeit not quite to the extent that FANTASY is pervaded by it. Several sf writers studied it, notably including Lloyd BIGGLE Jr (PhD in musicology), Langdon JONES and Edgar PANGBORN, or were for a time professionally or semiprofessionally involved in music: Philip K. DICK purveyed classical music on a radio programme and in a record shop; Douglas ADAMS, Biggle, Jerome BIXBY, Anthony BURGESS, the film director John CARPENTER, the sf editor Edmund CRISPIN, Samuel R. DELANY, L. Ron HUBBARD, Jones, Desmond LESLIE, Pangborn and especially Somtow Sucharitkul ( S.P. SOMTOW) have composed music, while Delany, Laurence M. JANIFER, Anne MCCAFFREY, Barry N. MALZBERG, Michael MOORCOCK, Dan MORGAN, Chris MORRIS and Janet E. MORRIS, Charles PLATT, John B. SPENCER, Boris VIAN and many others have appeared as performers, often of their own compositions.Music, dependent on the instruments with which it is played, is more than most artforms associated with contemporary technology. Also central, though we now take it for granted, is the technology of sound reproduction. The "frozen words" of Francois RABELAIS's Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-52; trans 1653-94) anticipate sound recording, as, more scientifically, do the hi-tech Sound Houses of Francis BACON's New Atlantis (1629). Edward BELLAMY, in Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), saw mechanically reproduced music as fundamental to a UTOPIA. In "The Colours of the Masters" (1988) Sean MCMULLEN imagines a 19th century in which a clockwork "pianospectrum" has been invented in time to record Chopin and Liszt.Many sf authors, like most of the general public, believe that radical musicians (often using electronic technology) are producing work that is deliberately ugly and unintelligible. Others believe that the influence of technology on music is unavoidable and will eventually give rise to new masterpieces. Arthur C. CLARKE, in The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), makes the realistic extrapolation that historical processes will integrate today's electronic music and instruments into the artistic mainstream. Futuristic or ALIEN music is, of course, rather difficult to describe, and stories which try - including "The Music Makers" (1965) by Langdon Jones and Sweetwater (1973) by Laurence YEP - set themselves a near-impossible task.Musicians from the past, both rock and classical, occasionally figure in sf. A flute-playing character in Piers ANTHONY's MACROSCOPE (1969) is obsessed by the life of the 19th-century poet and musician Sidney Lanier (1842-1881); the seeming revival of Richard Strauss - to demonstrate the future poverty of hi-tech music - in James BLISH's "A Work of Art" (1956) turns out to be a mental pattern imposed on the brain of a totally unmusical person; Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) is mysteriously revived, with no desire to perform music, in Michael MOORCOCK's "A Dead Singer" (1974). Other stories of interest in this context include Gregory BENFORD's "Doing Lennon" (1975) and Michael SWANWICK's "The Feast of St Janis" (1980).Music has always played a substantial role in literature, whether as a principal plot element or only incidentally, as in Captain Nemo improvising at the organ or Gully Foyle plucking primitive tunes on an egg-slicer while marooned in space. The profound effects achieved by music (and particularly singing), both beneficial and destructive, have been favourite subjects from the stories of Orpheus and HOMER's sirens through to, for example, Edgar Pangborn's "The Music Master of Babylon" (1954) and "The Golden Horn" (1962), or the operatic "Un Bel Di" (1973) and "The Fellini Beggar" (1975) by Chelsea Quinn YARBRO. (The Orpheus legend features commonly in sf versions, a recent and interesting example of its HARD-SF transmutation being Fool's Run [1987], by Patricia MCKILLIP.) Music's therapeutic powers can be seen in Delany's "Corona" (1967) and the impact of the Singers in his "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1969). Anne McCaffrey's training as an opera singer is evident in her The Ship who Sang (fixup 1969) and elaborately reflected in The Crystal Singer (1974-5; fixup 1982) and its sequel Killashandra (1985), all of which focus on the potency of music. In Orson Scott CARD's Songmaster (fixup 1980) both the healing and destructive powers of music are shown. Music is effectively used as a weapon in Tintagel (1981) by Paul H. COOK and in Dargason (1977) by Colin COOPER; in Charles L. HARNESS's "The Rose" (1953) the unusual time signature of Tchaikowski's 6th Symphony (Pathetique) is used as a weapon in a fight with a villain. Music may be a political tool; it instigates revolution against repression in Lloyd Biggle's The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets (1968), but supports the soulless, mechanical nature of the societies in Yevgeny ZAMIATIN's My (trans as We(1924) and George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949). (Biggle's interest in music is also apparent in many of the stories in The Metallic Muse [coll 1972].) In Frank HERBERT's "Operation Syndrome" (1954) music is a means of revenge, and it is a means of escape from the constraints of the physical body in ON WINGS OF SONG (1979) by Thomas M. DISCH.Since the late 1960s the charismatic nature of rock music - and its power to create emotions so strong that they can be read by those who feel them as transcendent - has played an important role in sf, sometimes ambiguously, as in the Satanic heavy metal of George R.R. MARTIN's Armageddon Rag (1983), with its power both to heal and to destroy. This novel, part horror and part sf, has an intense feeling for the music of the 1960s of a kind quite common in recent sf. It (relevantly) powers such stories as Howard WALDROP's "Flying Saucer Rock & Roll" (1985) and "Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance" (1988), the former about Black kids picked up by aliens on account of the transcendent power of old Frankie Lymon songs, the latter about "a song that was gonna change the world" and, two decades later at a class reunion, does. 1960s rock appears by way of local colour in many novels by Stephen KING, sometimes relevantly, and wholly irrelevantly in Allen STEELE's Orbital Decay (1989). This last was reviled by some critics as culturally trapped in a rock'n'roll era (dead even now), even though it is set in the mid-21st century; it is a specific case of a general problem - the future story whose cultural referents, often musical, are so absurdly anachronistic that willing suspension of disbelief flies out the window. Other authors who draw powerful metaphors from the rock'n'roll era are Jack WOMACK - whose Elvissey (1993) plays on the Elvis Presley myth, as do Robert RANKIN's Armageddon books and Allen Steele's Clarke County, Space (1990) - Lewis SHINER, Norman SPINRAD - notably in "The Big Flash" (1969) and Little Heroes (1987), another book about revolution and the music business - Bradley DENTON, in Wrack and Roll (1986) and BUDDY HOLLY IS ALIVE AND WELL ON GANYMEDE (1991), and John SHIRLEY, in Eclipse (1985). Two predecessors of this particular strand of sf writing were The Book of Stier (1971) by Robin SANBORN and Barefoot in the Head (1969) by Brian W. ALDISS; in both, youth movements are at least partially inspired by popular music, as a prelude to the triumph of the counterculture, and at the risk of creating enormous personal power. One of the most interesting variants is Bruce STERLING's acid, precise fable of an ALTERNATE WORLD in which rock critic Lester Bangs (1948-1982) lived on, "Dori Bangs" (1989). Some of the conventions of this strand are parodied in The Truth about The Flaming Ghoulies (1984) by John Grant (Paul BARNETT), and the elevation of the vampire Lestat to rock megastardom in Anne Rice's series of fantasies, The Vampire Chronicles (1976-92), can also be read as in part a parody (perhaps an unconscious one) of the subgenre.Colonizers of alien planets might get back to their roots with access to a piano (Frank Herbert's "Passage for Piano", 1973), but more commonly music in alien circumstances is used as a means of understanding or even as the only means of COMMUNICATION. Touring musicians thus may have an ambassadorial function, as in the string quartet that visits the advanced society of Jules VERNE's L'ile a helice (1895; trans as The Floating Island 1896). An interplanetary touring opera company features in Jack VANCE's ironically titled Space Opera (1965). Aliens may well be biologically musical, as with the trumpet-faced heralds, one form of the Selenites in H.G. WELLS's THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1901), the hollow-horned unicorns in Piers Anthony's Apprentice Adept sequence (1980 onward) and the centauroid titanides in John Varley's Gaean trilogy (1979-84). Mutated singing plants feature in J.G. BALLARD's "Prima Belladonna" (1956). Musical contact is achieved over interplanetary distances in Barrington J. BAYLEY's "The Big Sound" (1962), in which an orchestra of 6000 becomes not only a sound transmitter but also a receiver. Music as a kind of alien LINGUISTICS is central to Jack Vance's "The Moon Moth" (1961); it has since become almost a CLICHE. The aliens communicate with us this way in the film CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977), initially with the most celebrated five-note musical phrase in sf. Music is combined with dance in Spider and Jeanne ROBINSON's STARDANCE (1979), another novel which supposes that rapport with aliens might be made easier by the use of the kind of nonverbal communication which music represents; yet another is The Rapture Effect (1987) by Jeffrey CARVER. An amusing, well told ecological melodrama is Sheri S. TEPPER's After Long Silence (1987; vt The Enigma Score 1989 UK), in which giant, crystalline lifeforms can be appeased - or, it turns out, spoken to - only by specially trained musicians.Music unlocks galactic history for terrestrials in Piers Anthony's MACROSCOPE (1969). It achieves such religious significance for the Third Men in Olaf STAPLEDON's LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930) that a Holy Empire of Music is founded; one of Stapledon's Last Men describes the Music of the Spheres and, in its most rarefied application, it has become part of the very fabric of some early universes described in Stapledon's STAR MAKER (1937), where all movement is musical rather than spatial. Kim Stanley ROBINSON's The Memory of Whiteness (1985) uses a great interplanetary "Orchestra" - a vast calliope-like instrument with a single player - as part of a complex metaphor, combining music and mathematics, in which musical structure and cosmic structure are seen as analogous. This sort of music/ MATHEMATICS/structure-of-the-Universe imagery appears also in David ZINDELL's ornate Neverness (1988).Perhaps the most distinguished of recent sf novels with a musical theme is The Child Garden (1988) by Geoff RYMAN, in which a densely portrayed future world, whose people are infected into INTELLIGENCE by virally transmitted DNA, is both transcended and reflected - in all its infernal and purgatorial aspects - by the setting to music of DANTE ALIGHIERI's Inferno and Purgatorio (written c1314-21), works which also shape the novel. This is one of the most richly orchestrated portrayals of the function of music in all sf.The invention of imaginary musical instruments is surprisingly common in sf, and by no means only recently. It is touched on in several stories, notably "Automata" (1814) by the composer E.T.A. HOFFMANN. There have been many proposals for what, in recent years, have been known as sound sculpture and sound environments: early mentions include the sounds made by wind blowing through the statues in Samuel BUTLER's Erewhon (1872). More recent wind-powered sound sculptures can be found in the "Music Masons" entry in Dictionary of the Khazars (1983) by Milorad Pavic (1929- ); they intricately carve rock salt in preparation for the season of the 40 winds. Future instruments mostly fall into two classes: variants on traditional instruments and those that exploit future technology. The focus of J.B. PRIESTLEY's lighthearted Low Notes on a High Level (1954) is the subcontrabass wind instrument, the Dobbophone, while more conventional instruments include the 9-stringed guitar-like baliset played by troubadors in Frank Herbert's DUNE (fixup 1965). Moderately conventional instruments tend to be found in low-technology and post- HOLOCAUST environments, like the pipe played by a 6-fingered MUTANT in Olaf Stapledon's Odd John (1935), the 20-hole flute (played with fingers and toes) fashioned inside a mutant's machete in Delany's THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (1967) and, in Richard COWPER's Corlay trilogy (1978-82), the double pipe articulated by its player's surgically twinned tongue-tip in the Britain of AD3000.Forms of instruments unknown at the time of writing but which could have existed a couple of decades later include: the Fourier audiosynthesizer in Charles L. Harness's "The Rose", which anticipates programmable synthesizers by some 25 years; the three-bass radiolyn played in an ensemble in Delany's Out of the Dead City (as Captives of the Flame 1963; rev 1968); and the multichord in Biggle's "The Tunesmith" (1957). The sensory-syrynx in Delany's NOVA (1968) is operated like a combination of theremin and guitar, and has sympathetic drone strings. The ultracembalo in "The Song the Zombie Sang" (1970) by Harlan ELLISON and Robert SILVERBERG is operated by electronic glove controllers. A direct neural input to the auditory lobes is achieved with Ballard's ultrasonic instruments in "The Sound Sweep" (1960), thereby reducing workload for the "sonovac" operators in a world overloaded with sonic pollution. Direct stimulation of the brain is featured also in Philip K. Dick's We Can Build You (1972) by way of the Waldteufel Euphoria and the Hammerstein Mood Organ.Not all such instruments are played by soloists. Dance music in quintuple time in Aldous HUXLEY's BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) is performed by 16 sexophones (plus additional ether music, synthetic music and a scent-and-colour organ). A typical "cosmos group" of audiovisual instruments is featured in Silverberg's The World Inside (1971): vibrastar, comet-harp, incantator, orbital diver, gravity-drinker, doppler-inverter and spectrum-rider, some of them generating sounds and images that are modulated by others. Similarly, in Ballard's Vermilion Sands (coll 1971) sonic statues with built-in microphones respond to sounds about them, replaying them in transmuted form. The most outrageous instruments, buried in concrete bunkers, are played by means of off-planet remote control by the rock group Disaster Area in Douglas ADAMS's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980): these are the photon-ajuitar, bass detonator and Megabang drum complex, with the performance reaching its climax when a stunt ship is driven into the system's sun.A recent anthology of original stories relating to pop and rock music is In Dreams (anth 1992) ed Paul J. MCAULEY and Kim NEWMAN. [HD/PN/BS]See also: THEATRE. MUTANT 1. Variant title of the film FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982).2. Film (1983; vt Night Shadows). Film Ventures International. Dir John Bud Cardos, starring Wings Hauser, Bo Hopkins, Jennifer Warren, Jody Medford, Cary Guffey, Lee Montgomery. Screenplay Peter Z. Orton, Michael Jones, John C. Kruize. 99 mins. Colour.When their car is wrecked by fun-loving good ole boys, two city slickers are trapped in a little town whose inhabitants have been turning strange since an unscrupulous chemical company started dumping toxic waste nearby. A low-budget sensationalist film, this has more than its share of blue-faced, yellow-drooling mutant zombies, but also takes some care with its pleasantly offbeat characterization (Hauser is fine as the hero who just wants to get the hell out of town) and its nonstop action (there's an immaculate scare sequence with hero and heroine cornered in the school toilets by pre-teen monsters). The picture was begun by director Mark Rosman (The House on Sorority Row [1983]) but Cardos, of KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977) and The Day Time Ended (1979; vt Vortex), stepped in - as he did when Tobe Hooper was fired from The Dark (1978) - and efficiently took over. [KN] MUTANTS The idea of "mutation" as a concept for use in understanding biological EVOLUTION was popularized by Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) in Die Mutationstheorie (1901-3); he related it to gross hereditary variations - the freakish "sports" which occasionally turn up in animal populations. Such sports are usually short-lived and sterile, and Charles Darwin (1809-1882) had rejected the notion that they might play a key part; the concept of mutation as an evolutionary factor was eventually modified to refer to relatively slight modifications of individual genes. In 1927 the US geneticist H.J. Muller (1890-1967) succeeded in inducing mutations in fruit flies by irradiation, and this success captivated the imagination of many speculative writers. One of the first to take up the notion was John TAINE, who wrote several extravagant "mutational romances". In The Greatest Adventure (1929) the corpses of giant saurians, no two alike, begin floating up from the ocean depths and are traced to a LOST WORLD in Antarctica where experiments in mutation were once carried out. In The Iron Star (1930) a mutagenic meteor transforms a region in Africa, causing local wildlife to undergo exotic metamorphoses. In Seeds of Life (1931; 1951) an irradiated man becomes a SUPERMAN, but does not realize the damage done to the genes which he transfers to the next generation. Stories like these, which attribute magical metamorphic qualities to radiation, owe far more to de Vries than to orthodox mutation theory, and yet they have remained commonplace throughout the history of sf. Mutational romance has been a staple of PULP MAGAZINES, COMICS and sf CINEMA, with the irradiation of various creatures frequently producing giant MONSTERS and the irradiation of people causing metamorphoses into supermen (many - possibly most - SUPERHEROES have this type of genesis) or subhumans. Examples from the early pulps include Jack WILLIAMSON's "The Metal Man" (1928) and Edmond HAMILTON's "The Man who Evolved" (1931). Hamilton went on to write many further mutational romances, notably The Star of Life (1947; rev 1959). He habitually featured developmental metamorphoses, and wrote an early story in which a mutant child is born to irradiated parents, "He that Hath Wings" (1938). Another author who made prolific use of mutational romance during the 1940s was Henry KUTTNER, in such stories as "I am Eden" (1946) and "Atomic!" (1947), where the magical transmogrifications are spread over several generations. Kuttner and C.L. MOORE, collaborating as Lewis Padgett, introduced into the sf pulps the sympathetic mutant superman, unjustly persecuted by "normal" humans, in the Baldy series - assembled as MUTANT (1945-53; fixup 1953) - and made comic use of the notion in the Hogben series.UK SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE of the 1930s frequently looked to mutational miracles to produce a better and saner breed of humans; even H.G. WELLS - who knew better - toyed halfheartedly with the idea in Star-Begotten (1937). The idea that mutation is a necessary part of the process of EVOLUTION led many serious sf writers to treat freakish human mutants sympathetically. Robert A. HEINLEIN did so, in "Universe" (1941), as did Isaac ASIMOV in Foundation and Empire (fixup 1952), the central character of which is "The Mule", a mutant whose advent had been unforeseeable by PSYCHOHISTORY. Frequently populations of persecuted mutants were used as a metaphor for real-life oppressed minorities. The explosion of the atom bomb in 1945 gave a great stimulus to mutational romance, and, although the wildest variants of the concept became scarcer in written sf, the logically absurd notion of clutches of similar superhuman mutants arising simultaneously as a result of nuclear accidents remains commonplace. The most notable example is perhaps Wilmar H. SHIRAS's Children of the Atom (1948-50; fixup 1953); a more recent one is Aubade for Ganelon (1984) by John Willett (1932- ). Post- HOLOCAUST stories frequently feature several subspecies of mutants, and often show the "normal" survivors of the atomic war persecuting the mutants - usually unwisely, as it is from the ranks of the mutants that a new species of humanity, better than the old model, is scheduled to appear; examples include Twilight World (1947; fixup 1961) by Poul ANDERSON and F.N. Waldrop, John WYNDHAM's The Chrysalids (1955; vt Re-Birth), Walter M. MILLER's A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1955-7; fixup 1960), Fritz LEIBER's "Night of the Long Knives" (1960; vt "The Wolf Pair") and Edgar PANGBORN's DAVY (1964). It was in this period that the cinema made most of its mutational romances; notably the giant-ant story THEM! (1954).Variants on the post-holocaust mutant theme include Lester DEL REY's The Eleventh Commandment (1962; rev 1970), in which a post-war Church encourages limitless reproduction in order to fight the lethal effects of the mutation rate; and Samuel R. DELANY's vivid romance of a social world which has undergone total mutational metamorphosis, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (1967). Post-holocaust PARANOIA about mutants is used in Norman SPINRAD's The Iron Dream (1972) as an analogue for Hitler's attitude to the Jews. More recent examples of post-holocaust mutational romance include Stuart GORDON's One-Eye (1973) and its sequels, and Hiero's Journey (1973) by Sterling LANIER. A more original story of mutant-persecution is J.G. BALLARD's "Low-Flying Aircraft" (1975), and the ambitious thread of THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION has been taken up by A.A. ATTANASIO in Radix (1981) and its sequels. Sf stories dealing sensibly with the idea of mutation remain rare but, now that the mutational miracle story has been taken to its ultimate extreme in Greg BEAR's BLOOD MUSIC (1985), writers may be forced to become more ingenious in mining the melodramatic potential of the notion. [BS]See also: DEVOLUTION; GREAT AND SMALL; NUCLEAR POWER. MUTATIONS Film (1973). Getty Picture Corp./Columbia. Dir Jack Cardiff, starring Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Michael Dunn, Julie Ege. Screenplay Robert D. Weinbach, Edward Mann. 92 mins. Colour.In this scientifically ludicrous UK film a mad SCIENTIST (Pleasence) attempts to combine plant with animal life, aided by the dwarf owner of a carnival freak-show (Dunn), who obtains human guinea-pigs for his experiments and exhibits the results. Tom Baker plays the sadistic, deformed assistant. The results of these experiments (one is a Venus Flytrap Man) carry out the inevitable revenge on their creator. As in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), real circus freaks (human pincushion, pretzel boy, lizard lady) were used to make the film, but, where Browning used them sympathetically, here they are only for sensationalist voyeurism. Director Cardiff was usually more reputable than this. [PN/JB] MYERS, EDWARD (1950- ) US writer whose LOST WORLD sequence-the Mountain Trilogy comprising The Mountain Made of Light (1992), Fire and Ice (1992) and The Summit (1994)-interestingly revises a long-abandoned convention. Though it is primarily set in the 1920s, and though fantasy elements increasingly dominate in later volumes, the trilogy is of sf as a demonstration of the extent to which seemingly dead forms can, on re-thinking, serve contemporary needs. The sequence is set in the Andes, and the lost race in question is Native American. But the old Lost World novel-which normally articulated late 19th century Western civilization's uneasy claims to racial and political hegemony over the entire planet-would have necessarily treated the lost race-because it was not of ancient white stock-as inherently superstitious. EM's version is far more complex, and the protagonist's rocky hegira towards higher wisdom in the 3rd volume transforms the old Lost World progaganda vehicle into genuine dialogue. [JC] MYERS, HOWARD L. (1930-1971) US writer whose Cloud Chamber (1977) attractively combines COSMOLOGY, ANTIMATTER invaders of our Universe, SEX and effortless rebirth of all sentient beings in a wide-ranging SPACE OPERA climaxing in its hero's arrival at Nirvana. [JC]See also: SOCIOLOGY. MYERS, ROY Roy MEYERS. MY FAVORITE MARTIAN US tv series (1963-6). A Jack Chertok Production for CBS. Prod/created Jack Chertok. Writers included John L. Greene, Ben Gershman, Bill Freedman, Albert E. Lewin, Burt Styler. Dirs included Leslie Goodwins, Oscar Rudolph, John Erman. 3 seasons, 107 25min episodes. First 2 seasons b/w, 3rd colour.This was a fairly sophisticated (compared to most tv sitcoms of the time), humorous and commercially successful series about a Martian (Ray Walston) who becomes stranded on Earth. He is befriended by a young man (Bill Bixby), who passes him off to friends as his uncle. The Martian's unfamiliarity with Earth customs, plus his special powers - which include ESP, INVISIBILITY and TELEKINESIS - provide much of the humour. A similar premise, again mostly used for light SATIRE, was adopted by 2 subsequent tv series, MORK AND MINDY (1978-82) and ALF (1986-current). [JB] MYHRE, OYVIND [r] SCANDINAVIA. MYLER, LOK [r] GERMANY. MYLIUS, RALPH [r] Warren C. NORWOOD. MY LIVING DOLL US tv series (1964-5). CBS TV. Created Jack Chertok, also executive prod. Prod Howard Leeds. 1 season, 25 mins per episode. Colour.After his success with MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, Chertok came up with another sf comedy series. Starring Bob Cummings as a psychiatrist, it concerned a female ROBOT, originally designed for use in space but put in his care while its inventor is away. Cummings decides to train it as the "perfect woman" - that is, quiet and obedient - but the robot's unpredictability places him in embarrassing situations. Statuesque Julie Newmar was memorable as the robot, carrying an erotic charge that could not be properly utilized within the context of a tv comedy. The underlying metaphor (woman equals doll) could be interpreted as either sexist, as Cummings plays it, or subversively proto- FEMINIST, which some of the ironies suggest. [JB/PN] MY SCIENCE PROJECT Film (1985). Touchstone/Silver Screen Partners II. Written and dir Jonathan R. Betuel, starring John Stockwell, Danielle von Zerneck, Fisher Stevens, Raphael Sbarge, Dennis Hopper. 94 mins, cut to 91 mins. Colour.One of an epidemic of teen sf movies ( BACK TO THE FUTURE, EXPLORERS, REAL GENIUS, WEIRD SCIENCE, etc.), this was among the less successful, even though its director, whose debut this was, had previously written the much better teen movie, The LAST STARFIGHTER (1984). Here a young man seeking material for a science project finds in a derelict army warehouse a strange engine (apparently taken from a hushed-up UFO), and it turns out to work as a TIME MACHINE when fed energy; the school is absorbed into a time vortex as the town's power supply is sucked up. Teenagers do well (naturally) against cavemen, Japanese soldiers, dinosaurs and mutants. The film lacks focus and straggles, but Hopper is good as the ex-hippy science teacher. [PN] MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN Film (1988). Weintraub/A Franklin R. Levy/Ronald Parker Production/Catalina. Dir Richard Benjamin, starring Kim Basinger, Dan Aykroyd, Alyson Hannigan. Screenplay Jericho Weingrod, Herschel Weingrod, Timothy Harris, Jonathan Reynolds. 108 mins. Colour.This charmless and leaden-footed SEX comedy tells of an alien woman (Basinger), fully human in appearance, who comes to Earth to learn the operation of a Galaxy-penetrating beam accidentally invented by an oafish scientist (Aykroyd). The running gags are all infelicitous variations on the theme of cultural misunderstanding, often sexual, between alien and human. [PN] MYSTERIANS, THE CHIKYU BOEIGUN. MYSTERIOUS ISLAND Film (1961). American Films/Columbia. Prod Charles H. Schneer. Dir Cy Endfield, starring Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Herbert Lom. Screenplay John Prebble, Daniel Ullman, Crane Wilbur, based on L'ile mysterieuse (1874-5; trans W.H.G. Kingston as The Mysterious Island 1875 UK) by Jules VERNE. 100 mins. Colour.This is a jovial showcase for Ray HARRYHAUSEN's robust special effects, with a luxuriant musical score by Bernard Herrmann. Prisoners escape by balloon from a confederate prison during the American Civil War and are washed ashore on a remote Pacific island. They encounter a giant crab, two female castaways, a giant prehistoric bird, huge bees, pirates, a deserted underwater city, Captain Nemo (Lom) himself, with his famous submarine Nautilus and, of course, an erupting volcano.Other versions include one made by MGM in 1929. Dir Lucien Hubbard, Maurice Tourneur, Benjamin Christiansen, it starred Lionel Barrymore as Count Dakkar (Nemo). The screenplay was by Hubbard; a soundtrack was added at the last moment. A Russian version, Tainstvenni Ostrov, was - surprisingly - made in wartime, in 1941. In 1951 Sam Katzman produced a 15-part serial for Columbia, dir Spencer G. Bennett and starring Richard Crane, Marshall Reed, Karen Randle. A little-seen French/Italian/Spanish coproduction, L'Isola Misteriosa e il Capitano Nemo, starring Omar Sharif, was briefly released as The Mysterious Island of Captain Nemo (1972) in the USA. [JB/PN] MYSTERIOUS TRAVELER MAGAZINE, THE US DIGEST-size magazine. 5 issues #1-#4 Nov 1951-June 1952, #5 undated 1952, published by Grace Publishing Co.; ed Robert Arthur. A spin-off from Mutual Broadcasting's Mysterious Traveler RADIO show, MTM was subtitled "Great Stories of Mystery, Detection and Suspense, Old and New", but included some sf (Ray BRADBURY, Murray LEINSTER) until, with its last issue (#5), it was retitled The Mysterious Traveler Mystery Reader. [FHP/MJE/PN] MYSTERIOUS WU FANG, THE US PULP MAGAZINE. 7 issues Sep 1935-Mar 1936, monthly, published by Popular Publications; ed Rogers Terrill. Intended to capitalize on the popularity of Sax ROHMER's Fu Manchu (featured in films and a radio series of the period), MWF showed the "Dragon Lord of Crime" seeking world domination, sometimes using sf means in the attempt. The novels were by the prolific Robert J. Hogan (1897-1963), who was simultaneously producing G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES; the first of them, The Case of the Six Coffins, was reprinted in PULP CLASSICS #8 (1975 chap). DR YEN SIN was a near-identical follow-up from the same publisher. [MJE/FHP] MYTHOLOGY The relationship of mythology to sf is close and deep, but not always obvious. Part of the confusion stems from the widely held belief that sf is itself a form of latter-day mythology, fulfilling comparable hungers in us. James BLISH took issue with this argument, pointing out that myth is usually "static and final in intent and thus entirely contrary to the spirit of sf, which assumes continuous change". We restrict ourselves below to the role of traditional mythologies in sf and to the literal, new mythologies which are sometimes created within sf, usually in the context of explaining the way alien societies think.Traditional mythology appears in sf in two ways, its archetypes being either re-enacted or rationalized (sometimes both). The re-enactment of myths is the more complex of the two cases. Behind the retelling of a myth in a modern context lies the feeling that, although particular myths grew out of a specific cultural background, the truths they express relate to our humanness and remain relevant to all our societies: the story of Prometheus, punished by the gods for stealing fire from the heavens, or its Christian variant, where Dr Faustus is doomed to eternal damnation for selling his soul in exchange for knowledge, has a direct bearing on the SCIENTIST's aspiration for ever more information about the meaning of the Universe, and more power over matter. The entry on CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH lists many such stories; even such an apparently HARD-SF technological story as Arthur C. CLARKE's RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (1973) is permeated quite deliberately with echoes of ancient myths, the Promethean one in particular. But to list mythic echoes in sf (as with most forms of prose fiction) would be impossible; there are too many. Even a list of full-scale sf analogues of myths as opposed to mere echoes would be fatiguingly long.Several of the most popular mythic analogues are discussed elsewhere in this volume. Retellings of the Christian legend are discussed under RELIGION and MESSIAHS, and reworkings of the story of Genesis are examined under ADAM AND EVE. Obviously the entry on GODS AND DEMONS bears on mythology, as does that on SUPERNATURAL CREATURES.Mythology in sf reflects a familiar truth, that in undergoing social and technological change we do not escape the old altogether, but carry it encysted within us. The totally new is by its nature almost impossible for sf writers or anyone else to envisage. Far more commonly, they work out ancient patterns of love and death, aspiration and reconciliation in a new context. Several sf writers have imagined a sterile future which has consciously repudiated its myths and hence its past, only to be left with a terrible emptiness. Ray BRADBURY's nostalgic "The Exiles" (1949 as "The Mad Wizards of Mars") has literary and mythic figures exiled on Mars, perishing when the last of the books containing their stories is burned or lost; the emerald city of Oz dissolves like a mist; an Earth expedition is faced with only a desert. Robert SILVERBERG's "After the Myths Went Home" (1969) has figures of myth reincarnated, via a time machine, for the entertainment of a far future which is suffering from ennui; familiarity soon breeds boredom, and the myths are dismissed; the society, emptied of heroism and mystery, is destroyed by invaders. James WHITE's The Dream Millennium (1974) depicts a crew of starship colonists, who spend much of their time in SUSPENDED ANIMATION, as able to survive because in their dreams they have access to a kind of Jungian substratum of racial memory; the awareness they thereby derive of the mythic patterns in human history gives them the strength to survive on a new world.Re-enactments of myth in sf take several forms. The simplest strives to deepen the emotional connotations of a story by permeating it with the reverberations of some great original, as C.S. LEWIS does successfully with the myth of the temptation of Eve in Perelandra (1943; vt Voyage to Venus), and less successfully with the Arthurian legend in That Hideous Strength (1945; vt The Tortured Planet US). Lewis's friend Charles WILLIAMS re-enacted myths both Christian and pre-Christian in most of his novels, usually digesting the pagan elements so that they emerged as supportive to the Christian faith. Patricia MCKILLIP's FOOL'S RUN (1987) is one of several sf retellings of the Orpheus myth, perhaps the most accomplished, set in a prison satellite, the Underworld. Several writers have striven for a Homeric resonance by retelling HOMER's Odyssey in sf terms, whether directly or indirectly; Stanley G. WEINBAUM did this in a short series of stories in the 1930s, R.A. LAFFERTY in Space Chantey (1968), and Brian STABLEFORD in his Dies Irae trilogy (1971). ( SPACE OPERA generally, of course, has a good deal in common with the picaresque voyages of Odysseus.) Lafferty has several times reverted to mythic themes, notably in The Devil is Dead (1971) and FOURTH MANSIONS (1969); the latter categorizes mythic archetypes into four groups, the eternal conflict between which leads to many of our troubles.The supposed Cretan myth of the Earth-Mothers, and the king sacrificed to ensure renewed fertility, is often evoked in sf, naturally enough by Robert GRAVES, in Watch the North Wind Rise (1949 US; vt Seven Days in New Crete 1949 UK), since he is the best known popularizer of the myth in this century, particularly in his nonfictional (though anthropologically unreliable) book The White Goddess (1947 US). It is also used, colourfully if confusingly, in Sign of the Labrys (1963) by Margaret ST CLAIR, in which members of a surviving witch/priestess cult prove best equipped to cope with an underground, post- HOLOCAUST existence. Philip Jose FARMER has also been preoccupied with the image of WOMEN as archetypal seeresses, creators and destroyers, and with men as virile but doomed horned gods, notably in Flesh (1960; rev 1968). Like Bradbury in "The Exiles", Farmer makes little distinction in most of his writings between literary and religious myths, seeming to regard them as feeding the same human needs. All Farmer's work is permeated by mythology, whether the mythic creature is a reincarnated god, a great white whale or Tarzan; the mythology may be a new one invented by Farmer himself, usually on very traditional models (see below). The best known sf novel drawing on The White Goddess is THE SNOW QUEEN (1980) by Joan D. VINGE, in which she designs an entire planetary culture along Gravesian lines, and adds to it a secondary and more recent myth taken from Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875).Another bestselling book (like Graves's) about myth was The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). Many myths that make their way into modern sf have been filtered through a sort of Campbellian sorting process before getting there. Among them are Farmer's books, mentioned above, a particularly pure example being Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (1972), a spoof biography in which Farmer draws on Campbellian ideas about the nature of the HERO. George LUCAS has often spoken about his use of Campbellian ideas about myth, and his films STAR WARS (1977) and its sequels, which are intended to have many mythic resonances, incorporate these (as, indeed, does every second work of sf mythology; see discussion of Roger ZELAZNY below). Something of Farmer's engagingly packrat attitude towards myth can also be found in Sam LUNDWALL's satirical Alice's World (1970 dos US), in which a spaceship returning to an abandoned Earth finds a grotesque variety of mythic and literary beings now living there.More complex than many of the above are stories whose mythic components are seen with a degree of irony, stressing not only ancient continuities but also modernist discontinuities with the past. Several of Samuel R. DELANY's novels fall into this category, notably THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (1967) and NOVA (1968); in the former a deserted Earth is repopulated by aliens who take on human shape and, with it, the mythic burden of the past, in a confused form they do not always understand; in the latter the story of Prometheus is replayed in a tale of literally stealing fire from the heavens, but the narrative tone has as much of the deflationary as the heroic in it. Michael MOORCOCK's BEHOLD THE MAN (1966 NW; exp 1969) has a time traveller who wanted to see Christ's crucifixion playing an uncomfortably central role in that event; the scene he finds is more squalid than transcendent. Lawrence DURRELL's Tunc (1968) and its sequel Nunquam (1970) feature a multinational conglomerate called Merlin, but the Arthurian echoes are primarily to show that there is little room for romance in a corrupt future. Michael SWANWICK uses similar Arthurian echoes altogether more economically and to equally squalid effect in "The Dragon Line" (1988), a tale of a coke-snorting modern Mordred trying to do the right thing for the world with a resuscitated Merlin's help. Cordwainer SMITH derives a considerable emotional charge from the mythic analogues, often Oriental, he uses in his stories; in "The Dead Lady of Clown Town" (1964) the parallels are with the legend of Joan of Arc. Smith's use of myth is touching but sometimes rather remote; often, as in this story, the mythic parallels are further distanced by the events of the tale being themselves remembered by later generations, and recounted with the formality and balance of a well rounded myth-myths within myths, as it were. In The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972; vt The War of Dreams US) Angela CARTER, another ironist, has a mad scientist using a MACHINE charged with erotic energy to make the dreams and myths of men come alive; the very series of betrayals through which his plans go awry is itself, ironically, mythic. Charles L. HARNESS regularly uses mythic archetypes both of character and of plot in his involuted, grandiose melodramas, notably in THE RING OF RITORNEL (1968) and "The Rose" (1953), in both of which art and science dance a complex saraband and winged archetypes are confronted with MATHEMATICS. Stories structured on myth can appear rather simple-mindedly determinist, as events run along their preordained grooves. Alan GARNER, for example, specializes in a kind of cyclic history in which ancient myths of violence and betrayal work themselves out again in a modern setting, but such books as The Owl Service (1967), based on a Welsh legend in the Mabinogion, and Red Shift (1973) allow free will to loosen the mythic trap, if not escape it entirely. James TIPTREE Jr evokes the legendary figure of the Rat King in "The Psychologist who Wouldn't do Awful Things to Rats" (1976), but the protagonist is not saved by its majestic appearance; indeed, he is goaded into brutal rat murder.Within both GENRE SF and FANTASY a particularly popular variant on the mythology theme is to have humans encountering mythic figures through TIME TRAVEL to the past or in an ALTERNATE WORLD, or conversely to have mythic survivals appearing in the modern world. Some of these stories are dealt with under the heading of MAGIC. They were especially associated with the magazine UNKNOWN, and often involved a puckish or whimsical humour, as in the Harold Shea stories by L. Sprague DE CAMP and Fletcher PRATT. Jack WILLIAMSON's The Reign of Wizardry (1940; rev 1965) is from the same magazine and the same period. Edmond HAMILTON's The Monsters of Juntonheim (1941 Startling Stories as "A Yank at Valhalla"; 1950 UK; vt A Yank at Valhalla 1973 US) is another story of this type. Naomi MITCHISON gives an account of the search for the Holy Grail as told by two reporters from the Camelot Chronicle and the Northern Pict in To the Chapel Perilous (1955), but here the basic points are serious, despite the anachronistic jokes that usually feature largely in stories of this kind, as in several by Poul ANDERSON ( MAGIC). Thomas Burnett SWANN made a career out of writing sweet, sometimes oversweet, narratives about mythic survivals, his point being that something wonderful and delicate left the world as modern rationalism took a grip, and as we desecrated our landscapes.One quite popular strategy for mythology stories is to tell the myths from the viewpoint of an observer or protagonist from the time in which they happened - sometimes, of course, rationalizing them in the process. John GARDNER's Grendel (1971) does this with the Beowulf story, as did Henry Treece (1911-1966) in The Green Man (1966) and Michael CRICHTON in Eaters of the Dead (1976), but only Crichton's book, which accounts for Grendel and his dam as Neanderthal survivals ( APES AND CAVEMEN), can be seen as sf.The majority of stories of mythic survival are more fantasy than sf, like Swann's; or like The Last Unicorn (1968) by Peter Beagle (1939- ), which tells of the sad search of the beast of the title for its extinct fellows; or like Diana Wynne JONES's Eight Days of Luke (1975), in which Loki turns up in modern England, and Fire and Hemlock (1984), in which the tale of Tam Lin's escape from the Fairy Queen is replayed (yet again) in the here and now; or like the allegorical The Circus of Dr Lao (1935) by Charles FINNEY, in which mythic creatures survive in a circus, and have a deep effect on the disbelieving town folk who witness them. A yearning for the survival of mystery, and an intellectual belief in the necessity of such a survival if human culture is not to become sterile and bleak, pervade most such stories, and are central to the concerns of Beauty (1991) by Sheri S. TEPPER, which fascinatingly (and fascinatedly) weaves a centuries-spanning construct out of folklore and fairy-tale archetypes as a possible prophylactic against a hellish, mythless future. The same yearning is to be found even at the simplistic end of the spectrum, as in Emil PETAJA's Kalevala series, where avatars of the Finnish gods have adventures, or Joseph E. KELLEAM's The Little Men (1960) and its sequel, where Jack Odin has fights in space and elsewhere. Stan LEE (and/or Jack KIRBY) resuscitated various myths, notably that of Thor, in MARVEL COMICS, and Thor turns up again in Douglas ADAMS's The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), trying to catch a plane to Oslo. Sterling LANIER's The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (coll 1971) wittily spins yarns about confrontations with demigods, monsters, and other mythic survivals. John BLACKBURN also worked with the theme, but here we enter a new area, and a peculiarly sciencefictional one, the rationalized myth, which becomes (not always convincingly) sf rather than fantasy.Blackburn was not the best exponent of the rationalized myth, although Children of the Night (1966) and For Fear of Little Men (1972) elicit satisfying shudders in their accounts of hidden LOST RACES in England whose existence explains legends of fairies and goblins, with a logic similar to that of the Crichton novel mentioned above, and echoing the Faerie of Arthur MACHEN. Manly Wade WELLMAN's Hok stories (1939-42) rationalize various myths, as H. BEDFORD-JONES had done in his Trumpets from Oblivion series in The BLUE BOOK (1938-9). Rather in the manner of the theories of Erich VON DANIKEN, a number of sf stories explain myths as distorted memories of visits to Earth by aliens, as did Arthur C. Clarke in CHILDHOOD'S END (1950; exp 1953) - though in this case it is through racial precognition, not memory, that the horned aliens have given rise to the legend of the Devil. In Clifford D. SIMAK's The Goblin Reservation (1968) a rather whimsical attempt is made to explain gnomes, trolls, fairies, banshees and so forth as specialized colonists created by biological engineering. More successful was Nigel KNEALE's tv serial QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1958-9), in which the image of the Devil turns out to be a race memory of insect-like Martians, a memory that comes disturbingly to life in modern London. Larry NIVEN and Jerry POURNELLE reversed the ordinary rationalization procedure in Inferno (1976), in which an sf writer finds himself, possibly deservedly, in Hell, a place he consistently and unsuccessfully attempts to rationalize as an actual physical construct in the Universe of matter; ultimately it turns out to be, indeed, Hell.A quite different kind of mythic survival appears in Mythago Wood (1984) and its sequel Lavondyss (1988) by Robert HOLDSTOCK. The wood of the title (which like John CROWLEY's hidden world in Little, Big [1981] is infinitely bigger on the inside than its modest periphery would suggest) has the property, more fantastic than sciencefictional, of incarnating mythagos from the collective unconscious of those humans who live in and around it, mythagos being, effectively, walking figures of myth. As the wood is ever more deeply penetrated, the ultimate bare myths of the Ice Age come to life. The two books are Holdstock's most powerful work, and perhaps the central mythological fantasy of the 1980s.The sf writer who has most consistently used mythological themes in sf, as opposed to fantasy, is Roger Zelazny. His first novel, THIS IMMORTAL (1966), confronts its almost immortal protagonist ( IMMORTALITY) with various MUTANT creatures which are somehow archetypes of Greek myth given flesh. Zelazny stayed with themes of this type for some years, often using them ironically, typically playing off the colloquial against the archaic, in stories about quasi-gods of human origin whose powers blend advanced mental training with high technology, deliberately reconstructing and replaying mythic confrontations, in Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), which reincarnates the Egyptian pantheon, and perhaps most successfully in LORD OF LIGHT (1967), an assured and oddly moving story of planetary colonists who deliberately take on the aspect of Hindu gods, and become involved with a variety of appropriate metaphysical paradoxes.These comprise a new kind of mythology story, in which myths are evoked not only by the author but quite consciously by the characters, often as a form of cold-blooded CULTURAL ENGINEERING, and sometimes self-destructively, as game becomes trap. Another example is Harry HARRISON's Captive Universe (1969), in which the crew of a giant starship has been deliberately programmed into a mental state of medieval monkishness, and the colonists into an Aztec tribalism complete with Aztec "gods" (who turn out to be constructs); both crew and colonists are ignorant of the true state of affairs, and regard the starship simply as the world ( POCKET UNIVERSE). Poul Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness" (1971) has the native inhabitants of a colonized planet reading the minds of the colonists, picking out their archetypal fears and hopes, and creating by hallucination a world of sinister faerie to keep the colonists away, even kidnapping human children in the manner of the old ballads.Finally, sf commonly creates its own myths. In his A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920) David LINDSAY invents a whole series of imaginary (but hauntingly familiar) mythologies on another planet; these ultimately annihilate one another in a kind of mutual critique, leaving its protagonist at the end annealed by fire and wholly stripped of illusion. The SWORD AND SORCERY subgenre regularly constructs mythologies which often, as in the case of Robert E. HOWARD's, bear a close relation to our own. Out of the Mouth of the Dragon (1969) by Mark GESTON is permeated with a myth of Armageddon, a final conflict doomed never to take place, since the forces who have volunteered to fight it keep cutting their own side to ribbons in squabbles on the way. At a more accessible level, GENRE SF has created a meta-narrative SPACE-OPERA myth which has resulted from the borrowing of ideas from story to story, with additional accretions on the way. A distinct sf version of MARS, for example, is the work of no single writer, has little to do with the real Mars, and yet exists very clearly in the imagination of readers. Leigh BRACKETT and Ray Bradbury have created some of the more poignant variations on this particular Mars myth.With the growing interest in ANTHROPOLOGY in sf since the 1960s, several of the better sf writers have added richness and density to their depiction of alien or imaginary societies by creating myths for them. This is the case with most of Ursula K. LE GUIN's work, as in THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (1969) and - with a spectacular density and length - in ALWAYS COMING HOME (1985); her "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight?" (1987), however, uses traditional Native American myth in its story of a girl who comes to live with incarnate animal spirits. Terry CARR's "The Dance of the Changer and the Three" (1968) presents a dangerous alien society whose enigmatic behaviour may be explained only if their myths are properly understood; it was brave of Carr to essay a mythology for beings composed of pure energy. Harlan ELLISON, by juxtaposing icons and images from the ancient and the modern worlds, has forged some fine modern myths, many collected in Deathbird Stories (coll 1975), which includes "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" (1973), in which the violence and indifference of a great city are seen to coalesce into a kind of contemporary demon. His "Croatoan" (1975) features a characteristically wild but unselfconscious metaphor in bringing together the story of the lost Virginian colony of Roanoke with (a development of a modern myth) the idea of a colony of children in the sewers, descended from aborted foetuses flushed down the drains, who live alongside huge alligators which, when smaller, suffered the same fate.THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS (1972) is one of the many works by Gene WOLFE in which, as with the Le Guin stories, the bearing of myth on reality is both constant and unpredictable; along perhaps with John Crowley - whose brilliant ENGINE SUMMER (1979), for example, plays cruelly with the idea of cyclic myth in a post- HOLOCAUST venue - Wolfe makes the most sophisticated use of myth of any modern sf writer. Clashes between free will and predestination, the first signifying an outward thrust and the second an inward pressure from the inexorable past, occur, as they must, in all mythological sf written by people who are conscious of the consequences of their themes. Certainly it is Wolfe's pre-eminent subject - especially in the Book of the New Sun series - as it is, with the emphasis rather more on myth as elegiac trap, Crowley's also.A theme anthology is New Constellations: An Anthology of Tomorrow's Mythologies (anth 1976) ed Thomas M. DISCH and Charles Naylor. [PN]See also: ATLANTIS. Яндекс.Реклама: |