SF&F encyclopedia (D-D)DAGMAR Lou CAMERON. DAGMAR, PETER Frank J. PINCHIN. DAGNOL, JULES N. [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. DAHL, ROALD (1916-1990) Welsh-born writer of Norwegian parents who spent periods of his life in the USA, but lived in the UK in his later years; married to the actress Patricia Neal 1953-83. Though his enormous success as an author of children's stories tended to dominate perceptions of his career, he was in fact long best known for his eerie, exquisitely crafted, somewhat poisonous adult tales, many of them fantasies, assembled in Someone Like You (coll 1953 US; exp 1961 UK), Kiss Kiss (coll 1960 US), Switch Bitch (coll 1974 US) and several later collections which often included previous material: The Best of Roald Dahl (coll 1978 US); Tales of the Unexpected (coll 1979) and More Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected (coll 1980; vt More Tales of the Unexpected 1980; vt Further Tales of the Unexpected 1981), both assembled as Roald Dahl's Completely Unexpected Tales (omni 1986); Two Fables (coll 1986 chap); Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (coll 1989); and the posthumous The Collected Short Stories (coll 1991), which includes further work. Not infrequently these stories make use of borderline sf images, such as the unpleasant metamorphosis of human into bee in "Royal Jelly" (1960); but more generally it is the threat of sf or supernatural displacement that powers them.RD's first title was a children's fantasy, The Gremlins (1943 chap US), a short story that became famous because Walt Disney dickered for a time with making an animated film of it (there is no connection with the much later Joe DANTE film Gremlins). His only sf novel, Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948 US), by some margin his worst book, recasts the tale for an adult audience. After attempting to sabotage humanity during WWII, the long-submerged gremlins see that we ourselves are doing the job quite adequately; they take back control of the planet after the nuclear WWIV, but then become extinct in a world bare of humanity. The strained and sour whimsy of this "fable" might be seen - according to RD's critics - as passing directly into his juvenile fantasies, though it would probably be fairer to acknowledge a world of difference between adult spitefulness and the exuberant child's-eye view of grown-ups and the meting of justice unto them presented in James and the Giant Peach (1961 US) and all its successors, the most famous being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964 US), filmed as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971); it was assembled with its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972 US), as The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka (omni 1987). RD also wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967). One late novel for adults followed, the quasi-historical, borderline- STEAMPUNK My Uncle Oswald (1979), which plays with the notion of "tapping" geniuses such as Freud and Shaw for purposes of artificial insemination - spermpunk, in short.But the adult work was, in the end, miserly; the stories for children were, in the end, generously wicked gifts of fable. [JC]Other works for adults: Over to You (coll 1946 US), associational; Twenty-Nine Kisses from Roald Dahl (coll 1969), a compilation; Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) and Going Solo (1986), autobiographical; Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (anth 1983).For children: The Magic Finger (1966 chap US); Fantastic Mr Fox (1970 chap); Danny, the Champion of the World (1975); The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (coll 1977; vt The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar 1977 US); The Enormous Crocodile (1978); The Twits (1980 chap); George's Marvellous Medicine (1981); The BFG (1982); The Witches (1983); The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me (1985); Matilda (1988); Esio Trot (1990 chap), associational; The Minipins (1991 chap).About the author: Roald Dahl (1983) by Chris Dowling.See also: HUMOUR; SATIRE. DAIBER, ALBERT [r] GERMANY. DAIKAIJU GAMERA (vt Gamera) Film (1966). Daiei. Dir Noriaki Yuasa, starring Eiji Funakoshi, Harumi Kiritachi (and, in the US version, Brian Donlevy, Albert Dekker, Diane Findlay). Screenplay Fumi Takahashi. 88 mins. Colour.This was Daiei Studios' answer to the enormously successful GOJIRA ["Godzilla"] films from Toho Studios. Gamera is a giant prehistoric turtle, restored to life by nuclear testing. It attacks Tokyo, naturally, but is captured and sent into space. The US version had extra footage showing Americans, not Japanese, discovering how to eliminate Gamera! The Gamera films were, apart from the Gojira films, Japan's most successful MONSTER MOVIES. The 6 sequels, all dir Yuasa except the first (for which he did the special effects), are: Gamera Tai Barugon (1966), dir Shigeo Tanaka, released in English as Gamera vs. Barugon, in which Gamera returns from space, now apparently jet-propelled, and fights a giant lizard that has a lethal rainbow field around it; Gamera Tai Gaos (1967; vt Daikaiju Kuchusen), released in English as Gamera vs. Gaos (vt The Return of the Giant Monsters), in which Gaos is a bad scaly monster that hates sunlight and Gamera (like Godzilla, he rapidly became a good monster) saves children; Gamera Tai Viras (1968; vt Gamera Tai Uchukaiju Bairasu), released in English as Gamera vs. Viras (vt Gamera Versus Outer Space Monster Viras; vt Destroy All Planets), in which two boy scouts save Gamera from alien control; Gamera Tai Guiron (1969), released in English as Gamera vs. Guiron (vt Attack of the Monsters), in which Gamera saves children from brain-eating female aliens and their knife-headed monster; Gamera Tai Daimaju Jaiga (1970), released in English as Gamera vs. Jiger (vt Gamera vs. Monster X; vt Monsters Invade Expo 70), in which nasty Jiger lays an egg inside Gamera, a parasite hatches and starts sucking his blood, and children in a mini-submarine enter his veins to help out; and Gamera Tai Shinkai Kaiju Jigura (1971), released in English as Gamera vs. Zigra (vt Gamera Versus the Deep Sea Monster Zigra), in which there is an anti-pollution theme, bad aliens, and a very bad script. [PN]See also: CINEMA. DAIKAIJU KUCHUSEN DAIKAIJU GAMERA. DAIL, C(HARLES) C(URTIS) (1851-1902) US writer and lawyer whose Willmoth the Wanderer, or The Man from Saturn (1890; rev c1891) is a real oddity. Though told with no great skill, its narrative, purporting to be that of Willmoth the Saturnian as told towards the end of his several-million-year lifespan, is an eventful affair. Willmoth proceeds from Saturn to Venus (travel via ANTIGRAVITY) and, late in the book, to a prehistoric Earth, whose primitive inhabitants he breeds into Homo sapiens. CCD's episodic second novel, The Stone Giant: A Story of the Mammoth Cave (1898), lies within the overarching context of the first book. It is presented as a translation (by Willmoth) of memoirs by the prehistoric ruler Wymorian, an 8ft (2.4m) giant and founder of ATLANTIS, who is given (by ancient descendants of Willmoth) an elixir of life. There is much talk about the ethics of the IMMORTALITY experiment, which on the whole is a failure - as, notoriously, was Atlantis. [PN/JC] DAIN, ALEX Pseudonym of Alex Lukeman (? -? ), US writer whose sf novel is The Bane of Kanthos (1969 dos), a SPACE OPERA. [JC] DAKE, CHARLES ROMYN (? -? ) US writer whose lost-race ( LOST WORLDS) novel, A Strange Discovery (1899), features a Roman colony in the Antarctic and is notable in that it continues the story of Edgar Allan POE's Gordon Pym. [JC] DALE, ADAM Brian HOLLOWAY. DALE, FLOYD D. (? - ) US writer whose first work, A Hunter's Fire (1989), is a post- HOLOCAUST military-sf adventure. [JC] DALEKS These sinister ALIENS, bent on universal conquest, mutated and rendered immobile by radioactivity, inhabit metal transporters to become CYBORGS. They were introduced in the tv series DOCTOR WHO by writer Terry NATION in The Dead Planet (1963-4), the long-running programme's second story, later filmed as DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965); another 1964 tv story was filmed as DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. (1966). The Daleks returned in many Dr Who tv episodes, being the most popular feature of its first decade; only in 1975 did we learn, in Genesis of the Daleks, that they had been created by an evil, crippled genius, Davros. [PN] DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. (vt Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.) Film (1966). AARU. Dir Gordon Flemyng, starring Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, Roberta Tovey, Jill Curzon. Screenplay Milton Subotsky, based on a 6-episode DR WHO tv story by Terry NATION, The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964). 84 mins. Colour.This was the second movie made by coproducers Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg to cash in on the popularity of the Dr Who tv series, the first being DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965). The DALEKS, almost 200 years on, have invaded Earth (largely unchanged since the 1960s) intending to empty its core and use it as a giant spaceship, but Dr Who and his colleagues, who include a London bobby (Cribbins) from 1966, thwart their plan in a story devoid of dramatic tension or science: Earth's north and south magnetic fields, we are told, meet below Bedfordshire, and can be used to suck the Daleks into oblivion at Earth's centre. The greatest ineptness of the screenplay is its failure to give Dr Who, here played as a doddery old gent by Cushing, anything at all to do. [PN] DALEY, BRIAN C. (1947- ) US writer whose first novels were the SCIENCE-FANTASY Coramonde sequence - The Doomfarers of Coramonde (1977) and The Starfollowers of Coramonde (1979) - which puts into an ALTERNATE-WORLD setting a tale of MAGIC, court politics and quest, starring a Vietnam veteran who helps his friend, the rightful ruler, fight off an evil sorcerer. Of slightly greater sf interest is the Alacrity FitzHugh sequence - Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds (1985), Jinx on a Terran Inheritance (1985) and Fall of the White Ship Avatar (1986) - whose hero, Alacrity, hurtles through sf adventures on a galactic scale. BCD's best single novel has perhaps been A Tapestry of Magics (1983), a fantasy whose central conceit - a tapestry which is also a magical singularity - recursively recruits into the tale, from various eons and realities, characters both real and fictional, including some of Robert A. HEINLEIN's, perhaps in acknowledgement of Heinlein's own RECURSIVE later fiction.BCD remains best known, however, for his highly competent and colourful Star Wars ties, Han Solo at Star's End * (1979), Han Solo's Revenge * (1979) and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy * (1980), which admirably set out to infill Solo's pre-saga life, and which were assembled as Star Wars: The Han Solo Adventures (omni 1992); Star Wars: The NPR Radio Dramatization *(1994) is a radio play. Other ties include Tron * (1982) ( TRON) and the two sequences of Robotech tv ties with James Luceno, writing together as Jack McKinney: the first comprises Robotech #1: Genesis * (1987), #2: Battle Cry * (1987), #3: Homecoming * (1987), #4: Battlehymn * (1987), #5: Force of Arms * (1987), #6: Doomsday * (1987), #7: Southern Cross * (1987), #8: Metal Fire * (1987), #9: The Final Nightmare * (1987), #10: Invid Invasion * (1987), #11: Metamorphosis * (1987) and #12: Symphony of Light * (1987); the second sequence, the Sentinels books, comprises The Sentinels #1: The Devil's Hand * (1988), #2: Dark Powers * (1988), #3: Death Dance * (1988), #4: World Killers * (1988) and #5: Rubicon * (1988); both sequences conclude with Robotech: The End of the Circle * (1990). Luceno and BCD, both still writing as Jack McKinney, continued with some independent titles: Kaduna Memories (1990), about a detective in 21st-century Manhattan, and the first volumes of the Black Hole Travel Agency sequence, Event Horizon (1991),Artifact of the System (1991),The Big Empty (1993) and The Shadow * (1994), a film tie. It could not be argued that BCD has much built upon the promise of his first books, but nor could it be said that he has ever given bad value. He has become one of the necessary journeymen. [JC] DALGAARD, NIELS (1956- ) Danish academic and sf critic whose PhD research into Danish sf is the first on such a topic to be funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities. ND is sf reviewer for the newspaper Politiken and editor of the critical journal Proxima (since 1981). He wrote the DENMARK entry in this volume. [PN] DALMAS, JOHN Pseudonym for all his fiction of US writer John R(obert) Jones (1926- ), whose first career was as a research ecologist for the US Forest Service. He began publishing with The Yngling (1969 ASF; fixup 1971; rev 1984), which, with its prequel, Homecoming (1984) - both assembled as The Orc Wars (omni 1992) - depicts a barbarian future whose history echoes that of the eponymous Norse kings of legend; eventually the hero of the saga leads his neo-Vikings south from the encroaching ice, though their ideal community is soon under threat; The Yngling and the Circle of Power (1992) is a prequel. In the Fanglith series - Fanglith (1985) and Return to Fanglith (1987) - the planet to which criminals are exiled turns out to be Earth; much of JD's work similarly transforms SPACE-OPERA venues into arenas where ironies (or the gods) have free play. In both The Reality Matrix (1986) and, with Rod Martin (1928- ), The Playmasters (1986) this drift of implication becomes explicit. The Regiment sequence - comprisingThe Regiment (1987), The White Regiment (1990) and The Regiment's War (1993) - tells, a group of mercenaries from a military planet sent off to fight until they all die - characters, once again, who are players in others' games. The General's President (1988) interestingly assumes that a US civilian puppet-leader might convincingly fox his military backers. Though his work is teasingly close to routine, JD is too various and lively to dismiss.Other works: The Varkaus Conspiracy (1983); Touch the Stars: Emergence (1983) with Carl Martin (1950- ); The Scroll of Man (1985); The Walkaway Clause (1986); The Lantern of God (1989); The Lizard War (1989); The Khalif's War (1991). DALOS, GYORGY (ALFRED) (1943- ) Hungarian writer, who suffered the usual persecutions (he was expelled from theCommunist Party in 1968 as a "dissident") before writing 1985: A Historical Report(Hongkong 2036) from the Hungarian of * * * (trans Stuart Hood and Estella Schmid1983 UK), a tale which did not appear in his native land, or in its original language, duringthe period of Soviet hegemony. It is an extremely sprightly SATIRE on conditions inhis native land, in the form of a sequel to George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR(1949), recounting the death of Big Brother, aninterval of thaw, and once again a clenching of the iron fist. [JC] DALTON, HENRY ROBERT S(AMUEL) (1835-? ) UK writer, active to about 1890, whose sf novel Lesbia Newman (1889) depicts a profound change in UK social attitudes after a disastrous 1890s loss of territory to European powers and the USA, as a consequence of which the eponymous female manages to seduce the Ecumenical Council of 1900 into proclaiming the worship of women. [JC] DALTON, SEAN Jay D. BLAKENEY. DALY, HAMLIN [s] E. Hoffmann PRICE. DAMNATION ALLEY Film (1977). Landers-Roberts/Zeitman/20th Century-Fox. Dir Jack Smight, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Dominique Sanda. Screenplay Alan Sharp, Lukas Heller, based on Damnation Alley (1969) by Roger ZELAZNY. 95 mins cut to 91 mins. Colour.In this travesty the solitary, snarling, Hell's Angel protagonist of Zelazny's novel has become four fairly decent Air Force officers. There are almost no survivors of WWIII. The officers set out from the western USA to cross the country eastwards in "land-mobiles", seeking viable communities. The HOLOCAUST has tilted Earth's axis, turning the sky into a display of glowing radiation and electrical storms, represented by astonishingly garish and inadequate process work from an obviously low-budget special-effects department. The encounter with mutated, carnivorous cockroaches stands out in an otherwise wholly laughable and random series of stereotyped adventures with murderous hillbillies, floods, a girl, a feral boy and several deaths. [PN] DAMNED, THE (vt These Are the Damned) Film (1961). Hammer/Swallow. Dir Joseph Losey, starring MacDonald Carey, Oliver Reed, Shirley Ann Field, Viveca Lindfors, Alexander Knox. Screenplay Evan Jones, based on The Children of Light (1960) by Henry L. LAWRENCE. 96 mins, cut to 87 mins (UK) and to 77 mins (US). B/w.Made in the UK by expatriate US director Losey, this film so dismayed the distributors, Columbia, that they kept it on the shelf for two years before releasing it, and then with major cuts. A US visitor to an English seaside town (Carey) becomes involved with the sister (Field) of the leader of some tough, local bikers. The pair accidentally learn of a secret, illegal military project to irradiate children kept in underground isolation, thereby rendering them capable of surviving nuclear HOLOCAUST. (The otherwise powerful film is partly devalued by Losey's casual approach to science; gaffes include the belief that the irradiated children would have abnormally low body temperatures but be otherwise healthy!) Ironically, Carey and Field are fatally contaminated by the very children they seek to free. Losey's moral indignation has a paranoid streak, but the film's evocative, allusive imagery is strong, in particular when the children communicate with their obsessed, scientist "father" (Knox) by tv and in the final shots, showing a helicopter hovering like a giant carrion bird over the small boat carrying the dying couple - echoing the grotesque, sometimes bird-like sculptures executed by the scientist's lover (in reality by distinguished sculptress Elisabeth Frink), which stand on the clifftops nearby. TD is one of the most memorable sf films of a period when few really good directors would come within miles of the genre. [JB/PN]See also: CINEMA; PARANOIA. DAMRON, HILLEL [r] ISRAEL. DAN DARE - PILOT OF THE FUTURE UK sf COMIC-strip character, distinguished in appearance by his long chin and by the zigzag on the outer end of each eyebrow. DD was created by Frank HAMPSON for the weekly boys' comic Eagle, in which - with the sobriquet "Pilot of the Future" - he appeared with his Lancastrian batman Digby from 1950 until the comic's demise in 1969. Hampson supervised a team of writers, artists, model-makers and photographers to create a totally convincing scenario of the future, as governed by the United Nations Organization. Writers included Eric Eden, David Motton, Alan Stranks and Chad Varah; artists included Frank Bellamy, Bruce Cornwell, Eric Eden, Donald Harley, Harold Johns, Desmond Walduck and Keith Watson. DD stories generally dealt with the exploration of the Solar System, individual stories often centring on conflicts between DD and the Mekon, a green-skinned, dome-headed Venusian despot. Under Hampson's firm control, pictorial authenticity was achieved through the use of scale models, and characters were drawn from photographs of real people; stories were scrutinized for scientific accuracy (Arthur C. CLARKE was adviser for the first six months).After Hampson's departure in 1959 the writers extended their themes beyond the limitations of the original conception in a series of less convincing adventures across the Galaxy. Continuity became strained and, despite a period of revitalization at the hands of Keith Watson, the strip declined, no new material being published after Jan 1967. A DD newspaper strip of 7 frames per week was published in the UK Sunday newspaper The People 3 May-26 Nov 1964.Written by Tom Tulley and drawn at first by Massimo Belardinelli and subsequently by Dave GIBBONS, the character was revived in name only in 2,000 AD (from #1, 26 Feb 1977). The voluble adverse reaction to this from fans of the original strip, along with news of plans for a nostalgic DD tv series (to be produced by Paul de Savary), persuaded IPC, Eagle's erstwhile publisher, to relaunch Eagle in 1982 as a weekly pulp comic with new DD stories featuring the "great grandson" of the original DD. At first top-line artists were used - Gerry Embleton (although he quickly became disillusioned by inconsistent editorial directives and left) and then Ian Kennedy (until 1984) - but the series failed to recreate the credibility of the original, and for a time IPC used less able artists on it until, for a six-week period in 1989, they returned once more to Hampson's original conception (with Keith Watson as artist). The new incarnation of Eagle failed to achieve significant sales and became a monthly, reprinting earlier strips alongside new DD stories written by Tom Tulley and drawn by David Pugh; it still (early 1992) survives.In 1982 de Savary's tv series was abandoned unfinished, although a different DD tv series is (early 1992) in the process of production by Zenith Films. There have been two RADIO adaptations: the first, starring Noel Johnson, ran continuously on Radio Luxembourg 2 July 1951-25 May 1956; the second, starring Nick Ward, adapted Eagle's original DD story and was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 1990. Book-length reprints of Hampson's DD stories have been published by Dragon's Dream - The Man from Nowhere (graph 1979), Rogue Planet (graph 1980) and Reign of the Robots (graph 1981) - and by Hawk Books - Pilot of the Future (graph 1987), Red Moon Mystery & Marooned on Mercury (graph omni 1988), Operation Saturn (graph 1989), Prisoners of Space (graph 1990) and The Man from Nowhere (graph 1991). DD also starred in a political- SATIRE comic strip written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Rian Hughes, which appeared 1990-91 in Revolver and Crisis and was published in book form as Dare (graph 1991). A comic-strip parody of DD, lampooning contemporary UK politics, ran as Dan Dire - Pilot of the Future in 1991 in the satirical magazine Private Eye. There have also been two novels: Dan Dare on Mars * (1956) by Basil Dawson and Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future * (1977) by Angus Allen, the latter a novelization of the original Eagle story.For more on DD's creator read The Man who Drew Tomorrow (1985) by Alastair Crompton, and for more on the character read The Dan Dare Dossier (1990). [RT/ABP/JE] DANE, CLEMENCE Pseudonym of UK playwright and novelist Winifred Ashton (1888-1965), best remembered for Broome Stages (1931), a tale of the theatre. She became known to the sf world late in life when she edited the Novels of Tomorrow series in 1955-6 for Michael Joseph Ltd, publishing work by John CHRISTOPHER, Harold MEAD and Arthur SELLINGS. Some of her own fiction was of genre interest. Legend (1919) concerns a supernatural relationship between a dead writer and her biographer. The Babyons (1927) traces a curse through four generations. The Arrogant History of White Ben (1939), set in a beleaguered NEAR FUTURE, gives an animate scarecrow the task of leading the UK out of trouble. In The Saviours (coll of linked plays 1942) Merlin attempts to revitalize Britain by giving Arthur's heirs good advice. Some of the stories assembled in Fate Cries Out (coll 1935) are of genre interest. [JC] DANGER: DIABOLIK DIABOLIK. DANGERFIELD, PAUL Victor NORWOOD. DANGEROUS VISIONS Original ANTHOLOGY ed Harlan ELLISON. DV (1967) was a massive and influential anthology of 33 stories and copious prefatory material; it became strongly identified with the NEW WAVE in the USA. Among its stories, "Aye, and Gomorrah . . ." by Samuel R. DELANY, "Gonna Roll the Bones" by Fritz LEIBER and "Riders of the Purple Wage" by Philip Jose FARMER won major awards. DV was followed by Again, Dangerous Visions (anth 1972), which was larger still, although it created less stir. It contained two more major-award winners, "When It Changed" by Joanna RUSS and THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST (1972; 1976) by Ursula K. LE GUIN, among its 46 stories. ADV used only authors who had not appeared in DV. A third and still unpublished instalment, again with wholly new authors - The Last Dangerous Visions - has become legendary for its many postponements over 19 years (to 1992), although Ellison is on record (1979) as saying that over 100 stories were bought for it. One sternly adversarial account of its history is the widely discussed The Last Deadloss Visions (1987 chap; rev 1987) compiled/written and published by Christopher PRIEST. [MJE/PN]See also: TABOOS. DANIEL, GABRIEL (1649-1728) French writer whose Voyage du Monde de Descartes (1690; trans T. Taylor as A Voyage to the World of Cartesius 1692 UK) is a FANTASTIC VOYAGE whose purpose was to popularize the ideas of the philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) on COSMOLOGY and other matters. [PN]See also: PROTO SCIENCE FICTION; SPACE FLIGHT. DANIEL, TONY (1963- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "For the Killed Astronauts" for IASFM in 1990, and who has been fairly prolific in the 1990s. His first novel, Warpath (1991 IASFM as "Candle"; exp 1993), was admired for its ambitious scope, though it seems at points overloaded with material, and slides (at points uncontrolledly) from sf to MAGIC REALISM to myth (mostly based on Native American material) to and outright fantasy. The premise is romantic: centuries past, Mississippi Native Americans have learned to convey their canoes on interstellar voyages, and have settled the planet Candle. The inevitable arrival of technology-dominated human civilizations provides the engine of a plot which incorporates god-like bear-shaped companions, demon-like sorcerers, weather-manipulation governed the sentience of a dead lover, and much else. None of it works as a whole; but the parts are enough to establish TD as a significant new writer of the 1990s. [JC] DANIEL, YULI (MARKOVICH) (1925-1988) Russian author who wrote as Nikolai Arzhak; he lived in exile after having been imprisoned in 1966 along with his dissident friend, Andrey SINYAVSKY (Abram Tertz), for the writings translated as This is Moscow Speaking, and Other Stories (written before 1966; trans Stuart Hood and others 1968 UK). The title story is of sf interest: 10 August 1960 is declared to be Public Murder Day; the point is satirical. The eponymous character in "The Man from MINAP" has the power of predetermining the sex of any child from his loins. [JC]See also: TABOOS. DANIELS, LOUIS G. [s] Daniel F. GALOUYE. DANIELS, MAX Pseudonym of US writer Roberta Leah Jacobs Gellis (1927- ), who wrote non-sf as Leah Jacobs. As MD she published two unremarkable sf adventures, The Space Guardian (1978) and Offworld (1979). [JC] DANN, JACK (MAYO) (1945- ) US writer and anthologist, with a BA in social/political science, who began publishing sf in 1970 with two stories for Worlds of If with George ZEBROWSKI, "Dark, Dark the Dead Star" and "Traps". Among his best and most revealing stories of this period was Junction (1973 Fantasy; exp 1981), a NEBULA-award finalist in its early form; its young protagonist must leave the eponymous village, the last place on Earth to remain physically stable, to explore the "Hell" of mutability outside. The expansion cogently dramatizes what Gregory FEELEY has suggested is JD's central theme: the rousing of a young man from disaffected solipsism into awareness of the marvels of the noosphere. Starhiker (fixup 1977), set in a heightened SPACE-OPERA venue, similarly puts a young human singer-bard escapee from alien-occupied Earth into an alien spaceship, where he undergoes a series of revelatory experiences (including near self-transcendence on a sentient planet) before returning to his depressed home. The stories assembled in Timetipping (coll 1980) reiterate this basic pattern. Only with THE MAN WHO MELTED (1984) did JD expand his canvas by introducing a human subject - his lost wife - for whom the protagonist must search through a baroque world rendered savagely mutable through collective psychoses which have a binding effect on reality.Despite the clear though strait attainments of his fiction, JD soon became - and has remained - best known as an editor of several strong anthologies: Wandering Stars (anth 1974) and More Wandering Stars (anth 1981) feature sf about Jews; Faster than Light (anth 1976), with George Zebrowski; Future Power (anth 1976), with Gardner DOZOIS, the first of many collaborations with Dozois (see listing below), Immortals: Short Novels of the Transhuman Future (anth 1980); the impressive In the Field of Fire (anth 1987) with Jeanne Van Buren Dann, about Vietnam. Much of his effort in the 1980s was devoted to a long non-genre novel, with MAGIC-REALIST elements, Counting Coup, which remained unpublished because of the collapse of BLUEJAY BOOKS. Echoes of Thunder (1991 chap dos) with Jack C. HALDEMAN II - a TOR BOOKS Double originally designed for DOS publication, but ultimately released in the format of a conventional two-item anthology - was much expanded as High Steel (1993), a virtuoso NEAR FUTURE tale which begins with its American Indian protagonist's experiences as a shanghaied worker constructing a space station, but soon expands in various directions, as the hero evolves into a SUPERMAN, apocalyptic hallucinations afflict Earth's normals, and an enigmatic message left by ALIENS promises the secret of FTL travel. But with the exception of this remarkable exercise, it seems that, after climaxing his genre career with the creation of a rich and humanized world in THE MAN WHO MELTED, JD has lost his need to write sf. [JC]Other works: JD also collaborated with Gardner Dozois on seven of the stories assembled in the latter's Slow Dancing through Time (coll 1990).Other works as editor: An exclamatory series, all with Dozois: Aliens! (anth 1980), Unicorns! (anth 1982), Magicats! (anth 1984), Bestiary! (anth 1985), Mermaids! (anth 1985), Sorcerers! (anth 1986), Demons! (anth 1987), Dogtales! (anth 1988), Seaserpents! (anth 1989), Magicats II (anth 1991),Little People! (anth 1991), Invaders! (anth 1993) and Horses! (anth 1994).About the author: The Work of Jack Dann: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1990) by Jeffrey M. ELLIOT.See also: ESP; GENERATION STARSHIPS; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; WAR. DANTE, JOE (1947- ) US film-maker. Originally a fan writer, JD entered the film industry working for Roger CORMAN's New World in the trailers department, making Filipino movies look more exciting by inserting stock shots of exploding helicopters. His first feature, codirected with Allan Arkush, was Hollywood Boulevard (1976), a brisk and breezy SATIRE on low-budget schlock movies featuring many cameo roles, ranging from Dick Miller to Godzilla ( GOJIRA), inaugurating JD's tradition of movie-buff in-jokes.With writer John SAYLES, JD made PIRANHA (1978) and The Howling (1981), a pair of effective MONSTER MOVIES with amusing satirical twists (the latter not really sf), and then he gravitated into the orbit of Steven SPIELBERG to direct an episode of Twilight Zone: The Movie (adapted from "It's a Good Life" [1953] by Jerome BIXBY) and more famously Gremlins (1984), a nasty anecdote in which anarchic monsters chew away at the foundations of a Spielberg-cum-Capra small town.Following the box-office disappointment of his most personal film, EXPLORERS (1985), a meditation on the SENSE OF WONDER informed by the cultural legacy of Forrest J. ACKERMAN, JD has had less independent control, but has nevertheless delivered a lively, self-aware run of comedies with an edge: INNERSPACE (1987) is a feature-length parody of FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966), The 'burbs (1989) a psychotic neighbourhood comedy, and Gremlins II: The New Batch (1990). JD has also contributed episodes to the omnibus film of sf skits, Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), and to the tv series AMAZING STORIES (1985-7), The TWILIGHT ZONE (2nd series, 1985-7) and Police Squad (1982). In 1991 JD became creative consultant for, and directed 5 episodes of, Eerie, Indiana (1991), an NBC tv series about a Tom-Sawyer-type kid and his sidekick who conduct supernatural investigations in a seemingly average but actually weird town. ]JD's next feature was the amusing MATINEE (1993), a coming-of-age film set in Key West, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, in which much of the action is connected to a new sf exploitation movie premiering in town, "Mant", about a man who becomes a giant ant creature. Matinee is a kind of critique of early 1960s MONSTER MOVIES and their cultural background. [KN/PN]See also: CINEMA; FEMINISM; HORROR IN SF. DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265-1321) Italian poet. His La divina commedia (c1304-21 in manuscript; many translations as The Divine Comedy) is an epic poem of 100 cantos in 3 books, each of 33 cantos, with an introduction; the books are Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It has profoundly affected not only the religious imagination but all subsequent allegorical creation of imaginary worlds in literature generally. For that reason it can (with hindsight) be said to be a work of PROTO SCIENCE FICTION (although it stands at the head of other traditions much older than the sciencefictional); indeed, it is sf in the strict sense, albeit the science is medieval. Its subject is cosmological ( COSMOLOGY) - it offers us in its worlds of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven (and Earth, Sun and stars) a picture of the way the Universe is structured. The obvious objection to such a view is that the work is theological and philosophical in intent; this is so, but there was no distinction between science and RELIGION when Dante wrote, and he did so with the eye of a scientist, transcending the rational but not deserting it. The tradition that led to sf has The Divine Comedy as an ancestor. [PN]See also: GODS AND DEMONS; ITALY; MUSIC. DANVERS, JACK Writing name of Camille Auguste Marie Caseleyr (1909- ), a Belgian who, after WWII, emigrated to Australia, where he set his sf novel, The End of it All (1962 UK). The tale depicts a nuclear WAR and climaxes in doomed Australian attempts to cope with epidemics unleashed by the opposing forces. In the end extinction is total. [JC] DANZELL, GEORGE [s] Nelson S. BOND. DARE, ALAN George GOODCHILD. D'ARGENTEUIL, PAUL Pseudonym of unidentified US author of The Trembling of Borealis (1899), set in the USA after a war with Cuba and featuring a revolt of the working classes which brings about a welfare state and the disenfranchisement of Blacks. Given the socialist - albeit racist - bent of the tale, the author's pseudonym can be read as linking wealth to work. [JC] d'ARGYRE, GILLES Gerard KLEIN. DARIU, AL. N. [r] ROMANIA. DARK ANGEL I COME IN PEACE. DARKE, JAMES Laurence JAMES. DARKMAN Film (1990). Universal. Dir Sam Raimi, starring Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Colin Friels, Larry Drake. Screenplay Chuck Pfarrer, Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Daniel Goldin, Joshua Goldin, from a story by Raimi. 91 mins. Colour.In its violence and simple, over-the-top characterization this is essentially the film equivalent of a comic-book, an "origin of a SUPERHERO" story of sadism and revenge. Darkman, patterned on the Phantom of the Opera (with visual quotes reminding us of other early Universal HORROR films), has had his face and hands horribly mutilated in a gangster attack, and the nerves that transmit pain and pleasure have been severed in hospital. He returns as a half-mad avenger. The sf element - synthetic skin that lasts exactly 99 mins and permits Darkman to duplicate exactly his gangster enemies or appear as briefly normal to his girlfriend - is borrowed from the old sf movie DOCTOR X (1932). There are bravura opening and closing sequences, but D is badly constructed (too many writers?) and uninvolving, lacking the insane vigour of Raimi's debut film, The Evil Dead (1982). [PN] DARK STAR Film (1974). Jack H. Harris Enterprises. Dir John CARPENTER, starring Brian Narelle, Dan O'Bannon, Joe Saunders, Dre Pahich. Screenplay Carpenter, O'Bannon. 83 mins. Colour.This cult success, Carpenter's debut, was originally a 45min film shot on 16mm by students at the University of Southern California for $6000, but producer Jack H. Harris provided cash for new footage and for transfer to 35mm film stock. DS is a SATIRE on space films: the Dark Star is a SPACESHIP in which four men are endlessly roaming the Universe on a tedious mission to locate "unstable" worlds and destroy them with thermostellar bombs. Conditions have deteriorated - the COMPUTER is malfunctioning, the life-support systems acting up, the crew in various stages of psychosis, the cryonically maintained captain "dead" but still partly conscious, the ship's mascot (an ALIEN like a beach ball with claws) increasingly belligerent and, worst of all, one of the sentient thermostellar bombs has to be continually coaxed out of exploding prematurely by debates about phenomenology. DS ends apocalyptically ("Let there be light!" the bomb decides), with each crew member reaching his desired apotheosis, one board-riding through space and a second undergoing ecstatic union with the stars in an asteroid shower.Described by one critic as "a Waiting for Godot in outer space", DS is a sophisticated mixture of black comedy and genuine sf. Technically quite good, its sets and effects are superior to those of sf films costing 10 times its (eventual) $60,000 budget. The novelization is Dark Star * (1974) by Alan Dean FOSTER. [JB/PN]See also: CINEMA; SATIRE. DARLTON, CLARK Pseudonym of German writer, translator and editor Walter Ernsting (1920- ); he has also written as F. MacPatterson. In the 1950s he edited the German Utopia-Magazin (launched 1955), providing it with much original and translated material. In 1957 he began a series of sf publications, Terra-Sonderband, and was one of the founding editors and writers, with K. -H. SCHEER, of the PERRY RHODAN series of SPACE OPERAS from 1961. Over 1600 of these booklets had appeared, on a weekly basis, by mid-1992; a slightly expurgated series of English-language translations began with Enterprise Stardust (trans 1969 US) and continued through 141 further instalments to Phantom Horde (trans 1979 US). [JC/PN]See also: GERMANY. DARNAY, ARSEN (JULIUS) (1936- ) Hungarian-born writer, in the USA from 1953 and a US citizen from 1961. His first sf story, "Such is Fate", appeared in If in 1974; his first novel, A Hostage for Hinterland (1976), set the pattern for much of his work: in a post- HOLOCAUST USA, where floating CITIES depend upon land-dwelling ecofreak tribesmen for the helium that cools their reactors, crisis erupts into a bleak and somewhat metaphysical confrontation, at the end of which the cities die. A similarly abstract dichotomy, set on a RIMWORLD, is destabilized in The Siege of Faltara (1978). The Splendid Freedom (coll of linked stories 1980) carries its protagonists, who are linked through REINCARNATION, into a variety of DYSTOPIAS. AD has not published fiction since 1981. [JC]Other works: Karma: A Novel of Retribution and Transcendence (1978; vt The Karma Affair 1979); The Purgatory Zone (1981). DARRINGTON, HUGH (1940- ) UK writer whose sf novels are The God Killers (1970) with Tony Halliwell, both authors signing as James Ross, and Gravitor (1971), which features an oppressed world and a scientific plot to increase GRAVITY, causing chaos . . . to the advantage of the plotters. [JC] DARWIN, ERASMUS (1731-1802) UK physician, philosopher and poet; grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). It is for his poetry that ED is of interest to the sf field; in particular, The Botanic Garden: A Poem, in Two Parts; Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation; Part II: The Loves of the Plants (as separate poems 1792 and 1789; 1795) conveys through its wooden but occasionally powerful couplets a serious speculative message about the chronological depth of EVOLUTION, for which he argued in abominable rhyme - examples of his verse can be found in The Stuffed Owl (anth 1930), ed D.B. Wyndham Lewis (1894-1969) and Charles Lee - clearly presaging the revolutionary thoughts of his grandson.ED's prose work Zoonomia: Of the Laws of Organic Life (1796) and the posthumously published poem The Temple of Nature (1802) both extend the argument, with a wealth of technological and scientific imagery. The extent to which science fired ED's imagination, together with his contemporary popularity, make him an important figure in PROTO SCIENCE FICTION and his work an early outstanding success in terms of sf PREDICTION. He belonged to the period when the imagery of science first entered the consciousness of laymen in general. [JC/PN]About the author: Erasmus Darwin (1963) by Desmond King-Hele; Brian W. ALDISS discusses ED at length in Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986) with David WINGROVE. D.A.R.Y.L. Film (1985). World Film Services/Columbia. Dir Simon Wincer, starring Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean, Kathryn Walker, Josef Sommer, Barret Oliver. Screenplay David Ambrose, Allan Scott, Jeffrey Ellis. 100 mins. Colour.D.A.R.Y.L. is a Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform but, when "he" (Oliver) wakes up amnesiac in the woods, he thinks he is just a small boy, Daryl. Adopted by a pleasant family, he learns not to show his superintelligence and coordination too obviously and makes local friends, but then is located by the scientists who made him, almost terminated by the military, escapes . . . and so forth. There is a happy ending. This film is fairly obviously aimed at children and is competently and even engagingly made, but it never ignites; even those sf riffs proven successful by Steven SPIELBERG and here borrowed from him (most obviously - E.T. - the alien being sheltered in suburbia who undergoes death and resurrection) remain comparatively inert. [PN] DATLOW, ELLEN (SUE) (1949- ) US editor, fiction editor of Omni from Oct 1981, and editor of two sequences of spin-off anthologies from that magazine 1983-9 ( OMNI for details); Omni Visions One (anth 1993) and Omni Visions Two (anth 1994), on the other hand, contain mostly original stories. The combination of a decent budget and good critical taste have made ED one of the more influential US sf (and fantasy) editors, and she has by no means restricted her story-buying to work from already established writers. Aside from the Omni anthologies she has edited Blood is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism (anth 1989)Alien Sex (anth 1990), a strong collection of both sf and fantasy ( SEX); A Whisper of Blood (anth 1991) and Little Deaths: 24 Tales of Sex and Horror (anth 1994 UK; cut 1995 US). With Terri WINDLING ED has edited the Year's Best Fantasy anthology series: The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (anth 1988; vt Demons and Dreams: The Best Fantasy and Horror 1 UK), The Year's Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection (anth 1989; vt Demons and Dreams 2 UK), #3 (anth 1990), #4 (anth 1991),#5 (1992), #6 (anth 1993) and #7 (anth 1994). These are certainly the best of their kind - the first two won World Fantasy AWARDS - being very big, very wide-ranging and intelligently selected; ED mainly looks after the horror, Windling the fantasy. This division of responsibilities is less apparent in Snow White, Blood Red (anth 1993) and Black Thorn, White Rose (anth 1994), two linked anthologies comprising original stories, all twice-told re-visions of traditional folk material. [PN] DAUDET, LEON [r] FRANCE. DAUGHTER OF DESTINY ALRAUNE. DAVENPORT, BASIL (1905-1966) US academic and anthologist. His connection with sf began with An Introduction to Islandia, its History, Custom, Laws, Language, and Geography, as Prepared by Basil Davenport from Islandia (1942 chap), a book about Islandia (1942) by Austin Tappan WRIGHT. Then came a short critical and historical study, Inquiry into Science Fiction (1955chap). BD also introduced the anonymously edited critical anthology The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism (anth 1959; rev 1964), which contains lectures delivered by Alfred BESTER, Robert BLOCH, Robert A. HEINLEIN and C.M. KORNBLUTH at a 1957 symposium at the University of Chicago. His anthologies are in the main fantasy rather than sf. Three were compiled with the aid of Albert Paul Blaustein (Allen DE GRAEFF), uncredited: Deals with the Devil (anth 1958; cut vt Twelve Stories from Deals with the Devil: An Anthology 1959), Invisible Men (anth 1960) and Famous Monster Tales (anth 1967). His other anthologies are Ghostly Tales to be Told (anth 1950), Tales to be Told in the Dark (anth 1953; cut vt Horror Stories from Tales to be Told in the Dark 1960) and 13 Ways to Dispose of a Body (anth 1966). [PN]See also: SF IN THE CLASSROOM. DAVENPORT, BENJAMIN RUSH (? -? ) US writer whose best-known novel is the future- WAR tale Anglo-Saxons, Onward! A Romance of the Future (1898), in which, led by the US president, Anglo-Saxons dominate the world, including Spain - cf the contemporaneous Spanish-US War. [JC]Other works: "Uncle Sam's" Cabins: A Story of American Life, Looking Forward a Century (1895); Blood Will Tell: The Strange Story of a Son of Ham (1902). DAVENPORT, GUY (MATTISON) (1927- ) US academic, translator and short-story writer, long a teacher at the University of Kentucky, known for his translations from the Greek, his poetry, his literary essays - collected primarily in The Geography of the Imagination (coll 1981) and Every Force Evolves a Form (coll 1987) - and for the FABULATIONS assembled in Tatlin! (coll 1974), Da Vinci's Bicycle (coll 1979), Trois Caprices (coll 1981 chap), Eclogues (coll 1981), The Bowmen of Shu (1983 chap), which also appears in Apples and Pears (coll 1984), The Bicycle Rider (1985 chap), which also appears in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon (coll 1987) and The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers (coll 1990). Although J.G. BALLARD and others had insinuated a fascination with French Surrealism into their NEW-WAVE tales, GD's own collaged and hallucinated conflations of data and visuals and Sehnsucht - as in "Tatlin!" (1974), the novel-length "The Dawn in Erewhon" (1974), "Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier" (1975), "The Richard Nixon Freischutz Rag" (1976) and "Christ Preaching at the Henley Regatta" (1980) - mediate neatly between the solitary despair of the 1960s work of Ballard and others and the more broadly socialized and nostalgic vision of sf writers like Howard WALDROP. Indeed GD's work can be seen as an important adumbration of the sudden late 1980s growth in alternate-history tales ( ALTERNATE WORLDS) which plunder the earlier 20th century for icons and protagonists and for moments of haunting significance. [JC] DAVENTRY, LEONARD (JOHN) (1915- ) UK writer whose first sf novel, A Man of Double Deed (1965), began the Claus Coman series of tales set on an Earth partly recovered from nuclear DISASTER and run by telepaths, one of whom, the protagonist, is assigned the task of solving various problems. The sequel is Reflections in a Mirage, and The Ticking is in Your Head (coll 1969 US), two book-length stories, published separately as Reflections in a Mirage (1969) and The Ticking is in Your Head (1970). Terminus (1971) is a grim DYSTOPIA. [JC]Other works: Twenty-One Billionth Paradox (1971 US); Degree XII (1972); You Must Remember Us - ? (1980). DAVEY, (HENRY) NORMAN (1888-? ) UK writer whose Yesterday: A Tory Fairy-Tale (1924) describes the NEAR-FUTURE secession of the Isle of Wight. Although proof copies of the novel exist entitled Perhaps and dated 1914, there is no evidence of the text having actually been published then. ND's other genre works are fantasies; they include the Matthew Sumner books: The Pilgrim of a Smile (1921) and The Penultimate Adventure (1924 chap) - both assembled as The Pilgrim of a Smile (omni 1933) - Judgment Day (1928) and Pagan Parable: an Allegory in Four Acts (1936). [JC] DAVID, PETER (ALLEN) (1956- ) US writer, many of whose books are signed David Peters. As PD he has concentrated on fantasies like Knight Life (1987), a tale in which Arthur is put into the modern world, and Howling Mad: A Tale of Relenting Horror (1989); on film ties like The Return of Swamp Thing * (1989),The Rocketeer * (1991) and Alien Nation: Body and Soul * (1993), tied to a cancelled tv series; and on Star Trek ties, STAR TREK novels includingThe Rift * (1991), The Disinherited * (1992) with Michael Jan FRIEDMAN and Robert Greenberger, and Who Killed Captain Kirk? * (graph 1993) illus Tom Sutton and Gordon Purcell; several STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION tales: Strike Zone * (1989), A Rock and a Hard Place * (1990), Vendetta * (1991), Q-in-Law * (1991), Imzadi * (1992), Starfleet Academy: Whorf's First Adventure * (1993), Starfleet Academy: Line of Fire * (1993), Starfleet Academy: Survival *(1993) and Q-Squared * (1994).As David Peters, he is responsible for two sequences: the Photon game-tie series - Photon: For the Glory * (1987), #2: High Stakes * (1987), #3: In Search of Mom * (1987), #4: This is Your Life, Bhodi Li * (1987), #5: Exile * (1987) and #6: Skin Deep * (1988) - and the Psi-Man series - Psi-Man (1990), Psi-Man: Deathscape (1991), #3: Main Street D.O.A. (1991), #4: The Chaos Kid (1991), #5: Stalker (1991) and #6: Haven (1991). [JC] DAVIDSON, AVRAM (JAMES) (1923-1993) US writer and editor, born in Yonkers, New York; he served in the US Navy 1941-5 and with the Israeli forces in the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. An orthodox Jew, though his faith found direct expression very rarely in his stories, he began publishing sf with "My Boy Friend's Name is Jello" (1954) in FSF, and early established a reputation for a sometimes obtrusive literacy and considerable wit. "Or All the Seas with Oysters" (1958) won a HUGO. Much of his early fiction appeared in FSF, which he edited 1962-4 - it won a Hugo in 1963 - and producing as part of his job The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 12th Series (anth 1963), 13th Series (anth 1964) and 14th Series (anth 1965). His first novel was Joyleg (1962) with Ward MOORE (whom see for details).AD's first solo novel, Mutiny in Space (1964), immediately established his credentials as a writer of superior SPACE OPERA rather in contrast to the manner and style of his short works. Other novels with a similarly straightforward effect include Rork! (1965), The Enemy of My Enemy (1966) and, most notably, Masters of the Maze (1965), an intricate PARALLEL-WORLDS adventure with sharply characterized humans involved in barring interdimensional transit to a remarkably vivid ALIEN race. The Kar-Chee Reign (1966 dos) and Rogue Dragon (1965) share a relaxedly pan-Galactic FAR-FUTURE perspective on their Earthly venue; Clash of Star-Kings (1966 dos), which along with Rogue Dragon was nominated for a NEBULA, is set in a richly realized Mexico which becomes a venue for a game of war amongst returning alien "gods". But even these relatively active tales tend to subordinate plot to the play of language and a visible affection for the phenomenal world, characteristics increasingly found in his later fiction, where an air of combined flamboyance and meditative calm enriches - but does not always manage to enliven - ornate fantasies like The Phoenix and the Mirror, or The Enigmatic Speculum (1966 AMZ; 1969), which opens the Vergil Magus sequence in a medieval ALTERNATE WORLD whose universal scholastic worldview, encompassing everything from geography to alchemy, turns out to be literally accurate (AD has always been fascinated by PSEUDO-SCIENCE). Vergil goes through a number of adventures in this ornately humanized environment in search of a "virgin mirror" to trade for his stolen virility, but the novel closes without coming to a satisfactory climax, nor does Vergil in Averno (1987), published as a sequel but in fact set prior to the earlier novel, bring things to a close. This tale, set in a factory town inside a volcano, is a rich and wry parable of the birth of the Renaissance mentality (with the magus himself rather jumping the gun). The Peregrine series - Peregrine: Primus (1971) and Peregrine: Secundus (1981) - even more relaxedly conveys its protagonist through a wide and intriguing world reminiscent of Classical Rome. The Island Under the Earth (1969) began a series not yet continued.AD's notable short fiction has been assembled in several volumes: Or All the Seas with Oysters (coll 1962), What Strange Stars and Skies (coll 1965), Strange Seas and Shores (coll 1971), The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy (coll of linked stories 1975; exp vt The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy 1990), set in an ALTERNATE-WORLD, RURITANIAN version of late-19th-century Europe, and The Redward Edward Papers (coll 1978), re-sorted in THE BEST OF AVRAM DAVIDSON (coll 1979) ed Michael KURLAND, and Avram Davidson: Collected Fantasies (coll 1982) ed John SILBERSACK. AD's wit and bookish allusiveness - he is perhaps sf's most explicitly literary author - shine most persuasively in his shorter works, where constraints in length seem to keep him from floundering or self-indulgence and the narrative thread stays in view; the focus supplied by length constraints also has a concentrating effect on the disquisitory 1980s essays, published in IASFM and elsewhere, and assembled as Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends (coll 1993). Working in short compass seems, too, to excite his extraordinary sense of humour. It is hard to imagine the genre that could encompass him; it is even more difficult to imagine fantasy or sf without him. [JC]Other works: And on the Eighth Day (1964) and The Fourth Side of the Triangle (1965), both as by Ellery Queen, both detections; Ursus of Ultima Thule (fixup 1973); Polly Charms the Sleeping Woman (1975 FSF; 1977 chap), an Eszterhazy tale; Magic for Sale (anth 1983); And Don't Forget the One Red Rose (1975 Playboy; 1986 chap); Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty (1988) with Grania (Eve) Davis (1943- ).See also: ATLANTIS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; FANTASY; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; PASTORAL. DAVIDSON, HUGH [s] Edmond HAMILTON. DAVIDSON, JOHN (1857-1909) UK poet, playwright and story-writer, best known in the first capacity for Fleet Street Eclogues (coll 1893). Miss Armstrong's and Other Circumstances (coll 1896) contains "An Interregnum in Fairyland", a fantasy tale. "Eagle's Shadow", a future- WAR story, and "The Salvation of Nature", a spoof tale ending in worldwide DISASTER, both feature in the The Great Men cycle of CLUB-STORIES collected in The Great Men, and A Practical Novelist (omni 1891), the second title not being of genre interest; both these stories also appear in The Pilgrimage of Strongsoul and Other Stories (coll 1896). A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender (1895) is a SATIRE about a self-appointed Nietzschean overman; and the Testaments series of poems - especially The Testament of a Vivisector (1901) - also make use of Nietzsche. [JC/BS]See also: END OF THE WORLD. DAVIDSON, LIONEL (1922- ) UK-born writer, resident in Israel, best known for his thrillers, beginning with The Night of Wenceslas (1960). His second, The Rose of Tibet (1962), has a lost-race ( LOST WORLDS) plot-line. The Sun Chemist (1976) is borderline sf: the lost formula of Israeli scientist and president Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) uses the sweet potato as a means of tapping the Sun's power; there is an adventurous quest to find it. Under Plum Lake (1980) is a fantasy for children with a trip to Paradise under sea and in outer space. [PN] DAVIDSON, MICHAEL (?1944- ) US author of two sf novels: The Karma Machine (1975), a dystopian vision of a COMPUTER-dominated world, and Daughter of Is: A Science Fiction Epic: An "Else-when"Parable (1978), an ALTERNATE-WORLD tale. [JC] DAVIES, FREDRIC Ron ELLIK. DAVIES, HUGH SYKES (1909-1984) UK writer and academic whose surrealist novel Petron (1935) is, at least retroactively, of some value to sf writers and readers as an early model for contemporary attempts at the rendering of INNER SPACE. The Papers of Andrew Melmoth (1960) is an interesting story about the EVOLUTION of INTELLIGENCE in rats, quite different, in its quiet literary tone, from the Gothic treatment such subjects normally evoke. [JC/PN] DAVIES, L(ESLIE) P(URNELL) (1914- ) UK writer who has worked also as a pharmacist and as a painter; he now lives in the Canary Isles. His consistently borderline sf often permits a delusional-frame interpretation of the events it depicts, so that frequently it is difficult to distinguish among the genres he utilizes, which include horror, fantasy, suspense thriller and sf. Along with John BLACKBURN and John LYMINGTON, both of whose writing his sometimes resembles, LPD has in a sense founded a new generic amalgam: tales whose slippage among various genres is in itself a characteristic point of narrative interest, with the reader kept constantly in suspense about the generic nature of any climaxes or explanations to be presented.LPD began publishing sf with "The Wall of Time" for London Mystery Magazine in 1960, and published fiction under a number of pseudonyms, including Leo Barne, Robert Blake, Richard Bridgeman, Morgan Evans, Ian Jefferson, Lawrence Peters, Thomas Phillips, G.K. Thomas, Leslie Vardre and Rowland Welch.His first novel, The Paper Dolls (1964), televised in 1968, sets a mystery involving telepathy and murder in the depths of the English countryside, a venue he uses frequently. Man out of Nowhere (1965; vt Who is Lewis Pinder? 1966 US) and The Artificial Man (1965) can both be read as delusional-frame tales; the latter, about a NEAR-FUTURE secret agent immured in a "fake" English village while his unconscious is probed, was made into the film Project X (1968), not to be confused with PROJECT X (1987). LPD's subsequent novels have been, as to genre, variously marketed, but they share an ambivalence in the way they can be read, an occasional glibness of effect, and narrative skill. [JC]Other works: Psychogeist (1966); The Lampton Dreamers (1966); Tell it to the Dead (1966 as by Leslie Vardre in UK; vt The Reluctant Medium 1967 US); Twilight Journey (1967); The Nameless Ones (1967 as by Leslie Vardre in UK; vt A Grave Matter 1968 US); The Alien (1968; vt The Groundstar Conspiracy 1972), filmed as The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972); Stranger to Town (1969); Dimension A (1969); Genesis Two (1969); The White Room (1969); The Shadow Before (1970); Give Me Back Myself (1971); What Did I Do Tomorrow? (1972); Assignment Abacus (1975); Possession (1976); The Land of Leys (1979 US).See also: PSYCHOLOGY. DAVIES, PAUL (CHARLES WILLIAMS) (1946- ) UK physicist (currently [1992] Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia), science writer and sf author whose scientific nonfiction is perhaps more distinguished than his sf. His novel Fireball (1987) has ANTIMATTER pellets impacting Earth and creating chaos; although their actual source is an ALIEN spacecraft, they are interpreted by the USA as a Soviet weapon. The ideas are interesting, the thriller elements routine. However, his academic science books, signed P.C.W. Davies, and his popular science books, signed Paul Davies, are very good. In the former category are Space and Time in the Modern Universe (1977), The Forces of Nature (1979), The Search for Gravity Waves (1980) and The Accidental Universe (1982), among others. In the latter category are The Runaway Universe (1978; vt Stardoom 1979 UK), Other Worlds (1980), The Edge of Infinity (1981), God and the New Physics (1983), The Matter Myth (1991) with John GRIBBIN, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (1992), The Last Three Minutes: Latest Thinking About the Ultimate Fate of the Universe (1994) and Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the discovery of Extraterrestrial Life (1995), among others. The speculations tend more towards the theological in the later works. The pungency of his theological/cosmological writings is confirmed by the award to PD in 1995 of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion worth over one million US dollars, a prize in its field comparable to the Nobel. [PN]See also: COSMOLOGY; METAPHYSICS; PARALLEL WORLDS; SCIENTISTS. DAVIES, PETE (1959- ) UK writer whose first novel, The Last Election (1986), depicts with singular ferocity a NEAR-FUTURE UK ruled by the Money Party and its senile Nanny; OVERPOPULATION and the total loss of a manufacturing base lead to the government's dissemination of a painkiller which causes premature ageing in the poor. The final election, won by Nanny with the aid of a powerful advertising agency, is soon over. In Dollarville (1989 US), refocusing his Swiftian rage on less local targets, PD constructs an impressively surreal though unspecific venue, a world polluted beyond redemption in which the rich are inconceivably corrupt; in this environment, a decent-hearted advertising man attempts to save a woman ecologist from a porno king; but the world ends. [JC] DAVIES, WALTER C. [s] C.M. KORNBLUTH. DAVIES, W.X. Pseudonym of the unidentified US author of the Countdown WWIII sequence of military-sf adventures: Countdown WWIII: Operation North Africa (1984), #2: Operation Black Sea (1984), #3: Operation Choke Point (1984) and #4: Operation Persian Gulf (1984). [JC] DAVIS, ELLIS JAMES [r] ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS. DAVIS, FREDERICK C(LYDE) (1902-1977) US writer of pulp fiction, sometimes under pseudonyms. His first book was The Smiling Killer (coll c1935 chap UK). His most interesting early work was the Moon Man sequence, first published from 1933 in Ten Detective Aces; after the publication, decades later, of one tale as The Moon Man (1974 chap), the sequence began to be released in book form with The Night Nemesis: The Complete Adventures of the Moon Man, Volume One (coll 1985) ed Gary Hoppenstand and Garyn G. Roberts; however, no further volumes appeared. Under the house name Curtis STEELE, FCD was responsible for the lead novels in the magazine OPERATOR # 5 from Apr 1934 to Nov 1935. 13 of these appeared in book form in 3 separate paperback series: (a) Legions of the Death Master (1966), The Army of the Dead (1966), The Invisible Empire (1966; vt Operator 5 #2: The Invisible Empire 1974), Master of Broken Men (1966), Hosts of the Flaming Death (1966), Blood Reign of the Dictator (1966), March of the Flame Marauders (1966), and Invasion of the Yellow Warlords (1966); (b) the original first 3 magazine novels republished in chronological order as The Masked Invasion (1974), The Invisible Empire (see above) and The Yellow Scourge (1974); (c) Cavern of the Damned (1980), Legions of Starvation (1980) and Scourge of the Invisible Death (1980). [JC/PN]Other work: The Mole Men Want Your Eyes (1976 chap). DAVIS, GERRY (1930-1991) UK writer, primarily for tv, who collaborated with Kit PEDLER on three sf novels: Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eater * (1971), derived from their DOOMWATCH tv series, Brainrack (1974) and The Dynostar Menace (1975). GD also wrote children's novelizations tied to the DR WHO tv series. [JC]See also: DISASTER; GENETIC ENGINEERING; POLLUTION. DAVIS, GRANIA [r] Avram DAVIDSON. DAVIS AWARDS AWARDS. DAVIS PUBLICATIONS ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE. DAW BOOKS New York publishing imprint started by Donald A. WOLLHEIM in 1972 (after his departure from ACE BOOKS) with assistance from New American Library. DB (the name derived from Wollheim's initials) publishes only sf and FANTASY, producing 4-5 titles per month. The editorial policy is similar to that followed by Wollheim at Ace: mostly adventure fiction, with a sprinkling of serious works. There has been much series fiction, particularly fantasy and SWORD AND SORCERY, by such authors as Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth BULMER), Marion Zimmer BRADLEY, Lin CARTER, Michael MOORCOCK, John NORMAN and E.C. TUBB, many of whom had followed Wollheim from Ace Books. Major discoveries were C.J. CHERRYH and the fantasy writer Tad Williams (1957- ), and DB also did much to promote the career of Tanith LEE. An anthology series was Annual World's Best SF ( WOLLHEIM for details). Wollheim's daughter Betsy Wollheim became president in 1985, when her father was seriously ill; by the time of his death in 1990 the number of books published annually by DB was rather lower than it had been early in the 1980s. [PN/MJE]Further reading: Future and Fantastic Worlds: A Bibliographic Retrospective of DAW Books (1972-1987) (dated 1987 but 1988) by Sheldon JAFFERY; An Index to DAW Books (1989 chap) by Ian Covell. DAWN OF THE DEAD (vt Zombie Italy; vt Zombies UK) Film (1978). Laurel. Dir George ROMERO, starring David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott H. Reininger, Gaylen Ross. Screenplay Romero, with Dario Argento (who also cowrote the music) as script consultant. 127 mins, cut to 125 mins. Colour.The first of two sequels to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) - the other was DAY OF THE DEAD (1985) - this was (unusually) premiered in Italy, under the title Zombie. DOTD is true sf, not just because of the pseudo-scientific explanation for zombiism but because Romero is interested in zombies not only as occasions for horror - though DOTD remains primarily a HORROR film - but also as phenomena (their sociology, their possible intelligence) in the way that an sf writer might be interested in ALIENS. Where the first film was unremittingly black, this has a comic-strip and satirical humour about it, as four survivors hole up in a shopping mall besieged by zombies and bikers. Jokes about the death of capitalism, even while the capitalist instinct survives, are focused on the many goods displayed in the spotless temple of consumerism. The subtext (we, the working class, are, or could be, the zombies) is spirited though unsubtle, and the film is remembered by most for its violent, brilliantly choreographed action. [PN]See also: SATIRE. DAY, BRADFORD M(ARSHALL) (1916- ) US sf collector and book-dealer whose bibliographical work is one of the foundations on which modern sf scholarship has been built ( BIBLIOGRAPHIES). His The Complete Checklist of Science-Fiction Magazines (1961 chap) defines sf widely and lists a number of hero-villain, fantasy and foreign magazines. The Supplemental Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1963) is a compilation of many titles omitted by or published after the period covered by Everett F. BLEILER's The Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1948), itself widely revised in 1978. Other works by BMD are The Checklist of Fantastic Literature in Paperbound Books (1965), Bibliography of Adventure: Mundy, Burroughs, Rohmer, Haggard (1964) and An Index on the Weird and Fantastica in Magazines (1953), which indexes most of the Frank A. MUNSEY pulps and many other general-fiction PULP MAGAZINES. All the above were originally published in stencilled format by BMD himself; several have been republished since. [PN]See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS. DAY, DONALD B(YRNE) (1909-1978) Pioneer sf indexer, resident in Oregon. His Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1926-1950 (1952), since reissued, has become, along with its successors compiled by other hands ( BIBLIOGRAPHIES), an essential tool for sf research. [PN] DAY, (GERALD WILLIAM) LANGSTON (1894-? ) UK writer whose Magic Casements (coll 1951) assembles mythological fantasies, and whose The Deep Blue Ice (1960) features the experiences of a Victorian mountaineer who is frozen in ice for half a century, and on revival ( SLEEPER AWAKES) must face the present day. [JC] DAY, LIONEL Ladbroke BLACK. DAY AFTER, THE Made-for-tv film (1983). ABC. Dir Nicholas Meyer, starring Jason Robards, Jo-Beth Williams, Steven Guttenberg, John Lithgow, Lori Lethin, William Allen Young and a dozen others. Screenplay Edward Hume. 121 mins. Colour.Set in Lawrence, Kansas, the film tells of a massive nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR. Many of the missiles hit Kansas and Missouri, targeted because of their numerous Minuteman silos. TDA opens a week before nuclear war begins, and ends around six weeks later. The film instantly became a media event, and was hugely publicized and discussed. It was widely - justly but irrelevantly - criticized, especially abroad, for its soap-opera treatment. Meyer's purpose was to bring home a propaganda message to ordinary people, which is precisely what soap-opera characters are perceived to be by most viewers. The film, as the final titles tell us, does give a remarkably mild account of the consequences of atomic war, gruelling though it is. Nevertheless, it was an act of courage for ABC to make this expensive film at all, since nuclear issues at that time were barely touched on by US tv, being unattractive to advertisers, and the nuclear debate was probably quite foreign to many viewers. Also, TDA could hardly be seen as apolitical (despite disclaimers by ABC executives): Meyer himself said "the movie tells you that civil defence is useless", and observed that ABC gave him "millions of dollars to go on prime-time tv and call Ronald Reagan a liar". Much of the film is routine in treatment if not subject matter, but it contains several outstanding sequences: the housewife who won't go into the cellar until she finishes cleaning the house; the lecture to increasingly furious farmers about implausible methods of "decontaminating soil"; a street packed with radiation victims on makeshift mattresses as far as the eye can see. [PN]See also: CINEMA. DAY MARS INVADED EARTH, THE Film (1962). API/20th Century-Fox. Dir Maury Dexter, starring Kent Taylor, Marie Windsor, William Mims, Betty Beall. Screenplay Harry Spalding. 70 mins. B/w.In this mediocre B-movie, Martians - who consist of pure energy - travel to Earth via radio beam. As in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), from which this clearly borrows, they duplicate human beings, killing off the originals, to the horror of a scientist who returns from vacation to find alien minds in the apparent bodies of friends and family and human-shaped ashes in the swimming pool. Unusually, the film ends with the Martians triumphant. [PN/JB] DAY OF THE DEAD Film (1985). Laurel. Dir George ROMERO, starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato, Richard Liberty, Howard Sherman. Screenplay Romero. 101 mins, cut to 100 mins. Colour.Romero's plan, after showing the initial zombie attacks ( NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD [1968]) and the total breakdown of society ( DAWN OF THE DEAD [1978]), was to complete the trilogy with a film showing a new coalition between humans and controlled zombies. Partly for budgetary reasons, he settled for something less ambitious. An underground military/storage base is used by a small company of scientists and soldiers in their desperately rushed study of zombie behaviour. Can they be controlled? What causes the infection? The behaviour of both groups becomes increasingly psychotic, with one scientist (Liberty) profaning the military dead by using their bodies to reward zombies in a B.F. SKINNER-style attempt at conditioning, and the senior military officer (Pilato) treating the scientists with insane violence and contempt. One almost likeable zombie, well played by Sherman, shows signs of human memory. Only three people, including the intelligent woman scientist (Cardille) who is the point-of-view character, escape to uncertain sanctuary in this small-scale, beautifully paced, claustrophobic film. DOTD, copiously illustrated with scenes of dismemberment and cannibalism, is sickening, but as ever Romero contrives to give metaphoric resonance to his exploitation-movie images. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. DAY OF THE DOLPHIN, THE Film (1973). Avco-Embassy. Dir Mike Nichols, starring George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Paul Sorvino, Fritz Weaver. Screenplay Buck Henry, based on Un animal doue de raison (1967; trans as The Day of the Dolphin 1969) by Robert MERLE. 105 mins. Colour.This above-average film, from a director well known for social comedy but new to sf, concerns a marine biologist who succeeds in teaching dolphins to speak English. The first half deals seriously and convincingly with this historic contact between two intelligent species, and conveys the genuine SENSE OF WONDER found in the best sf, but the rest of the story concentrates less interestingly on an attempt by a right-wing group to betray the innocent human-dolphin relationship and use the dolphins to plant mines to assassinate the US President. [JB] DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, THE 1. Film (1963). Security Pictures/Allied Artists. Dir Steve Sekely (uncredited), Freddie Francis, starring Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore. Screenplay Philip Yordan, based on The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John WYNDHAM. 94 mins. Colour.This unsuccessful version of a good novel had a moderately generous budget, but no sense whatever of how sf works. Thus there is plenty of preaching, lots of florid love interest, but only intermittent attention paid to the basic situation, which, while silly, should have been interesting: most of England's population blinded by light from a meteor shower, and a small group, still sighted, trying to cope with attacks from lethal 7ft (2.1m) mobile vegetables. The triffids are more absurd than frightening.2. UK tv serial (1981). BBC. Dir Ken Hannam, adapted from Wyndham's novel by Douglas Livingstone, starring John Duttine, Emma Relph. 6 30min episodes (aired outside the UK as a 2-part miniseries). Colour. This was a low-key but successful dramatization of the story, much better than the film. [JB/PN] DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE, THE Film (1961). British Lion/Pax/Universal. Prod and dir Val Guest, starring Edward Judd, Janet Munro, Leo McKern. Screenplay Wolf Mankowitz, Guest. 99 mins, cut to 90 mins (US). B/w.Val Guest, who had made The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1956) and other sf/horror films for Hammer in the 1950s, excelled himself with this intelligent DISASTER movie about the Earth falling into the Sun after a reckless series of H-bomb tests have knocked it out of orbit. Only more nuclear explosions, properly placed, can save it. The film is made in a crisp, low-key, pseudo-documentary manner, with much of the action set in the offices of the London Daily Express newspaper (with former editor Arthur Christiansen playing himself). Les Bowie's low-budget special effects are surprisingly good, including shots of the Thames completely evaporating in the heat. The novelization is The Day the Earth Caught Fire * (1961) by Barry Wells. [JB/PN] DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE Film (1951). 20th Century-Fox. Dir Robert WISE, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe. Screenplay Edmund H. North, based on "Farewell to the Master" (1940) by Harry BATES. 92 mins. B/w.Produced at the beginning of the sf boom of the 1950s, this is generally regarded as a classic, though its ethics might be regarded as intemperate; it is, however, directed with pace and impressive economy. An emissary from outer space arrives by flying saucer in Washington, accompanied by an 8ft (2.4m) ROBOT. The military gets very excited. The soft-spoken, human-seeming ALIEN, Klaatu, has come to warn Earth that his people will not tolerate an extension of human violence into space, but before he can deliver the message he is wounded by a soldier, escapes, and takes a room in a boarding house, where he learns about ordinary people. Later he arranges a demonstration of his powers - the stopping of all electrical equipment, all over the world. Then, his warning still undelivered, he is again shot, this time fatally. But like Christ - the parallel seems deliberate - he rises again and gives his message: unless human violence is curbed the true masters, who are in fact the robots, will "reduce this Earth of yours to a burnt-out cinder". Submission to the rule of implacable, disinterested robots is an authoritarian proposal for a supposedly liberal film. [PN/JB] DAY THE FISH CAME OUT, THE Film (1967). Michael Cacoyannis Productions/20th Century-Fox. Dir Michael Cacoyannis, starring Tom Courtenay, Sam Wanamaker, Colin Blakely, Candice Bergen, Ian Ogilvy. Screenplay Michael Cacoyannis. 109 mins. Colour.This NEAR-FUTURE Greek/UK film takes off from a real-life incident in which the US Air Force accidentally lost two H-bombs off the coast of Spain. A NATO bomber crashes into the sea near a small Greek island, losing two H-bombs and a "Doomsday weapon". To keep a low profile, the NATO recovery team arrives disguised as holiday-makers, but this creates the impression that the island is the "in" place to visit, and soon it is swarming with real tourists. Then lethal viruses are released from a metal box found by a fisherman. A strange mixture of slapstick and grim satire, TDTFCO is not very coherent, but the final scenes, showing dead fish floating in the black sea while all the tourists, already doomed themselves, dance with frenzied abandon on the beach, are forceful. The novelization is The Day the Fish Came Out * (1967) by Kay CICELLIS. [JB] DAY THE WORLD ENDED, THE Film (1956). Golden State/ARC. Prod and dir Roger CORMAN, starring Richard Denning, Adele Jergens, Lori Nelson, Touch (Mike) Connors. Screenplay Lou Rusoff. 81 mins, cut to 79 mins. B/w.The first sf/horror film to be directed by Corman (although in 1954 he had produced Monster from the Ocean Floor), this was, like most of his 1950s films, shot fast (less than a week) on an amazingly small budget (c$40,000). TDTWE tells of a small group of atomic-war survivors menaced by a MUTANT (created by the radiation) with a bulbous head, three eyes and a taste for human flesh. Corman later improved as a director. [JB/PN] DC COMICS US COMIC-book publishing company, based in New York, owing much of its commercial success to its ownership of the copyrights in the SUPERHEROES Batman, who is not quite an sf figure, and SUPERMAN, who is.In Feb 1935 Major Malcolm WHEELER-NICHOLSON published the first US comic book to contain all-new material rather than reprints from newspaper comics sections. His comic book, New Fun, ran for 5 issues Feb-Oct 1935, and was reborn in 1936 as More Fun (June 1936-Dec 1947). By 1938 Nicholson was publishing New Adventure Comics and Detective Comics; these were the first comic books to feature regular characters in a series of adventures. However, they didn't pay the bills, and Nicholson eventually settled his debts by handing his company, National Comics, over to his printers, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Leibowitz. Its next publication was Action Comics, #1 of which (June 1938) featured the first appearance of the character Superman, created by Jerry SIEGEL and Joe Shuster. In May 1939 Detective Comics #27 saw the debut of The Batman, drawn by Bob Kane and written by Bill Finger. The future of the company was assured.Detective Comics was the first all-new comic book of which each issue was devoted to a single theme. This approach was an instant success, and so the company adopted the initials DC as a trademark, featuring it boldly on (eventually) all of its covers. It bought up Max Gaines's All American Comics in 1945. Donenfeld pioneered the distribution of comic books in the USA, and his efforts were backed up by those of National's stable of editors, writers and artists, who included Alfred BESTER, Otto Binder ( Eando BINDER), Gardner FOX, Edmond HAMILTON and Mort WEISINGER. These produced a flood of memorable characters and series including Aquaman, Enemy Ace, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Sgt Rock, Sugar & Spike and WONDER WOMAN, and Mystery in Space, Rex the Wonder Dog, Robin the Boy Wonder and Strange Adventures.The 1950s saw a change of name to National Periodical Publications and the introduction of romance titles (Girls Love), sf (Strange Adventures), Westerns (Hopalong Cassidy) and licensed character humour (Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason and Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis). In the mid-1950s there was a resurgence in the popularity of superheroes, and many characters abandoned in the previous decade were revived and revamped. This popularity burgeoned in the 1960s and 1970s, and such material constituted a substantial proportion of the company's output, even though there were new titles in the horror, gothic romance and SWORD-AND-SORCERY genres. In 1968 the company was taken over by Warner Bros., and in the early 1980s its official name finally became DC Comics Inc.The 1980s saw a great expansion of new publishing formats, including limited-series books, softcover and hardcover collections, and GRAPHIC-NOVEL adaptations of the works of leading sf writers such as Larry NIVEN and Robert SILVERBERG. A major contributing factor to the company's recent success has been its exploitations of The Batman (now usually known just as Batman), allowing artists and writers - including Frank MILLER, and Alan MOORE and Brian BOLLAND - to evolve a number of highly individual interpretations of his character and milieu. Batman's popularity has, of course, benefited from the films Batman (1966), Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). [RT/SW] DEAD KIDS (vt Strange Behavior) Film (1981). Endeavour/Bannon Glenn/Hemdale. Dir Michael Laughlin, starring Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis, Arthur Dignam. Screenplay Laughlin, William Condon. 99 mins, cut to 93 mins. Colour.This Australian/New Zealand exploitation sf/ HORROR movie is set in the US Midwest and has a largely US cast, but was actually shot in New Zealand. It is the first of a projected trilogy (linked by theme only) of which the second is STRANGE INVADERS (1983). At a research centre teenage kids are acting as guinea pigs in experiments in behavioural conditioning (the film is consciously anti-B.F. SKINNER) via a drug injected into the brain - on one occasion, through the eyeball. Some of them become homicidal and murder the children of a now-dead mad SCIENTIST's old enemies. The mad scientist is revealed to be not dead after all. The film - part of the teenage SPLATTER-MOVIE subgenre of the time - has plenty of gore but also wit and intelligence, as well as a rather 1950s style that would be featured again in Strange Invaders. [PN] DEADLY INVENTION, THE VYNALEZ ZKAZY. DEADLY RAY FROM MARS, THE FLASH GORDON. DEAD ZONE, THE Film (1983). Dino De Laurentiis/Lorimar. Dir David CRONENBERG, starring Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Martin Sheen. Screenplay Jeffrey Boam, based on The Dead Zone (1979) by Stephen KING. 103 mins. Colour.Borderline-sf movie about John Smith (Walken), who has an accident, spends five years in a coma, and wakes to learn he has developed a PSI POWER, precognition. The "dead zone" is a blank spot in his visions which may represent the possibility of the future being changed. The more Smith uses his powers, which he is loath to do because of the cargo of pain his visions often carry (and because they age him), the more cut off he becomes from ordinary humanity. He performs several minor miracles, solves an ugly murder mystery, and ultimately prevents WWIII by thwarting the election of a smooth, narcissistic politician (Sheen) who might otherwise, in the future, have plunged the world into holocaust. Cronenberg's least typical and most commercial work, perhaps because King's sprawling novel is a long way removed from the personal material he normally uses, TDZ is nevertheless a good and powerful film, notable for its sad, insistent images of winter, correlating with Smith's retreat from life and also with the dead zone of the title. Walken's performance in the main role is admirably lost and icy. [PN] DEAMER, (MARY ELIZABETH KATHLEEN) DULCIE (1890-1972) New Zealand-born writer, in Australia from about 1922, where in association with Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) and others she ruffled some provincial dovecotes. Some of the content of In the Beginning: Six Studies of the Stone Age and Other Stories (coll 1909) reappears in As It Was in the Beginning (1929), an exercise in prehistoric sf set in Australia, illus Lindsay. The Devil's Saint (1924 UK) is a historical novel with greater elements of FANTASY than normal in her work. Holiday (1940) is a fantasy of REINCARNATION. [JC] DEAN, MAL (1941-1974) UK illustrator who died young, of cancer. MD was well known in the jazz world (he illustrated for Melody Maker) and in sf for the work he did for NEW WORLDS in the late 1960s and early 1970s; it was especially associated with the Jerry Cornelius stories by Michael MOORCOCK and others. His work was mainly in black-and-white with a broad line and much cross-hatching; it was strong, often deliberately unpolished, but the reverse of artless. He favoured surreal juxtapositions, and often worked in the grotesque satirical tradition of Hogarth. [PN] DEAN, MARTYN [r] Roger DEAN; Christopher EVANS. DEAN, ROGER (1944- ) UK illustrator. Primarily a commercial designer, especially of record-album covers, RD has done some sf and fantasy ILLUSTRATION, and his album and poster art shows a strong fantasy influence. His style is strong, romantic and mannered; he contrasts very finely detailed figures and machines against loosely structured backgrounds. His book Views (1975) shows his development from a student at the Canterbury School of Art onwards. Views was published by Dragon's Dream, a specialist publishing house devoted primarily to UK fantasy illustrators, founded by RD and his brother Martyn Dean; it also publishes under the Paper Tiger imprint. The book Magnetic Storm (1984), ed Roger and Martyn Dean, details many of the design and publishing projects - often fantastic or sciencefictional - with which they have been associated. RD has been an important influence on UK fantasy illustration, as has his brother, who is more closely associated with book publishing than RD. [JG/PN]Other Works: The Flights of Icarus (1987) with Donald Lehmkuhl DEARMER, GEOFFREY (1893- ) UK writer, and a WWI poet of some note. His Saint on Holiday (1933) presents a NEAR-FUTURE UK in which the government is dominated by ministries designed to be of benefit to citizens; it was couched as a topsy-turvydom SATIRE. In They Chose to be Birds (1935) a preacher of closed mind is unsettlingly duped into "becoming" a bird, and as such learns some Wellsian lessons about the true nature of the world. [JC]Other works: Three Short Plays (coll 1928), two of which are fantasies. DEATH LINE (vt Raw Meat US) Film (1972). K-L Productions. Dir Gary Sherman, starring Donald Pleasence, Hugh Armstrong, Norman Rossington, David Ladd, Sharon Gurney. Screenplay Ceri Jones, from a story by Sherman. 87 mins. Colour.In the late 19th century a group of construction workers building an extension to London's underground railway system are buried in a cave-in. In the present, late-night travellers at Russell Square tube station are being murdered (and eaten) by, we slowly learn, troglodytic descendants of the entombed workers who have found their way up, and are now supplementing their diet of rats with human meat. What raises this exploitation movie out of the ordinary is its unexpected shift of perspective - the dawning sympathy we are made to feel for the troglodytes (nearly all of whom have died of a leprosy-like disease): they have almost lost the use of language, but are still able to feel grief and love. [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK The INCREDIBLE HULK . DEATH RACE 2000 Film (1975). New World. Prod Roger CORMAN. Dir Paul Bartel, starring David Carradine, Simone Griffith, Louisa Moritz, Sylvester Stallone, Mary Woronov. Screenplay Robert Thom, Charles Griffith, based on a story by Ib Melchior. 80 mins. Colour.In this low-budget black SATIRE about a car race across the USA in the year 2000, the winner is the driver who kills the most pedestrians. "Frankenstein" (Carradine) - who has supposedly been in so many crashes that most of his body has been replaced with artificial parts - is the nation's favourite driver, and surprises everyone at the end by running over the US President as a political gesture. The film's fast pace and lively ironies led many critics to judge it superior to ROLLERBALL (1975), a much more expensive production about the use of brutal sports as an opiate for the masses. A cult classic, DR2000 has been much imitated. [JB/PN] DEATH RAYS Rays that could kill, whether by heat or by disintegration, were the staple WEAPONS of pulp sf in the 1920s and 1930s and became a central item of sf TERMINOLOGY. At about the time death rays became old-fashioned in sf, scientists in the real world saw fit to invent the laser, thus retroactively justifying one of sf's fantasies. The death ray always, however, had a basis in historical fact. After the well publicized discoveries of X-rays by Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen (1845-1923) in 1895 and of radioactive emissions by Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) - he too called them rays - in 1896, the word "ray" entered the popular imagination. One of the earliest literary examples is the "heat ray" used by the Martians in H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898). [PN] DEATHSPORT Roger CORMAN. DEATH WATCH Le MORT EN DIRECT . de BERGERAC, CYRANO CYRANO DE BERGERAC. De CAMP, CATHERINE A. CROOK [r] L. Sprague DE CAMP. De CAMP, L(YON) SPRAGUE (1907- ) US writer, married from 1939 to Catherine A(delaide) Crook (1907- ), who has collaborated on a number of his books, sometimes without printed credit, although always freely acknowledged by LSDC; the two are increasingly seen to have been a creative team for many years (she is referred to below as CACDC). LSDC was educated at the California Institute of Technology, where he studied aeronautical engineering, and at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he gained a master's degree in 1933. He went to work for a company dealing with patenting, and his first published work was a cowritten textbook on the subject. He then met P. Schuyler MILLER, with whom he collaborated on a novel, Genus Homo (1941 Super Science Stories; 1950), which failed to find a publisher for several years. His first published story was "The Isolinguals" (1937) in ASF; this was before the arrival of John W. CAMPBELL Jr as editor, but when that happened the two men proved highly compatible, and LSDC soon became a central figure of the GOLDEN AGE OF SF, writing prolifically for ASF over the next few years (on one occasion using the pseudonym Lyman R. Lyon), his contributions including the Johnny Black series about an intelligent bear: "The Command" (1938), "The Incorrigible" (1939), "The Emancipated" (1940) and "The Exalted" (1940). Some of the better stories from this period were collected in The Best of L. Sprague de Camp (coll 1978).It was, however, the appearance in 1939 of ASF's fantasy companion UNKNOWN which stimulated his most notable early work, including LEST DARKNESS FALL (1939 Unknown; 1941; rev 1949), in which an involuntary time-traveller to 6th-century Rome attempts to prevent the onset of the Dark Ages; this was the most accomplished early excursion into HISTORY in magazine sf, and is regarded as a classic. Other contributions to Unknown included "None but Lucifer" (1939) with H.L. GOLD, Solomon's Stone (1942 Unknown; 1956) and the long title stories of Divide and Rule (coll 1948) - the title story alone being republished as Divide and Rule (1939 ASF; 1990 chap dos) - The Wheels of If (coll 1948), an ALTERNATE-WORLDS story, also cited below in reissued form, and The Undesired Princess (coll 1951), the title story alone being republished in The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny (anth 1990), the second story being by David A. DRAKE. LSDC was most successful in his collaborations with Fletcher PRATT, whom he met in 1939. Pratt conceived the idea behind their successful Incomplete Enchanter series of humorous fantasies in which the protagonist, Harold Shea, is transported into a series of ALTERNATE WORLDS based on various myths and legends. As usual with LSDC, the publication sequence is complex. The main titles are: The Incomplete Enchanter (1940 Unknown; 1941; vt The Incompleat Enchanter 1979 UK), The Castle of Iron (1941 Unknown; 1950) and The Wall of Serpents (fixup 1960; vt The Enchanter Compleated 1980 UK). The first two titles were then assembled as The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea (omni 1975), and all three were eventually put together as The Intrepid Enchanter (omni 1988 UK; vt The Complete Compleat Enchanter 1989 US); Sir Harold and the Gnome King (1991 chap) was subsequently added to the Enchanter canon. Other collaborations with Pratt were The Land of Unreason (1942) and The Carnelian Cube (1948), the latter being published several years after it was written. In 1950, LSDC and Pratt (whom see for details) began their Gavagan's Bar series of CLUB STORIES, assembled in Tales From Gavagan's Bar (coll 1953; exp 1978). LSDC joined the US Naval Reserve in 1942, spending the war working in the Philadelphia Naval Yard alongside Isaac ASIMOV and Robert A. HEINLEIN. Afterwards he published a few articles, but hardly any new fiction until "The Animal Cracker Plot" (1949) introduced his Viagens Interplanetarias stories, a loosely linked series set in a future where Brazil has become the dominant world power, the stories themselves being sited mainly on three worlds which circle the star Tau Ceti and are named after the Hindu gods Vishnu, Ganesha and Krishna; the planet Krishna was a romantically barbarian world on which LSDC could set, as sf, the kind of PLANETARY ROMANCES he had previously written as fantasy, the market for pure fantasy having disappeared with Unknown in 1943. Other planets circling other stars included Osiris, Isis and Thoth. Many of the short stories in the series were included in The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (coll 1953); others appeared in Sprague de Camp's New Anthology of Science Fiction (coll 1953 UK), and "The Virgin of Zesh" (1953) was assembled together with The Wheels of If (1940 Unknown; 1990 chap dos) in The Virgin and the Wheels (coll 1976). Rogue Queen (1951), a novel in the series, depicts a matriarchal humanoid society based on a hive structure; it is, with LEST DARKNESS FALL, LSDC's most highly regarded sf work. The remaining novels, an internal series all set on Krishna, were Cosmic Manhunt (1949 ASF as "The Queen of Zamba"; 1954 dos; vt A Planet Called Krishna 1966 UK; with restored text and with "Perpetual Motion" added, rev vt as coll The Queen of Zamba 1977 US); The Search for Zei (1950 ASF as the first half of "The Hand of Zei"; 1962; vt The Floating Continent 1966 UK) and The Hand of Zei (1950 ASF as the second half of "The Hand of Zei"; 1963; cut 1963), both titles finally being superseded by publication of the full original novel, The Hand of Zei (1950 ASF; 1982); The Tower of Zanid (1958 Science Fiction Stories; cut 1958; with "The Virgin of Zesh" added, vt as coll The Virgin of Zesh/The Tower of Zanid 1983); The Hostage of Zir (1977); The Bones of Zora (1983) with CACDC; and The Swords of Zinjaban (1991) with CACDC. They contain a blend of intelligent, exotic adventure and wry humour characteristic of LSDC's better work, though they do not explore any too deeply either the romantic or the human-condition ironies available to aspiring authors of the planetary romance.LSDC was in any case not to write much more sf, his later career increasingly being devoted to outright fantasy and to SWORD AND SORCERY. He had gained an interest in the latter category through reading Robert E. HOWARD's Conan stories, and worked extensively on editing and adding to that series. Tales of Conan (coll 1955; vt The Flame Knife 1981) consists of unfinished Howard manuscripts converted into Conan stories and completed by LSDC (for remaining titles, see listing below). His nonfiction writings on the sword-and-sorcery genre have been published as The Conan Reader (coll 1968), Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976) and Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975 chap). He also edited the anthologies Swords and Sorcery (anth 1963), The Spell of Seven (anth 1965), The Fantastic Swordsmen (anth 1967) and Warlocks and Warriors (anth 1970), and co-edited the critical anthologies The Conan Swordbook (anth 1969) and The Conan Grimoire (anth 1972), both with George H. SCITHERS. LSDC's own first sword-and-sorcery effort was the Pusadian sequence of tales assembled as The Tritonian Ring and Other Pusadian Tales (coll 1953); the title novel was later published alone as The Tritonian Ring (1951 Two Complete Science-Fiction Adventure Books; 1968). Later he wrote several stories set in the imaginary world of Novaria: The Goblin Tower (1968), which is his most substantial novel of this type, The Clocks of Iraz (1971), The Fallible Fiend (1973), The Unbeheaded King (1983) and The Honorable Barbarian (1989) - the first, second and fourth of these five being assembled as The Reluctant King (omni 1984).LSDC's most notable sf writings after about 1950 were stories like The Glory that Was (1952 Startling Stories; 1960) and the 1956 title story of A Gun for Dinosaur (coll 1963), which also included "Aristotle and the Gun" (1958). The first and third of these tales use history themes, in the case of the third combined with TIME TRAVEL, in a manner similar to LEST DARKNESS FALL; the second is a straightforward time-travel story. LSDC produced one of the earliest books about modern sf, Science Fiction Handbook (1953; rev 1975) with CACDC; a useful compendium of information and advice for aspiring writers in its original edition, it gained little from its subsequent revision - indeed, the revised version omitted some material of interest. Otherwise he wrote historical novels and nonfiction works, including a book on MAGIC with CACDC: Spirits, Stars and Spells (1966). His opinions about the nature of FANTASY and the appropriate decorum necessary to write within the genre were expressed in an energetic, if sometimes reactionary, fashion in his many articles. He also wrote definitive lives of H.P. LOVECRAFT - Lovecraft: A Biography (1975; cut 1976) - and of Robert E. Howard - Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard (1983) with CCDC and Jane Whittington Griffin, the latter book having been preceded by The Miscast Barbarian (1975 chap). In the 1980s, and into his own ninth decade, more and more often in explicit collaboration with CACDC, he maintained a remarkable reputation for consistency of output. He was given the Gandalf (Grand Master) Award for 1976 and the Nebula Grand Master Award for 1978. His recent work seems agelessly smiling. [MJE/JC]Other works: Lands Beyond (1952) with Willy LEY, nonfiction, awarded an INTERNATIONAL FANTASY AWARD; Lost Continents (1954), nonfiction about ATLANTIS and others; Demons and Dinosaurs (1970), poetry; The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales (coll 1970); 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction (anth 1972) with CACDC; Scribblings (coll 1972); Tales beyond Time (anth 1973) with CACDC; The Great Fetish (1978); The Purple Pterodactyls: The Adventures of W. Wilson Newbury, Ensorcelled Financier (coll of linked stories 1979); The Ragged Edge of Science (1980), nonfiction; Footprints on Sand (coll 1981) with CACDC; Heroes and Hobgoblins (coll 1981); The Incorporated Knight (fixup 1987) and its sequel, The Pixilated Peeress (1991), both with CACDC; The Stones of Nomuru (1988) with CACDC; The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992); Rivers of Time (coll 1993).Conan: In terms of internal chronology: Conan (coll 1967) with Lin CARTER and Robert E. Howard, Conan of Cimmeria (coll 1969) with Carter and Howard andConan the Freebooter (coll 1968) with Howard, all three being assembled as The Conan Chronicles (omni 1989 UK);Conan the Wanderer (coll 1968) with Carter and Howard, Conan the Adventurer (coll 1966) with Howard, and Conan the Buccaneer (1971) with Carter, all three being assembled as The Conan Chronicles (omni 1990 UK); Conan the Warrior (anth 1967); Conan the Usurper (coll 1967) with Howard; Howard's own Conan the Conqueror (1967 edn) ed LSDP; The Return of Conan (1957; vt Conan the Avenger 1968) with Howard and Bjorn Nyberg; Conan of Aquilonia (coll 1977); Conan of the Isles (1968) with Carter; Conan the Swordsman (coll 1978) with Carter and Nyberg; Conan the Liberator (1979) with Carter; The Blade of Conan (anth 1979); The Spell of Conan (anth 1980); Conan and the Spider God (1980); Treasure of Tranicos (1980) with Howard; Conan the Barbarian * (1982) with Carter, a film tie. (For other Conan books, Robert E. HOWARD.)About the author: "Neomythology" by Lin Carter (introduction to LSDC's Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers); Seekers of Tomorrow (1965) by Sam MOSKOWITZ, Chapter 9; De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography (1983) by Charlotte Laughlin and Daniel J.H. LEVACK.See also: APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; EDISONADE; END OF THE WORLD; EVOLUTION; FINLAND; HIVE-MINDS; HUMOUR; LINGUISTICS; LONGEVITY (IN WRITERS AND PUBLICATIONS); MATHEMATICS; NEBULA; NUCLEAR POWER; PARALLEL WORLDS; POLITICS; PUBLISHING; SCIENCE FANTASY; SOCIOLOGY; TIME PARADOXES. De CHAIR, SOMERSET (STRUBEN) (1911-1995) UK writer whose sf novel, The Teetotalitarian State (1947), is a not particularly bad-tempered SATIRE set in the NEAR FUTURE and directed at the Labour Party, then in power in the UK. The contemporary researcher obsessed by the life of Julian, in Bring Back the Gods: The Epic Career of the Emperor Julian the Great (1962), eventually comes to share the experiences of the Roman. [JC] DeCHANCIE, JOHN (1946- ) US writer who worked in tv in various capacities before beginning to publish sf with his Skyway Trilogy: Starrigger (1983), Red Limit Freeway (1984) and Paradox Alley (1986). Based on a truckers-in-space premise with some comic potential, the already crowded tale is complicated by TIME PARADOXES, godlings and much more; the ensuing epic is at points extremely funny. A second comic sf sequence, the USS Recluse stories, began with The Kruton Interface (1993); and a third, the Dr. Dimension series in collaboration with David BISCHOFF, began with Dr. Dimension (1993) and Dr. Dimension: Masters of Spacetime (1994), both containing RECURSIVE SF elements.Crooked House (1987) with Thomas F. MONTELEONE is a horror novel, and the Zelaznyesque Castle Perilous sequence - Castle Perilous (1988), Castle for Rent (1989), Castle Kidnapped (1989), Castle War! (1990), Castle Murders (1991),Castle Dreams (1992) and Castle Spellbound (1992) - is fantasy, as is MagicNet (1993). JDC has also written two biographies: Peron (1987) and Nasser (1987). [JC] DECIMA VITTIMA, LA (vt The Tenth Victim) Film (1965). Champion/Concordia. Dir Elio Petri, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, Massimo Serato. Screenplay Petri, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra, Giorgio Salvione, based on "The Seventh Victim" (1953) by Robert SHECKLEY. 92 mins. Colour.This French-Italian coproduction is based loosely on Sheckley's story about a future world where, as a safety valve for latent aggression, the government has legalized duels to the death. In the film two participants (Mastroianni and Andress) are highly trained individuals alternating as "hunter" and "victim", each aiming for the 10-kill score that will bring unlimited privileges. The DYSTOPIAN possibilities are neglected in favour of the then-fashionable James Bond/thriller approach, with black jokes and posturing in extravagant costumes. The novelization is The Tenth Victim * (1966) by Robert Sheckley. [JB]See also: LEISURE. DEE, ROGER Working name of US writer Roger Dee Aycock (1914- ) for his fiction, which he began writing with "The Wheel is Death" for Planet Stories in 1949; he was a prolific contributor to the sf magazines of the early 1950s. His sf novel, An Earth Gone Mad (1954 dos), is a routine adventure. [JC] DEEGAN, JON J. House name created by Gordon Landsborough, editor of AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION, and used almost exclusively by UK writer Robert (George) Sharp (? -? ) for novels published in that journal, which for some time early in its run filled each issue with one long story. The Old Growler series, beginning with "Reconnoitre Krellig II" in 1951, was signed as by JJD, and three of its sequels (all by Sharp) were published in book form as Amateurs in Alchemy (1952), Antro, the Life-Giver (1953) and The Great Ones (1953). Sharp wrote also a TIME-TRAVEL trilogy, Corridors of Time (1953), Beyond the Fourth Door (1954) and Exiles in Time (1954). Of further JJD titles, Underworld of Zello (1952) is by Sharp; authorship of The Singing Spheres (1952) is unconfirmed. The much earlier Horror Castle (1936) was published under Sharp's own name, which he generally used for his crime thrillers. [JC] DEEPING, (GEORGE) WARWICK (1877-1950) UK popular novelist, the first of whose many books, Uther & Igraine (1903), was an Arthurian fantasy, as were The Man on the White Horse (1934); The Man who Went Back (1940), the latter being a timeslip epic which takes its protagonist from the 20th-century UK to the time of the Romans, and returns him wiser and better able to cope with the Nazis; and The Sword and the Cross (1957). I Live Again (1942) is a REINCARNATION fantasy that likewise terminates heroically in the Blitz. [JC] DEEP SPACE NINE STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. DEEPSTAR SIX Film (1988). Carolco/Tri-Star. Dir and coprod Sean S. Cunningham, starring Joyce Collins, Greg Evigan, Taurean Blacque, Miguel Ferrer. Screenplay Lewis Abernathy, Geof Miller, based on a story by Abernathy. 99 mins. Colour.A deep-sea missile base is being installed by underwater station DeepStar Six. Explosives open a vast cavern under the ocean floor, in which dwells a monstrous arthropod; it destroys two submersibles, enters the station, and kills most of the crew one by one. This no-better-than-competent MONSTER MOVIE was the first of the strange-things-in-the-ocean sf films of the period, others being Lords of the Deep (1989), LEVIATHAN (1989) and The ABYSS (1989). Once revealed, the crayfish-thing is anticlimactic. [PN] DEER, M.J. George H. SMITH. DEFINITIONS OF SF The term "science fiction" came into general use in the 1930s, an early appearance being in Hugo GERNSBACK's editorial to #1 of SCIENCE WONDER STORIES (June 1929). Long before, however, several writers ( Edgar FAWCETT; Edgar Allan POE; William WILSON) had made attempts to define species of literary production similar to sf, and other early speculative writers had their own manifestos. Only since the founding of the specialist sf PULP MAGAZINES in the USA has there been any measure of agreement.The category first referred to by Gernsback as SCIENTIFICTION was described by him thus in the editorial to #1 of AMAZING STORIES (Apr 1926): "By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story - a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision . . . Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading - they are always instructive. They supply knowledge . . . in a very palatable form . . . New adventures pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow . . . Many great science stories destined to be of historical interest are still to be written . . . Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress as well."This notion of sf as a didactic and progressive literature with a solid basis in contemporary knowledge was soon revised as other pulp editors abandoned some of Gernsback's pretensions, but the emphasis on science remained. A new manifesto was drawn up by John W. CAMPBELL Jr for Astounding Stories, which, as ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, would dominate the field in the 1940s. He proposed that sf should be regarded as a literary medium akin to science itself: "Scientific methodology involves the proposition that a well-constructed theory will not only explain away known phenomena, but will also predict new and still undiscovered phenomena. Science fiction tries to do much the same - and write up, in story form, what the results look like when applied not only to machines, but to human society as well."Within a few years of the creation of the term "science fiction" a subculture had evolved composed of writers, magazine editors (and, later, book editors), reviewers and fans; stories and novels written within this subculture shared certain assumptions, linguistic and thematic codes which were embedded in the growing literature, and a sense of isolation from the external "mundane" world for which those codes remained cryptic. This whole living matrix, not just the fictional texts that had initially occasioned it, came to be called "science fiction" ( GENRE SF).Once the publishing category had been established, readers and critics began using the term with reference to older works, bringing together all stories which seemed to fit the specifications. However, the first major study of the field's ancestry was undertaken by a person from outside it, the academic J.O. BAILEY in Pilgrims through Space and Time (1947). He identified his material thus: "A piece of scientific fiction is a narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences and consequent adventures and experiences . . . It must be a scientific discovery - something that the author at least rationalizes as possible to science."Many further sf researchers and writers attempted to generate definitions of the form which would demarcate the contemporary genre and assimilate any theoretically eligible earlier work. These definitions included attempts by James BLISH, Reginald BRETNOR, Robert A. HEINLEIN, Damon KNIGHT and Theodore STURGEON, from within the field, and, from scholars and critics more or less closely associated it, by Kingsley AMIS and Sam MOSKOWITZ. Judith MERRIL echoed Campbell's prospectus while borrowing Heinlein's preferred terminology, which replaced the term "science fiction" by "speculative fiction": "Speculative fiction: stories whose objective is to explore, to discover, to learn, by means of projection, extrapolation, analogue,hypothesis-and-paper-experimentation, something about the nature of the universe, of man, or 'reality' . . . I use the term 'speculative fiction' here specifically to describe the mode which makes use of the traditional 'scientific method' (observation, hypothesis, experiment) to examine some postulated approximation of reality, by introducing a given set of changes - imaginary or inventive - into the common background of 'known facts', creating an environment in which the responses and perceptions of the characters will reveal something about the inventions, the characters, or both."The emphasis in all of these earlier definitions falls on the presence of "science", or at least scientific method, as a necessary part of the fiction. The Merril definition, however, clearly (by shifting from science itself to the idea of extrapolation) is rather wider, since it would include stories which depict social change without necessarily making much fuss over scientific development; and indeed such stories were becoming very popular in the magazines during the 1950s and 1960s, the period during which Merril did most of her writing and editing. Oddly enough, the most obvious element in the magazine sf that is the initial focus of nearly all of these earlier definitions is not much mentioned in them: the overwhelming majority of the sf of this period - especially in the USA - was set in the future. (By contrast, most 19th- and early-20th-century sf was displaced from the normal world through space rather than time.) With an enjoyable lack of responsibility about using the future to teach us about the present, writers like E.E. "Doc" SMITH, in his Lensman series, freed the future for "itself", and the effect of this new freedom was, in literary terms, explosive. From this the characteristic (and addictive) flavour of US sf derives: its relaxed embracing of scale and technology, its narrative fluency and, perhaps, its secret impatience with reason. Most descriptive definitions of sf from the period 1940-70 look with hindsight surprisingly unsatisfactory and rather constricting - damagingly indifferent, in fact, to the actual shape of sf texts.In the 1960s a new line of thought, stemming in large part from the UK, saw sf re-emphasized as a global literature with 19th-century roots rather than as a purely US phenomenon nurtured in the pulp magazines from the 1920s onwards. This wider perspective on sf tends to de-emphasize its science/technology component. The term "science fiction" itself came in for criticism from Brian W. ALDISS, who commented that sf is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are for ghosts. J.G. BALLARD remarked in 1969 that "the idea that a magazine like Astounding, or Analog as it's now called, has anything to do with the sciences is ludicrous. You have only to pick up a journal like Nature, say, or any scientific journal, and you can see that science belongs in a completely different world." In Billion Year Spree (1973; rev vt Trillion Year Spree 1986 by Aldiss and David WINGROVE) Aldiss offered the remark - it seems more an observation describing a philosophical outlook than a definition - that "science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode" ( GOTHIC SF). By placing Mary SHELLEY's Frankenstein (1818) at the head of this tradition, Aldiss effectively (and influentially) argued that sf was a child begotten upon Gothic Romance by the Industrial and Scientific Revolution of the early 19th century. More recent critics, like Brian M. STABLEFORD in Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950 (1985), have likewise somewhat undercut those definitions that appear to fit most closely an idea of sf as a genre first cultured in US magazines ( SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE).The 1970s as a whole witnessed a great upsurge of academic interest in sf ( SF IN THE CLASSROOM), especially in the USA, and with it, naturally enough, came more rigorous and formal attempts to define sf. To teach a subject you need to know what it is; and, especially in the case of sf (which blurs so easily into FANTASY on one side and POSTMODERNIST fictions- FABULATIONS - on another, TECHNOTHRILLERS and political thrillers on a third, mainstream works about scientific discovery on a fourth, not to mention LOST-WORLD stories or UTOPIAS or future- WAR stories or stories set in the prehistoric past), you also need to know what it isn't. Thus in academic definitions there was a new emphasis on drawing the boundaries of sf more precisely, in terms of its literary strategies as well as its ideational content, sometimes using a vocabulary already developed in different spheres of literary criticism by structuralist and other critics.In 1972 Darko SUVIN defined sf as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment". By "cognition" Suvin appears to mean the seeking of rational understanding, and by "estrangement" something akin to Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt, defined in 1948 thus: "A representation which estranges is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time make it seem unfamiliar." Perhaps the most important part of Suvin's definition, and the easiest with which to agree, is the emphasis he puts on what he and others have called a "novum", a new thing - some difference between the world of the fiction and what Suvin calls the "empirical environment", the real world outside. The presence of a novum is insufficient in itself, of course, to define sf, since the different and older tradition of fantasy likewise depends on the novum. Peter NICHOLLS, pointing to this particularly blurred demarcation line, argues that sf must by definition follow natural law whereas fantasy may and mostly does suspend it. Fantasy need not be susceptible to "natural" or cognitive explanation; indeed, supernatural explanation is at fantasy's heart. (Suvin claims that the commercial linking of sf and fantasy is "a rampantly pathological phenomenon". This dividing line is further discussed under MAGIC.) As to estrangement, it arguably has little to do with at least the US tradition of sf (although a great deal to do with European traditions of SATIRE), in which an important component is nostalgia for the familiar - even the familiarly new ( CLICHES) - and estrangement is significantly absent. John CLUTE has argued that much sf seeks to create the exact opposite of estrangement; that is, it works to make the incredible seem plausible and familiar. Nonetheless, while Suvin's definition would find few who agreed with all of it, it is challenging and has perhaps been the most useful of all in catalysing debate on the issue.It is to be expected that disagreements of this sort should take place, since sf itself is not homogeneous, and at different times - sometimes both at once - its strategy is either to comment on our own world through the use of metaphor and extrapolation or to create genuine imaginative alternatives to our own world.The first of these alternatives is the one emphasized in Structural Fabulation (1975) by Robert SCHOLES, who defines FABULATION as "fiction that offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way". Unqualified, the definition would fit not only GENRE SF but also the fabulations of John BARTH, Richard BRAUTIGAN, Jorge Luis BORGES and Thomas PYNCHON, works which are quite often annexed to sf though having a different characteristic flavour. Scholes recognizes this when he goes on to the specific case of "structural fabulation" (yet another term substituting for "science fiction" and sharing the initials "sf") in which "the tradition of speculative fiction is modified by an awareness of the universe as a system of systems, a structure of structures, and the insights of the past century of science are accepted as fictional points of departure. Yet structural fabulation is neither scientific in its methods nor a substitute for actual science. It is a fictional exploration of human situations made perceptible by the implications of recent science. Its favourite themes involve the impact of developments or revelations derived from the human or physical sciences upon the people who must live with those revelations or developments."All definitions of sf have a component of prescription (what sf writers ought to do, and what their motives, purposes and philosophies ought to be) as well as description (what they habitually do do, and what kind of things tend to accumulate under the label). It is, however, only in the later academic definitions by authors like Suvin and Scholes, who are noticeably reticent as regards what sf is actually about, that we find prescription getting the upper hand. It is possible with almost all definitions, especially of the prescriptive sort, to find examples which do not fit the prescription. No one has yet emerged with a prescription sufficiently inclusive to satisfy all or even most readers. (If the editors of this encyclopedia have erred, it has been on the side of inclusiveness.)Some other academic definitions have been less inclusive than Suvin's or Scholes's. Leslie FIEDLER, for example, argues (in Partisan Review Fall 1965) that the myth of sf is the dream of apocalypse, "the myth of the end of man, of the transcendence or transformation of the human - a vision quite different from that of the extinction of our species by the Bomb, which seems stereotype rather than archetype". In his New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction and American Literature (1974) David KETTERER expands on Fiedler's point at length, dividing sf into three categories (according to the type of extrapolation involved) and concentrating on the third: "Philosophically oriented science fiction, extrapolating on what we know in the context of our vaster ignorance, comes up with a startling donnee, or rationale, that puts humanity in a radically new perspective." This he sees as a subcategory of "apocalyptic literature" which, by "the creation of other worlds", causes a "metaphorical destruction of [the] 'real' world in the reader's head".Alvin TOFFLER, author of Future Shock (1970), a study of the increasing rate of change in the real world, wrote in 1974 that sf, "by dealing with possibilities not ordinarily considered - alternative worlds, alternative visions - widens our repertoire of possible responses to change". Here is the beginning of a definition of sf in terms of its social function rather than of its intrinsic nature, a little more sophisticated than Marshall McLuhan's earlier comment in The Medium and the Massage (1967): "Science fiction writing today presents situations that enable us to perceive the potential of new technologies."In 1987 Kim Stanley ROBINSON wrote in FOUNDATION: THE REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION that sf was "an historical literature . . . In every sf narrative, there is an explicit or implicit fictional history that connects the period depicted to our present moment, or to some moment of our past." Commenting in 1992 in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION on this formulation, John Clute suggested that it underlined the sense US sf conveyed of being connected to the linear, time-bound logic of the Western World.Unfortunately, the clearest (or most aggressive) definitions are often the least definitive, although many sceptics have been attracted to Damon Knight's "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it" or Norman SPINRAD's "Science fiction is anything published as science fiction". Both these "definitions" have a serious point, of course: that, whatever else sf may be, it is certainly a publishing category, and in the real world this is of more pragmatic importance than anything the theorists may have to say about it. On the other hand, the label "sf" on a book is wholly subject to the whims of publishers and editors, and the label has certainly appeared on some very unlikely books. An additional complication arises because some writers fight hard to avoid the label, perhaps feeling that it might deleteriously affect their sales and/or reputations (e.g., Kurt VONNEGUT Jr, John WYNDHAM). Publishers apply similar cautionary measures to potential bestsellers, which are seldom labelled as sf even when that is exactly what they are (although this has been less true in the post- STAR WARS period than in, say, the 1970s), on the grounds that genre sf when so labelled, while normally selling steadily, rarely enters the bestseller class.There is really no good reason to expect that a workable definition of sf will ever be established. None has been, so far. In practice, there is much consensus about what sf looks like in its centre; it is only at the fringes that most of the fights take place. And it is still not possible to describe sf as a homogeneous form of writing. Sf is arguably not a genre in the strict sense at all - and why should it be? Historically, it grew from the merging of many distinct genres, from utopias to space adventures. Instinctively, however, we may feel that, if sf ever loses its sense of the fluidity of the future and the excitement of our scientific attempts to understand our Universe - in short, as more conservative fans would put it with enthusiasm though conceptual vagueness, its SENSE OF WONDER - then it may no longer be worth fighting over. If things fall apart and the centre cannot hold, mere structural fabulation may be loosed upon the world!For a listing of many definitions, including some of those referred to but not actually quoted above, a good source is the "Science Fiction" entry in Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy (1986) by Gary K. WOLFE. [BS/JC/PN] DEFOE, DANIEL (1660-1731) UK merchant, professional spy and writer, extremely prolific author of many works of various kinds, though the huge canon of unsigned works attributed to him has in recent years been convincingly diminished. He is best known today for his novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719) and its sequels, which, while not sf, provided a fundamental model for many sf stories ( ROBINSONADE). Of interest to students of PROTO SCIENCE FICTION is The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World of the Moon (1705; various savagely cut edns under vts 1705-41), in which a mechanical spirit-driven flying machine, the Consolidator, enables various satirical ( SATIRE) observations to be made from a lunar viewpoint. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), in effect a historical novel set in 1665, a year DD could presumably barely remember, is a prototype of the DISASTER novel. Some associational short work can be found in Tales of Piracy, Crime, and Ghosts (coll 1945 US). [JC/PN]See also: MACHINES; MOON; SPACE FLIGHT. DEFONTENAY, C(HARLEMAGNE) I(SCHIR) (1814-1856) French writer whose Star, ou Psi de Cassiopee (1854; trans P. J. Sokolowski as Star 1975 US, with intro by Pierre VERSINS) describes the discovery in the Himalayas of a box full of information about life on another planet. The biological and anthropological speculation is interesting; the translation lacks the inventive fluency of the original. [JC/PN]See also: STARS. deFORD, MIRIAM ALLEN (1888-1975) US writer, a newspaper reporter for many years; probably known better for her many mystery stories (some award-winning) than for the sf of her later years. Her publications also include such nonfiction as The Real Bonnie and Clyde (1968) and her work as contributing editor to The Humanist. She edited Space, Time and Crime (anth 1964), a collection of sf stories with mystery elements. As an author of sf stories in her own right, she published over 30 items - beginning with "Last Generation" in 1946 for Harper's Magazine - in various magazines, though most of the stories in her two collections, Xenogenesis (coll 1969) and Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow (coll 1971), had first appeared in FSF. Her examinations of themes such as nuclear devastation and sexual roles is conducted in a crisp, clearcut style that sometimes lacks grace but never vigour. [JC]See also: WOMEN SF WRITERS. DEGAL, ALDION [r] YUGOSLAVIA. De GRAEFF, ALLEN Pseudonym of Albert Paul Blaustein (1921- ), professor of law at Rutgers from 1955, under which he edited Human and Other Beings (anth 1963). He was uncredited co-compiler of three anthologies with his friend Basil DAVENPORT: Deals with the Devil (anth 1958), Invisible Men (anth 1960) and Famous Monster Tales (anth 1967). [PN] De HAVEN, TOM (1949- ) US writer who began publishing sf with his first novel, Freaks' Amour (1979), set in 1988 among a group of MUTANTS created by an atomic mishap, and following their lives as itinerant performers. A similar inclination to place a large connected cast in a surreally threatening world impels the otherwise very different Funny Papers (1985), a kind of urban fantasy/alternate history set at the end of the 19th century in a magic-realist New York ( ALTERNATE WORLDS; FABULATION) and concentrating on the newspaper business at the point when COMIC strips were first becoming widely popular. In the long third section of Sunburn Lake (coll of linked stories 1988), TDH applied his easy fabulistic manner to 21st-century New Jersey. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, TDH gave some sense that he was dissipating his energies, producing a sharp but unremarkable tie in U.S.S.A. Book 1 * (1987), a juvenile, Joe Gosh (1988), which may have been SHARECROPPED, and Neuromancer: The Graphic Novel: Volume 1 * (graph 1989) illus Bruce Jensen. But the fantasy sequence Chronicles of the King's Tramp represented a significant return of energy: Walker of Worlds (1990),The End-of-Everything Man (1991), and The Last Human (1992) traverse familiar territory - a sequence of PARALLEL WORLDS nested into an ontological hierarchy - with panache and knowing clarity. [JC]Other works: Jersey Luck (1980), associational.See also: CHILDREN'S SF. DEIGHTON, LEN Working name of Leonard Cyril Deighton (1929- ), UK writer of spy novels, cookery books and some other nonfiction, still perhaps best known for his early espionage thrillers, such as The Ipcress File (1962), several of which feature the same undisciplined secret agent. The fourth volume of the series, Billion-Dollar Brain (1966), is set in an indeterminate NEAR FUTURE and deals with a super- COMPUTER and a private preventive war launched on Russia across the ice from Finland by a mad tycoon; it was filmed as Billion Dollar Brain (1967) dir Ken Russell. In SS-GB (1978) the UK suffers German occupation from 1941 ( HITLER WINS). [JC] DELAIRE, JEAN Pseudonym of Mrs Muirson Blake (? -? ), whose date of birth has been listed as an improbably late 1888, editor of Christian Theosophist. JD's Around a Distant Star (1904) has two young fellows travelling on an electrically propelled FASTER-THAN-LIGHT spacecraft to a planet about 1900 light years away, so that, after avoiding carnivorous plants, they can witness through a supertelescope the death and resurrection of Christ. [PN]Other works: A Pixie's Adventures in Humanland (1926). DELANEY, JOSEPH H(ENRY) (1932- ) US lawyer and writer, associated through most of his career with ASF, for which magazine he began publishing sf with "Brainchild" in 1982 ( APES AND CAVEMEN). He made considerable impact with his second story, "In the Face of My Enemy"(1983), which became part of his first solo novel, In the Face of my Enemy (fixup 1985), a SPACE OPERA featuring an immortal shape-changer. His first novel, Valentina: Soul in Sapphire (fixup 1984) with Marc STIEGLER, rather more grippingly depicts the efforts of the eponymous AI to gain memory space in networked mainframes across the world, and to prove her selfhood. Lords Temporal (1987) is a TIME-TRAVEL tale of some ingenuity. [JC]See also: COMPUTERS. DELANY, SAMUEL R(AY) (1942- ) US author and critic, one of the most influential and most discussed within the genre; he has taught at several universities from 1975, and from 1988 has been professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts. He has a somewhat mixed cultural background: he is Black, born and raised in Harlem, New York, and therefore familiar with the Black ghetto; but his father, a wealthy funeral-parlour proprietor, had the family brought up in privileged, upper-middle-class circumstances - SRD was educated at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science (although he left college after only one term). This double background is evident in all his writing.He became famous as one of the youthful prodigies of sf. Unusually, his first published sf was a novel, published when he was 20: The Jewels of Aptor (1962 dos; restored 1968; rev 1971 UK); the later versions restore the third of the book which had originally been excised at ACE BOOKS. This was followed by the The Fall of the Towers trilogy: Captives of the Flame (1963 dos; rev vt Out of the Dead City 1968 UK), The Towers of Toron (1964 dos; rev 1968 UK) and City of a Thousand Suns (1965; rev 1969 UK), all assembled as The Fall of the Towers (omni of rev texts 1970). Another early novel was The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965 dos; text corrected 1977).The early novels had certain similarities, and some of the themes initiated in them have recurred regularly in SRD's work. The plot structure is almost invariably that of a quest, or some form of FANTASTIC VOYAGE. Physically and psychologically damaged participants are common. An economical use of colourful detail, often initially surprising but logical when considered, is used to flesh out the social background of the stories. There is an interest in MYTHOLOGY, taking the form of metaphorical allusion to existing myths or of an investigation of the way new myths are formed; this is central to The Ballad of Beta-2, in which a student anthropologist investigates the facts behind a folk song garnered from a primitive Earth culture which has gone voyaging in a fleet of GENERATION STARSHIPS. This novel also shows an interest in problems of COMMUNICATIONS and LINGUISTICS which was to become central to SRD's work. The Fall of the Towers, too, is full of colourful cultural speculation, although its melodramatic story of war, mutations, mad computers and a malign cosmic intelligence is moderately conventional. The original three volumes of The Fall of the Towers were set in the same post- HOLOCAUST Earth as The Jewels of Aptor; however, the linking references were removed in the revised edition.SRD published two more novels in 1966: Empire Star (1966 dos; text corrected 1977) and BABEL-17 (1966; rev 1969 UK). Both, especially the latter, which won a NEBULA, reveal a notable advance in sophistication. BABEL-17, whose chapters carry epigraphs from the work of SRD's wife (1961-80), the poet Marilyn Hacker (1942- ), is about language, and has a poet heroine. In a future galactic society, radio broadcasts in an apparently alien language are received; they are thought to be connected with sabotage and alien invasion. Much of the novel is to do with cracking the language. SRD believes that our PERCEPTION of reality is partly formed by our languages; the invention of different societies in this novel, more intense and imaginative than his previous work, is mostly rendered in terms of thought- and speech-patterns.In 1967 he began publishing short stories also. Algis BUDRYS (Gal Jan 1969) called him "the best science-fiction writer in the world". He was generally seen as being in the forefront of the NEW WAVE, emphasizing cultural speculation, the soft sciences, psychology and mythology over technology and HARD SF. The short story "Aye, and Gomorrah . . ." (1967) won a Nebula, and the novelette "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" (1969) won both HUGO and Nebula. These two, with BABEL-17 and THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION, his other Nebula-winning novel, can be found in his The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction (omni 1986). It can be argued that THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (1967; 1 chapter restored 1968 UK) is his most satisfying work, along with the next novel, NOVA (1968; text corrected 1969) and the novella The Star Pit (1967; 1988 chap dos). The latter can be found in SRD's excellent first collection DRIFTGLASS (coll 1971) together with all of his best shorter work of the period. THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION is remarkably compressed and densely patterned with allusive imagery. Earth has lost its humans (how is never made clear) and their corporeal form has been taken on by a race of aliens who, in an attempt to make coherent sense of the human artefacts among which they live, take on human traditions, too. Avatars of Ringo Starr, Billy the Kid and Christ appear; the hero, a Black musician who plays tunes on his murderous machete, is Orpheus and Theseus. The book is a tour de force, though a cryptic one, since the bafflement of the protagonists trying to make sense of their transformed lives tends to transfer to the reader. SRD's own diaries provide part of the text of the novel. NOVA is the Prometheus story and the Grail story combined in an ebulliently inventive space opera/quest; the fire from the heavens, the glowing heart of the Grail, is found only at the heart of an exploding nova. Passages of high rhetoric are mingled (as they often are, too, in the work of SRD's contemporary Roger ZELAZNY) with relaxed slang and thieves' argot. The book features a characteristic SRD protagonist, thecriminal/outcast/musician/artist whose literary genealogy goes back through Jean Genet (1910-1986) all the way to Francois Villon (1431-1485). The variety of cultures in these and other novels by SRD has the effect of making morality and ethics seem relative, pluralistic. Divers forms of bizarre human behaviour, many of which would have been seen as antisocial in US society of the time, emerge as natural in the circumstances created. The Star Pit, too, is a highly structured work; its central image is that of ant-colony/cage/trap/micro-ecology, and escape is seen to be intimately linked with emotional mutilation, even psychosis.SRD's next novel - not sf, though with elements of the fantastic - was the pornographic The Tides of Lust (1973; vt Equinox 1994); the title was not his. (A second pornographic novel, Hogg, remains unpublished, though The Mad Man (1994), which continues in the same vein, has seen print.) It is likely to shock most readers in its evocation of extreme sado-masochism in imagery which is sometimes poetic and often disgusting - and so intended - perhaps as a Baudelairean ritual of passage. It was, indeed, in the mid-1970s that it became generally known that SRD was bisexual. Certainly, all his later work is deeply concerned with the cultural mechanisms - actual, theoretical and sometimes labyrinthine - of eroticism and love. Much light is thrown on the relationship between SRD's own sexuality and the sf he wrote in the 1960s by his much later book, The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village 1957-65 (1988; exp vt The Motion of Light in Water: East Village Sex and Science Fiction Writing: 1960-65; with The Column at the Market's Edge 1990 UK). This book, frank and priapic to the verge of the scabrous, won a Hugo for Best Non-Fiction.SRD's next two novels were DHALGREN (1975; 6th impression has many typographical errors rectified; text further corrected 1977) and Triton (1976). After a six-year gap in which SRD had published little or no sf, DHALGREN was controversial. It is very long, and his critics see it as perilously self-indulgent and flabby, lacking the old economy of effect. It became a bestseller, however, and other critics saw it as his most successfully ambitious work to date. An anonymous youth, the Kid, comes to the violent, nihilist city of Bellona, where order has fled and there are two moons in the sky, though the rest of the NEAR-FUTURE USA is apparently normal. He becomes an artist, couples and fights, and writes a book that might be DHALGREN before leaving the city. The opening sentence completes the unfinished final sentence and an enigmatic circle. It is a book primarily about the possibilities and difficulties of a youth culture, and partly about being a writer. Triton is more traditionally structured, but in some ways more sophisticated. It presents a series of future societies differentiated mainly along sexual lines; the male protagonist, who begins by displaying a rather insensitive, traditional machismo, ultimately chooses to become a woman, but remains alienated. Triton (a moon of Neptune) is an "ambiguous heterotopia" with a bewildering variety of available lifestyles. The book poses interesting questions about sexuality, and also about freedom of choice.Since then SRD has published one singleton novel, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984), and four books in the Neveryon series, which masquerades as SWORD-AND-SORCERY fantasy: Tales of Neveryon (coll of linked stories 1979; rev 1988); Neveryona (1983; rev 1989 UK); Flight from Neveryon (coll of linked stories 1985; rev 1989 UK) and The Bridge of Lost Desire (coll of linked stories 1987; rev vt Return to Neveryon 1989 UK). Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, the first volume of a projected diptych, is an exotic piece set in a galactic civilization. A complex narrative again asks questions about the arbitrary and parochial nature of our ethical expectations, using various forms of enjoyed degradation to make the point. It is probably SRD's most important work of the 1980s. The Neveryon books adopt a similar strategy of culture-building, and play both with and against the readers' expectations. They are, in fact, sf in the sense that they invent alien societies, though technically they are FANTASY, being set in a distant, fantastic, pre-industrial past, and to a degree act as both critique and re-creation of the Mighty-Thewed Barbarian genre. SRD's treatment of the idea of bondage, for example, is infinitely more sophisticated, and somewhat more elusive, than that of, say, John NORMAN in the Gor books. Many ideas are explored, from the erotic to the economic, the concept of slavery appearing in both these idea-sets, and the slave-collar itself coming to be the prime erotically charged symbol; the later volumes make clear reference to the AIDS epidemic. Though allusive, ambitious, self-reflexive, seriously intended books, they do return in style to something reminiscent of the wittier, more economic, more playful SRD of the 1960s, and are among the more accessible works of his past two decades.During the six-year hiatus (from about 1969) in his own fiction, SRD began to pay more attention to other people's. Much of the resulting critical and semiotic writing has been collected in four books: The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (coll 1977), The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch - Angouleme (1978), Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (coll 1984) and The Straits of Messina (coll 1989). Delany's criticism is often post-structuralist and to a degree POSTMODERNIST, very aware of a contemporary literary context that goes well beyond sf, sometimes very wordy, but important in its persistent attempt to describe sf in terms of the protocols required for reading it. As SRD said in his acceptance speech after receiving the 1985 PILGRIM AWARD for excellence in sf criticism, "We must learn to read science fiction as science fiction." The second of the four books, an analysis of the structure and images of the short story "Angouleme" (1971; later incorporated in 334 [fixup 1972]) by Thomas M. DISCH, is written with a spectacularly microscopic fastidiousness. The Straits of Messina collects mostly pieces by SRD that were originally published as by K. Leslie Steiner, a pseudonym he uses when writing about his own work. The first and third books, essays on the language of sf, are perhaps of the most general interest. A fifth critical book, Wagner/Artaud: A Play of 19th and 20th Century Critical Fictions (1988 chap), does not bear directly on sf; though a sixth, Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (coll 1994) contained material of genre interest; With Marilyn Hacker SRD edited a series of original anthologies, QUARK, preferring the term "speculative fiction" to "science fiction", and emphasizing experimental writing. There were 4 vols 1970-71.With hindsight it can be hypothesized that SRD has had different audiences at different points of his career: a very wide, traditional sf readership up to and including DHALGREN, which sold nearly a million copies in the USA alone; and a narrower, perhaps more intellectual, campus-based readership thereafter. There is no doubt that by the 1980s his fiction (and criticism) had become less accessible, and the real debate about his career must be whether or not he gained more than he lost with his adoption of a denser style towards the later 1970s. At this point his fiction also began to include more passages of obviously polemical intent, some of whose thrust, especially in their icons of abasement, did not carry conviction for all readers. But, though admirers of SRD's earlier work tend to be heavily polarized in their views of his later work, he by no means disappeared from popular notice. The first two volumes of the Neveryon series sold around quarter of a million each. Lower sales on subsequent editions may have been partly due to resistance in the publishing and book-distribution worlds to his increasingly and explicitly controversial texts. [PN]Other works: Empire: A Visual Novel (graph 1978), a GRAPHIC NOVEL written by SRD and executed by Howard V. CHAYKIN; Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1979), autobiographical, about life in a commune in New York; Distant Stars (coll 1981), which includes Empire Star and contains 3 stories not included in DRIFTGLASS; We in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line (1968 FSF; 1990 chap dos); They Fly at Ciron (fixup 1993), a text based on "They Fly at Ciron" (1971 FSF) with James SALLIS, plus other material by SRD alone, all thoroughly revised.As Editor: Nebula Award Winners 13 (anth 1980).About the author: The Delany Intersection: Samuel R. Delany Considered as a Writer of Semi-Precious Words (1977 chap) by George Edgar SLUSSER; Worlds out of Words: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany (1979) by Douglas BARBOUR; Samuel R. Delany: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, 1962-1979 (1980) by Michale W. Peplow and Robert S. Bravard; Samuel R. Delany (1982 chap) by J.B. Weedman; Samuel R. Delany (1985) by Seth MCEVOY.See also: ARTS; CHILDREN IN SF; CITIES; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; CYBERPUNK; CYBORGS; DEVOLUTION; FABULATION; FANTASY; FAR FUTURE; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GAMES AND SPORTS; GENETICENGINEERING; GOTHIC SF; HEROES; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE; MUSIC; MUTANTS; NEW WORLDS; OUTER PLANETS; PARANOIA; PSYCHOLOGY; SCIENCE FANTASY; SEX; SOCIOLOGY; SPACE OPERA; SPECULATIVE FICTION; UTOPIAS; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION. DELAP, RICHARD (1942-1987) US editor, reviewer and writer who entered the sf world as a fan and soon began to publish book reviews, beginning with pieces in the FANZINE Granfalloon and moving on to a column in AMAZING STORIES during the 1960s. In Delap's Fantasy and Science Fiction Review Magazine he created a valuable review organ, whose folding was regretted. He co-edited with Terry DOWLING and Gil Lamont The Essential Ellison (coll 1987). His first novel, Shapes (1987) with Walt LEE, is a horror tale about an extraterrestrial shape-changer. [JC] DELICATESSAN Film (1990). Constellation/UCG/Hachette Premiere with the collaboration of Sofinergie/Sofinergie 2/Investimage 2/Investimage 3. Directed and written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro; starring Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Karin Viard, Ticky Holgado, Anne-Marie Pisani, Jacques Mathou, Rufus. 99 mins. Colour.This French film is an ABSURDIST fable about life after the HOLOCAUST in a small, decrepit town. The setting is enclosed; little is intimated about life outside, or the nature of the apocalypse that must have occurred. The local butcher (Dreyfus) does not let his various eccentric tenants-one of whom builds gracefully cranky suicide machines - starve; he hires transients as handymen then kills them for the meat; but the new handyman, a one-time circus clown Louison (Pinon), is attractive to the butcher's short-sighted daughter (Dougnac).She intervenes, as do the local underground vegetarian terrorists, the Troglodists. The film is surreal, grotesque, but, given its subject matter, amazingly gentle and forgiving, and curiously accepting of the fact that society is running down completely and there seems no way, or even desire, to wind it up again. Owing much to French pop culture (its more intellect facets,including up-market comics like METAL HURLANT) this film soon became a cult favourite,overseas as well as in France. [PN] DeLILLO, DON (1936- ) US writer who very rapidly established a reputation for brilliance and seriousness. His fourth novel, Ratner's Star (1976), subjects its sf material - it examines the personal and cognitive cruces surrounding the decipherment of a message from the star of the title - to a formidable array of contemporary intellectual procedures, while presenting its numerous characters as in-depth portraits of the fundamental obsessions at the heart of contemporary US intellectual life. The book stands as a model (a rather humbling one for GENRE SF) of the extraordinary complexity of response that any genuine message from the stars would (it is reasonable to assume) elicit. Several DD novels - like Great Jones Street (1973) and White Noise (1985) - subject their protagonists to sf-like revelations of the nature of reality through psychotopic drugs and devices; and the game of terror played in The Names (1982) smacks of OULIPO. Throughout his career, DD has been an author of FABULATIONS, the burden of which has been to expose his characters to unbearable images of the world we live in. [JC]About the author: Introducing Don DeLillo (anth 1991) ed Frank Lentricchia. De LINT, CHARLES (HENRI DIEDERICK HOEFSMIT) (1951- ) Canadian musician and writer, born in the Netherlands, who established himself during the 1980s as a prolific FANTASY author and as a significant and original contributor to the subgenre of contemporary fantasy, beginning with "The Fane of the Grey Rose" in Swords Against Darkness IV (anth 1979) ed Andrew J. OFFUTT. Some of CDL's short work has appeared as by Tanuki Aki, Henri Cuiscard, Jan Penalurick, Cerin Songweaver and Wendelessen, and one horror novel, Angel of Darkness (1990 US), was as by Samuel M. Key. CDL's output (see list below), which is both various and polished, merits extended consideration; and the urban fantasy sequence centred on the imaginary city of Newford (which resembles Ottawa) is of interest, and includes Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair (1987 IASFM; 1991 chap US), The Stone Drum (1989 chap), Ghosts of Wind and Shadow (1990 chap), Paperjack (1991 chap US) and Our Lady of the Harbour (1991 chap US) all assembled with other work as Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection (omni 1993 US); Mr.Truepenny's Book Emporium and Gallery (1992 chap US), The Bone Woman (1992 chap), The Wishing Well (1993 chap US) and Coyote Stories (1993 chap), all assembled with other work as The Ivory and the Horn: A Newford Collection (omni 1995 US); and Memory and Dream (1994 US). But he is mentioned here primarily for his one sf novel, Svaha (1989 US), a NEAR-FUTURE tale set in enclaves established by high-tech Native Americans to fend off the barbarian world outside. A kind of sweetish simplicity sometimes overloads his fantasy tales, especially the earlier ones; it might be surmised that a writer of CDL's energy and ambition may increasingly find that genre-crossing provides him with a necessary stimulus and threat. [JC]Other works: The Oak King's Daughter (1979 chap), published, like several other short texts here listed, by CDL's own Triskell Press; The Moon is a Meadow (1980 chap); De Grijze Roose ["The Grey Rose"] (coll trans Johan Vanhecke et al. 1983 Netherlands); The Calendar of the Trees (1984 chap); Moonheart: A Romance (1984 US) and its sequels Ascian in Rose (1987 chap US), Westlin Wind (1989 chap US),Ghostwood (1990) and Merlin Dreams in Moondream Wood (1992 chap), all four sequels assembled as Spiritwalk (omni 1992 US); The Riddle of the Wren (1984 US); The Three Plushketeers and the Garden Slugs (1985 chap); A Pattern of Silver Strings (1981 chap), the first volume in the projected Legend of Cerin Songweaver sequence which continues withGlass Eyes and Cotton Strings (1982 chap), In Mask and Motley (1983 chap), Laughter in the Leaves (1984 chap), The Badger in the Bag (1985 chap), The Harp of the Grey Rose (1979 as "The Fane of The Gray Rose"; exp 1985 US), And the Rafters Were Ringing (1986 chap) and The Lark in the Morning (1987 chap); Mulengro: A Romany Tale (1985 US); Yarrow: An Autumn Tale (1986 US); The Lark in the Morning (1987 chap); Jack, the Giant-Killer: The Jack of Kinrowan: A Novel of Urban Faerie (1987 US); The Drowned Man's Reel (1988 chap); Greenmantle (1988 US); Wolf Moon (1988 US); a contribution to the SHARED-WORLD Borderland enterprise run by Terri WINDLING, Berlin * (1989 chap); two ties - Philip Jose Farmer's The Dungeon, #3: The Valley of Thunder * (1989 US) and #5: The Hidden City * (1990 US); The Fair in Emain Macha (1985 Space & Time #68; exp 1990 dos US); The Dreaming Place (1990 US); Drink Down the Moon: A Novel of Urban Faerie (1990 US); The Little Country (1991 US); Cafe Purgatorium (coll 1991 US) with stories, separately, by Dana Anderson and Ray Garton; Hedgework and Guessery (coll 1991 US); ; Into the Green (1993); The Wild WoodSee also: CANADA. de l'ISLE ADAM, VILLIERS [r] VILLIERS DE L'ISLE ADAM. DELIUS, ANTHONY (RONALD ST. MARTIN) (1916- ) South African poet who eventually moved to the UK. His SATIRE on South African POLITICS and apartheid, The Last Division (1959), sends a 1980s Union Parliament to a Hell and Devil closely resembling those in Wyndham LEWIS's The Childermass (1928), where they re-create, under their Premier's inspiration, the social system they left behind. The swingeing satirical power of this book-length poem is remarkable. Its views on South Africa's future contrast markedly with those expressed by Garry ALLIGHAM and are comparable with those of Arthur KEPPEL-JONES, though sharper. Less interestingly, The Day Natal Took Off (1963) depicts that state's secession from South Africa. [JC] DELL, DUDLEY [s] Horace L. GOLD. DEL MARTIA, ASTRON House name invented by publisher Stephen FRANCES for his own publishing house, and used there by John Russell FEARN on The Trembling World (1949). The name was then sold on to Gaywood Press, which used it for three more tales: Dawn of Darkness (1951 chap), Space Pirates (1951) and Interstellar Espionage (1952 chap). The latter story features a security officer called Dog who appears also in Spawn of Space (1951) by Franz Harkon, an unattributed pseudonym. A fifth ADM story was advertised but never published, although the name was revived by Frances in a reprint of his One Against Time (1954 as by Hank JANSON; 1969 as by ADM). [SH/PN] DELMONT, JOSEPH Pseudonym of German writer Karl Pick (1873-1935), whose Die Stadt unter dem Meer (1925; trans anon as The Submarine City 1930 UK) features the construction by U-boat crews of an UNDER-THE-SEA city from which it is intended to conquer the world. Some of the stories assembled in English as The Dead City (coll trans anon 1932 UK) are sf, as is Der Ritt auf dem Funken (1928; trans anon as Mistress of the Skies 1932 UK). The protagonists of The Rock in the Sea (trans 1934) - the German original has not been identified - discover unknown forms of life on a volcanic island which has risen from the sea. [JC] del PICCHIA, MENOTTI [r] LATIN AMERICA. DELRAY, CHESTER Francis G. RAYER. del REY, JUDY-LYNN (1943-1986) US editor. She began her career in 1965 with GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, becoming associate editor in 1969. Her predecessor was Lester DEL REY; they married in 1971. She moved to BALLANTINE BOOKS in 1973, bringing her husband in on the operation in 1974, and in 1977 was instrumental in forming the Del Rey imprint - named for her - of Ballantine (itself owned by Random House). As editor-in-chief of DEL REY BOOKS, she demonstrated an extraordinary gift for marketing sf and fantasy to an unprecedentedly large audience, and her releases often hit the US bestseller lists. At the time of her death, she had become the dominant figure in US sf and fantasy publishing. Given her physically taxing genetic disability - she was an achondroplastic dwarf, and frequently in pain - the range of her accomplishments in the driven world of New York publishing seemed all the more remarkable.J-LDR was also responsible for the STELLAR original anthology series: Stellar 1 (anth 1974), Stellar Short Novels (anth 1976), Stellar Science-Fiction Stories #2 (anth 1976), #3 (anth 1977), #4 (anth 1978), #5 (anth 1980), #6 (anth 1981) and #7 (anth 1981). [JC]See also: HUGO; PUBLISHING. del REY, LESTER Working name of US writer Ramon Felipe San Juan Mario Silvio Enrico Smith Heathcourt-Brace Sierra y Alvarez-del Rey y de los Verdes (1915-1993). His father was a poor sharecropper of part-Spanish extraction, and LDR's education proceeded in fits and starts before dwindling away after two years in college. After holding a variety of temporary jobs he began to write in the late 1930s, his first published work being "The Faithful" for ASF in 1938. This was rapidly followed by his classic ROBOT story, "Helen O'Loy" (1938). Many of his early stories are remarkable for their sentimentality, but the best was the unsentimental suspense story Nerves (1942 ASF; exp 1956; rev 1976), about an accident in a NUCLEAR-POWER plant and the struggle to avert a major catastrophe. He stepped up his output after becoming a full-time professional writer in 1950, but this was accompanied by a decline in average quality. He produced several juvenile novels, some as Philip St John (a name he first used in 1939). He wrote also as Erik van Lhin, John Alvarez, Marion Henry, Philip James, Charles SATTERFIELD and Edson MCCANN (the last two pseudonyms being used on collaborations with Frederik POHL, who also used Satterfield on some solo stories). LDR's most notable works of the 1950s and 1960s were: Preferred Risk (1955 with Pohl, writing together as McCann; reprinted 1980 as by Pohl and LDR); the ultra-tough novel of COLONIZATION Police Your Planet (1953 Science Fiction Adventures; cut 1956 as by Erik van Lhin; rev 1975 as by LDR and Erik van Lhin); and an early novel on the theme of OVERPOPULATION, The Eleventh Commandment (1962); rev 1970). The second of the short-lived "Galaxy Magabooks" ( GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS), The Sky is Falling/Badge of Infamy (1963 dos), featured revised versions of two magazine novellas: The Sky is Falling (1954 Beyond as "No More Stars" with Pohl, writing together as Charles Satterfield; rev 1963 for the Magabook; 1974 dos) and Badge of Infamy (1959 Satellite; rev 1963 for the Magabook; 1973 dos). Some novels which appeared under his name in 1966-8 were actually written, from LDR's extensive outlines, by Paul W. FAIRMAN; these include The Runaway Robot (1965), Rocket from Infinity (1966), The Infinite Worlds of Maybe (1966), The Scheme of Things (1966), Tunnel through Time (1966), Siege Perilous (1966; vt The Man without a Planet 1969) and Prisoners of Space (1968). His most recent solo novel was Pstalemate (1971), about the predicament of a man who discovers that he has PSI POWERS, in the knowledge that all psi-powered individuals go insane. Weeping May Tarry (1978), as by LDR with Raymond F. JONES, is a novel by Jones extrapolating the theme of LDR'S "For I Am a Jealous People" (Star Short Novels anth 1954 ed Frederik Pohl).From the late 1940s, as well as doing a considerable amount of writing, LDR was actively involved with various business and editorial projects. In the early 1950s he was editor of FANTASY MAGAZINE, ROCKET STORIES (under the house name Wade KAEMPFERT), SPACE SCIENCE FICTION and, for a time, SCIENCE FICTION ADVENTURES, leaving all these positions after a dispute in 1953. He edited an anthology of juvenile sf, The Year After Tomorrow (anth 1954) with Cecile Matschat and Carl Carmer, and one of the many series of The Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year - #1 (anth 1972), #2 (anth 1973), #3 (anth 1974), #4 (anth 1975) and #5 (anth 1976). He selected the GARLAND Library of Science Fiction reprint series (45 vols, all 1975) and compiled Fantastic Science Fiction Art (1975). After the death of P. Schuyler MILLER in 1974 he took over ASF's book-review column (he had previously written reviews for Rocket Stories under the pseudonym Kenneth Wright, and had done occasional reviews for other magazines under his own name, notably IF in 1968-73). His fourth wife, Judy-Lynn DEL REY (nee Benjamin), was for some time on the staff of Gal and its companions - where he served as features editor 1969-74 - and became sf editor for BALLANTINE BOOKS in the mid-1970s; LDR joined the company in 1977, when it began issuing its sf and fantasy lines under the imprint DEL REY BOOKS - named in honour of her - and he continued to operate these lines alone after his wife's death in 1986 until his retirement at the end of 1991. His history of sf, The World of Science Fiction: 1926-1976 - The History of a Subculture (1979), focuses narrowly on the US pulp tradition.LDR was a versatile but rather erratic writer who never fulfilled his early promise. His best work appears in the collections . . . And Some Were Human (coll 1948; with "Nerves" cut, rev vt Tales of Soaring Science Fiction from . . . And Some Were Human 1961) and Gods and Golems (coll 1973); much of this is reprinted in The Best of Lester del Rey (coll 1978). There is an interesting autobiographical commentary in The Early del Rey (coll 1975). LDR was given the NEBULA Grand Master award for 1990. [BS]Other works: Marooned on Mars (1952 juvenile); Rocket Jockey (1952 juvenile, as by Philip St John; vt Rocket Pilot UK; reprinted 1978 as by LDR); Attack from Atlantis (1953), a juvenile; Battle on Mercury (1953) as by Erik van Lhin, a juvenile; the Moon sequence of juvenile tales, comprising Step to the Stars (1954), Mission to the Moon (1956) and Moon of Mutiny (1961); Rockets to Nowhere (1954) as by Philip St John, a juvenile; Robots and Changelings (coll 1957); The Cave of Spears (1957); Day of the Giants (1950 Fantastic Adventures as "When the World Tottered"; 1959); Outpost of Jupiter (1963), a juvenile; Mortals and Monsters (coll 1965); The Best of Hal Clement (coll 1979), ed; Once Upon a Time: A Collection of Modern Fairy Tales (anth 1991) with Risa Kessler.About the author: "Lester del Rey" in Seekers of Tomorrow (1967) by Sam MOSKOWITZ.See also: ALIENS; ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; COSMOLOGY; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; DYSTOPIAS; ESP; EVOLUTION; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GAMES AND SPORTS; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; HUGO; MARS; MERCURY; MOON; MUTANTS; ORIGIN OF MAN; PREDICTION; PUBLISHING; RELIGION; SATIRE; SOCIAL DARWINISM; SPACESHIPS; VENUS. DEL REY BOOKS US paperback imprint, founded 1977, a subsidiary of BALLANTINE BOOKS, itself a part of Random House. The imprint was named by then-Ballantine editor Judy-Lynn DEL REY for her husband Lester DEL REY; the original Ballantine imprint is now little used for sf. Judy-Lynn, who died in 1986, was editor-in-chief and, from 1982, publisher; Lester, the very successful fantasy editor, retired from the company in 1991 at the age of 76. DRB is an sf/fantasy imprint, though it is in fantasy that it has had the majority of its commercial successes, which have been very substantial. Its fantasy authors, some of whom began their career with DRB, have included Piers ANTHONY, James P. BLAYLOCK, Terry Brooks, Stephen DONALDSON, David Eddings, Barbara HAMBLY and Katherine KURTZ. Its sf authors have included Arthur C. CLARKE, Anne MCCAFFREY, Larry NIVEN, Frederik POHL and Charles SHEFFIELD. DRB is an important sf/fantasy publisher in terms of big-selling books; it has also published a number of good books. The two categories overlap. [PN] DELUGE Film (1933). RKO. Dir Felix E. Feist, starring Sidney Blackmer, Peggy Shannon, Lois Wilson. Screenplay John Goodrich, Warren B. Duff, based on Deluge (1928) by S. Fowler WRIGHT. 70 mins. B/w.One of the first DISASTER movies, this is an impressive spectacle showing the destruction of New York by a series of earthquakes and tidal waves. There are good special effects by Ned Mann, who later designed and supervised the effects in THINGS TO COME (1936), but the survivors' melodramatic love story is disappointing, and less shocking than the one in the book. The disaster sequence was later used as stock footage, continuing to show up in other films for decades. [JB/PN] de MADARIAGA (Y ROJO), SALVADOR [r] Salvador de MADARIAGA. DeMARINIS, RICK (1934- ) US writer whose first novel, A Lovely Monster: The Adventures of Claude Rains and Dr Tellenbeck (1975), applies a sharply fabulistic eye ( FABULATION) to Southern California and to the FRANKENSTEIN myth. Scimitar (1977), set in a similar region, satirically anatomizes the panicky responses of an urban USA to the imploding NEAR FUTURE. Cinder (1978), contrastingly, celebrates an old man's last days, which he spends (in every sense) in the company of a genie, also ageing and also determined to seize the day. The stories assembled in Jack & Jill (coll 1979) hover at the edge of sf, as do some of the contents of both Under the Wheat (coll 1986) - notably the terrifying title story and "Weeds" - and The Coming Triumph of the Free World (coll 1988). RDM's later novels, The Burning Women of Far Cry (1986) and The Year of the Zinc Penny (1989), do not venture into the fantastic. [JC] DEMIJOHN, THOM Collaborative pseudonym of Thomas M. DISCH and John T. SLADEK on the first edition of their mystery novel (not sf) Black Alice (1968). The subsequent edition used their real names. De MILLE, JAMES (1833-1880) Canadian writer and academic, author of much signed fiction and an anonymous, posthumous, Antarctic UTOPIA, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), one of the best 19th-century lost-race ( LOST WORLDS) novels. The cylinder's contents describe a shipwreck survivor's discovery of a lost valley at the South Pole, where the climate is temperate, prehistoric animals wander about, and a Semitic people, the Kosekin, has evolved a kindly, cannibalistic society which values darkness, poverty and clement death. [JC]See also: CANADA. DEMOLITION MAN Film (1993). Silver Pictures/Warner Bros. Dir. Marco Brambilla; screenplay Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, Peter M. Lenkov, based on a story by Lenkov and Reneau; starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Bob Gunton and Denis Leary. 115 mins. Colour.In 1997 Los Angeles, macho cop John Spartan (Stallone)-nicknamed "the demolition man"- is framed by his most recent arrestee, malicious supercriminal Simon Phoenix (Snipes), for the inadvertent manslaughter of a large group of hostages. Policeman and criminal are both sentenced to a cryoprison where they are frozen, and their frozen brains, in theory at least, are subjected to rehabilitation programs. About 35 years later an obviously unrehabilitated Phoenix is woken up for a parole hearing, escapes (through mysteriously knowing the code word that will unshackle him), and commits a series of murders in the peaceful utopia that Los Angeles, now San Angeles, has apparently become. Spartan is also brought back to life, by the meek and spineless future police force that can't cope with actual homicide. Spartan quickly discovers that Phoenix has been deliberately released by Cocteau (Hawthorne), the much loved dictator of this utopia, in order brutally to dispose of those rebels against the peace-and-love regime who eke out a life in the sewers. Spartan triumphs, and in so doing proves to be the mediator between the false tranquillity of the "eloi" style utopia (see H.G. WELLS), and the all too human grunge of the (rather handsome) morlocks.This is a strange blend of mildly sophisticated comedy, mainly satire at the expense of Californian new-age utopianism, and straightforward shoot-em-up action adventure. Screenwriter Waters was previously responsible for the black comedy Heathers (1989), and most of the often amusing if tasteless jokes (like a machine-mediated orgasm sequence, one of many borrowings from SLEEPER, 1973) are presumably his. But unlike The Last Action Hero, a Schwarzenegger action FANTASY also made in 1993, this is no thoroughgoing deconstruction of the action movie, despite Stallone taking to knitting. Indeed, the film is disappointing in its refusal to take future utopian possibilities even remotely seriously, and in its easy assumption, familiar in LIBERTARIAN philosophy, that any attempt to channel or remove human violence will result in a doomed and static civilisation. The film's moral is that social engineering must always be evil, and it takes a tough cop to prove it. [PN] DEMON Film. GOD TOLD ME TO. DEMONS GODS AND DEMONS; MAGIC; SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. DEMON SEED Film (1977). MGM. Dir Donald Cammell, starring Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerrit Graham, Berry Kroeger. Screenplay Robert Jaffe, Roger O. Hirson, based on Demon Seed (1973) by Dean R. KOONTZ. 95 mins. Colour.When the supercomputer Proteus IV is switched on it refuses to obey instructions, in the time-honoured tradition (for examples COLOSSUS, THE FORBIN PROJECT; 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY). All its terminals are shut down with the inadvertent exception of one, located in its creator's own automated home, which also contains a primitive one-armed robot and the scientist's estranged wife. The COMPUTER takes control of the house, trapping the woman inside and subjecting her to a terrifying (and calculatedly fetishistic) ordeal culminating in its raping her in order to create a new super-race melding human and MACHINE. This up-to-date Luddite variation of the FRANKENSTEIN theme, more HORROR than sf, can perhaps be admired for its bravado in putting its tasteless subtext up there on the surface where everyone can see it. There is indeed a baby. [JB/PN]See also: PARANOIA. DEMONS OF THE SWAMP Roger CORMAN. De MORGAN, JOHN (1848-c1920) US writer of fantastic fiction, miscellaneous works and dime novels; said to have been of UK birth. He drew very heavily on the work of H. Rider HAGGARD for models and sources. His adult fantastic fiction included: He (1887), involving a search for Kallikrates, an immortal who lives on Easter Island; "It" (1887), with characters from King Solomon's Mines (1886) like Allan Quatermain, describing further adventures in East Africa seeking the immortal woman, culminating in the discovery of the Missing Link and a clear statement about mutations; and King Solomon's Treasures (1887), which invokes a surviving pterodactyl and the immortal Macrobi. These works embodied an impressive background of accurate classical and ethnographic data. King Solomon's Wives (1887) as by Hyder Ragged, sometimes erroneously attributed to JDM, was written by UK legal scholar Sir Henry Chartres Biron (1863-1940).JDM later became a staff writer for Norman L. Munro ( DIME-NOVEL SF) and wrote conventional dime novels. The Strange Adventures of Two New York Boys in the Realm of the Polar North (1890) describes a lost race ( LOST WORLDS) of Old Norse near the North Pole, while Into the Maelstrom (1894) is concerned with a UTOPIAN society (without crime or evil passions) in a cave world filled with breathable water under the Maelstrom. In Unknown Worlds (1896), In Search of the Gold of Ophir (1899) and Bringing Home the Gold (1899) all deal with Missing Links. [EFB] DEMPSEY, HANK [s] Harry HARRISON. DENMARK Although one cannot really speak of a Danish sf tradition prior to the 1950s, quite a few Danish authors did write occasional sf works before then. The first such book was Ludvig HOLBERG's Nicolai Klimii iter Subterraneum (1741 in Latin; trans as A Journey to the World Underground by Nicolas Klimius 1742; reprinted 1974), which was among the earliest works in any language to feature a journey inside a HOLLOW EARTH. The 18th century saw a few other satirical and fantastical sf-like works, such as the play Anno 7603 ["The Year 7603"] (1785), a gender-reversal SATIRE, by Johan Hermann Wessel (1742-1785).The early 19th century saw little Danish sf and fantasy, although Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), in addition to his fantasies, wrote a few sf stories, most notably"Om Aartusinder"(1853; trans as"In a Thousand Years" in The Hans Andersen Library 1869). With the arrival of a new rationalism around 1870, the ground was laid for renewed activity in sf, but not much was actually published. A very interesting work from this time is Vilhelm Bergsoe's novella "En reise med Flyvefisken 'Prometheus'" ["A Journey on the Flying Fish 'Prometheus'"] (1869), which tells of a transatlantic journey on a vessel which alternately flies above the water and dives beneath the surface. Authors who worked with UTOPIAN themes included C.F. Sibbern with Meddelelser af Indholdet af et skrift fra Aaret 2135 ["Report on the Content of Papers from the Year 2135"] (2 vols, 1858 and 1872) and Otto Moller with Guld og AEre ["Gold and Honour"] (1900).The early 20th century saw a number of action-oriented juveniles, chiefly from Niels Meyn (1891-1957), who wrote racist and imperialistic SPACE OPERAS in imitation of Hans Dominik ( GERMANY) and various US authors. Satire and social criticism, mostly of a conservative bent, were produced by other contemporary authors, such as Aage Heinberg with Himmelstormerne ["Young Titans"] (1919).After WWII and Hiroshima, Danish literature reflected a mixture of fear and enthusiasm towards technology. This, together with the growing US cultural and economic dominance, made for a new trend in Danish sf. Chief among its practitioners was Niels E. Nielsen (1924- ), whose sf debut was in 1952 and who has since written about 40 sf novels. He began as an imitator of Ray BRADBURY, and still harbours a cautious attitude towards TECHNOLOGY, his books usually warning against humankind's usurpation of the powers of the Creator. Among his motifs are nuclear and ecological catastrophe; as early as 1970 he wrote a novel about GENETIC ENGINEERING, Herskerne ["The Rulers"] (1970).The 1960s saw increased interest in sf as a result of two principal factors: one was the enthusiasm generated by the US space programme, the other the indefatigable Jannick Storm (1939- ), who, as editor and translator, introduced a lot of US, UK and Scandinavian sf. Storm was a proponent of the NEW WAVE but also introduced such "classical" writers as Isaac ASIMOV, James BLISH and Frederik POHL.From the late 1960s onwards this increased interest in the genre led to a number of Danish authors writing occasional sf books. These may be grouped in several ways. Chiefly inspired by the New Wave and COMICS, the "flower children" of the late 1960s saw sf as a new way of telling wondrous tales, as with Knud Holten in Suma-X (1969). The realists, on the other hand, saw in sf a continuation of realism by other means and created NEAR-FUTURE scenarios; examples are Anders BODELSEN's Frysepunktet (1969; trans as Freezing Point 1971; vt Freezing Down) and Henrik STANGERUP's Manden der ville vaere skyldig (1973; trans as The Man who Wanted to be Guilty 1982). Experimental modernists took from the genre part of its inventory and used it for other purposes, as in Liget og Lysten ["Corpse and Desire"] (1968) by Svendge Madsen, which contains sf elements without really being sf. Occultists and ufologists published a number of sf works, best among them being Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff's Anno Domini (1975) and Gud ["God"] (1976). Finally, politically conscious writers used near-future scenarios to debate POLLUTION and NUCLEAR POWER. One author who has managed this without his fiction suffering from the politics is Jorgen Lindgreen, whose Atomer pa Naesset ["Nuclear Plant on the Promontory"] (1975) is an effective TECHNOTHRILLER. In the late 1970s and early 1980s a rather disparate group of WOMEN SF WRITERS appeared, ranging from the modernist Dorrit Willumsen, with Programmeret ti kaerlighed ["Programmed for Love"] (1981), to the utopianist Vibeke Gronfeldt, with Det fantastike barn ["The Fantastic Child"] (1982).With two exceptions, the authors mentioned above do not consider themselves sf writers, and nor has any of them written more than a single recognizably sf work. Those exceptions - the writers who really know sf - are Bodelsen and Madsen: Bodelsen has published a number of sf short stories, and Madsen has developed his own unique kind of sf with such works as Tugt og utugt i mellemtiden ["Virtue and Depravity in the Middle Period"] (1976), Se dagens lys ["Face the Light of Dawn"] (1980) and Lad tiden ga ["Let Time Flow"] (1985). Later, Inge Eriksen joined them with a very ambitious tetralogy, Rummet uden tid ["Space without Time"] (1983-9). If a distinctly Danish sf is to develop, it will have to build upon the works of these three. [ND] DENMARK, HARRISON [s] Roger ZELAZNY. DENNIS, BRUCE [s] David Wright O'BRIEN. DENNIS, GEOFFREY (POMEROY) (1892-1963) UK writer whose Harvest in Poland (1925; rev 1931) deals with augurs of a grim future for Europe in supernatural terms. The End of the World (1930), despite its sf title, is a nonfiction discourse on the ways in which the world might in fact end. It has been suggested by Brian M. STABLEFORD that GD may have also written under the name Guy DENT. [JC] DENNIS, NIGEL (FORBES) (1912-1989) UK writer whose second novel, Cards of Identity (1955), is a FABULATION about a post-WWII England whose citizens are so bereft of security that any identity can be imposed on anyone (see also PARANOIA); the final section, entitled "The Prince of Antioch, or An Old Way to New Identity", constitutes an entire (and entirely fraudulent) Shakespeare play, hilariously couched. In A House in Order (1966) identity is again imperilled as the protagonist, under increasingly surreal assault, attempts to act as though WWIII were not happening around him. [JC] DENT, GUY (? - ) Pseudonymous UK writer whose one original contribution to sf, Emperor of the If (1926), describes two of the possible universes created by a disembodied brain in a laboratory. In the first part the past is superimposed on the present, with vivid descriptions of London being overrun by prehistoric flora and fauna; in the second the locale is a future DYSTOPIA where humans exist under the domination of self-reproducing MACHINES. It has been suggested by Brian M. STABLEFORD that GD was in fact Geoffrey DENNIS. [JE]See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS; EVOLUTION; FAR FUTURE; SUPERMAN. DENT, LESTER (1905-1959) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Pirate Cay" for Top Notch Magazine in 1929; best known for his Doc Savage novels, which he wrote for DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE under the house name Kenneth ROBESON (which see for details); LD wrote all but 43 of the 181 issues. He also wrote stories under his own name and other crime stories under the pseudonym Tim Ryan. Lester Dent, the Man Behind Doc Savage (1974) is a study by Robert E. WEINBERG; information about LD and about his work appears also in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) by Philip Jose FARMER. The most complete study is Bigger than Life: The Creator of Doc Savage (1990) by Marilyn Cannaday. LD was famous in PULP-MAGAZINE circles for his Master Plot: the action-suspense formula he claimed never failed. His prose was described by James STERANKO as "bravura frenzy". [PN/JC] DENTINGER, STEPHEN [s] Edward D. HOCH. DENTON, BRADLEY (CLAYTON) (1958- ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Music of the Spheres" in FSF in 1984, and who caused some impact in the field with his first novel, Wrack and Roll (1986), a contemporary ALTERNATE-WORLD tale which portrays heavy-metal musicians as the HEROES they might dream of being in a world absolutely divided between the "straight" majority and the anti-authoritarian "wrackers", who are defined by their MUSIC. BD displays an impressive feel for the sustaining myths of heavy metal in his depiction of the wrackers, whose random violence and passion for life are set against the sterility and genocidal tendencies of the straight world as nuclear war approaches. BUDDY HOLLY IS ALIVE AND WELL ON GANYMEDE (1991) deploys the same range of knowledge with more feeling, deeper nostalgia, and an improved control of narrative; and Blackburn (1993), a horror novel featuring a serial killer with whom it is possible to empathize (though not to defend), is a maturely controlled fable of America. BD's short stories are generally contemporary fantasies with a moral twist, like the 1988 title story of The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians(coll 1994) in 2 vols, a fable which attacks the sterile blindness of many Christian conceptions of heaven. [NT] de PEDROLO, MANUEL [r] SPAIN. De POLNAY, PETER (1906-1984) Hungarian-born writer, in the UK from before WWII. Of his very many novels, only The Stuffed Dog (1977), a TIME-TRAVEL tale, is of genre interest. [JC] De REYNA, JORGE Diane DETZER. DERLETH, AUGUST W(ILLIAM) (1909-1971) US writer and editor, born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, where he spent his life. A correspondent with and devout admirer of H.P. LOVECRAFT, he devoted much of his life to projects aimed at preserving Lovecraft's memory. The most important of these projects was of course the founding, with Donald WANDREI, of the publishing company ARKHAM HOUSE in Sauk City in order to publish Lovecraft's stories; Wandrei later resigned his interest, but AWD carried on until his death, publishing a wide range of weird fiction, including some of his own otherwise very widely published work. He completed a number of unfinished Lovecraft stories and fragments: The Lurker at the Threshold (1945), The Survivor and Others (coll 1957) and The Watchers Out of Time and Others (coll 1974). In addition, he wrote two volumes of Lovecraft pastiches, The Mask of Cthulhu (coll 1958) and The Trail of Cthulhu (coll 1962), and edited anthologies of such stories by various writers like The Shuttered Room, and Other Pieces (anth 1959) - a title not to be confused with either of the Lovecraft collections likewise entitled (one 1970 UK and one 1971 US, contents differing) - Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (anth 1969; vt in 2 vols as Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos #1 1971 and #2) 1971). AWD edited Lovecraft's writings for publication, including his letters (in collaboration with Wandrei) and The Dark Brotherhood, and Other Pieces (anth 1966) - a coll of Lovecraft stories, solo and in collaboration - and also wrote H.P.L.: A Memoir (1945) and Some Notes on H.P. Lovecraft (1959 chap).But AWD's literary activities were by no means dominated by his interest in Lovecraft. He was a prolific and successful writer of regional novels, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship for this work, and of detective fiction, starting with Murder Stalks the Wakely Family (1934; vt Death Stalks the Wakely Family 1937 UK); he published a series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches about the character Solar Pons, beginning with "In Re: Sherlock Holmes" - The Adventures of Solar Pons (coll 1945; vt Regarding Sherlock Holmes 1974; vt The Adventures of Solar Pons 1975 UK). His very first story, however - "Bat's Belfry" for Weird Tales in 1926 - was of genre interest, and he remained for many years a prolific contributor to WEIRD TALES, mainly under his own name and the pseudonym Stephen Grendon, and to other magazines, including STRANGE STORIES (where he used the name Tally Mason). His best work was assembled in Someone in the Dark (coll 1941), Something Near (coll 1945), Not Long for This World (coll 1948; with 11 stories cut, vt Tales from Not Long for This World 1961), Lonesome Places (coll 1962), Mr George and Other Odd Persons (coll 1963 as Stephen Grendon; 1964 as AWD; vt When Graveyards Yawn 1965 UK as AWD), Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People (coll 1966) with the US critic and writer Mark Schorer (1908-1977), and Dwellers in Darkness (coll 1976). He wrote little sf, but his Tex Harrigan series was about a newspaperman constantly running across zany sf inventions and the like; it was included in Harrigan's File (coll 1975).AWD edited a great many anthologies, both sf and weird. His sf anthologies include several large volumes: Strange Ports of Call (anth 1948; much cut 1958), The Other Side of the Moon (anth 1949; cut 1956 UK; much cut 1959 US) and Beyond Time and Space (anth 1950; much cut 1958). His weird anthologies include Sleep No More (anth 1944; cut 1964 UK; much cut vt Stories From Sleep No More 1967 US), Who Knocks? (anth 1946; much cut 1964 UK) and The Sleeping & the Dead (anth 1947; vt in 2 vols as The Sleeping and the Dead 1964 UK and The Unquiet Grave 1964 UK). AWD was one of the pioneering anthologists in the genre.The history of Arkham House was chronicled in AWD's Arkham House: The First 20 Years (1959 chap) and Thirty Years of Arkham House, 1939-1969: A History and Bibliography (1970 chap). In 1948-9 the company published a magazine, ARKHAM SAMPLER, ed AWD. Competent and literate and highly energetic, AWD was the central figure in bringing lasting popularity to Lovecraft and to other authors such as Clark Ashton SMITH. His own extremely various output awaits comprehensive appraisal. [MJE]Other works: 100 Books by August Derleth (1962), nonfiction; The Beast in Holger's Woods (1968).As Editor: The Night Side (anth 1947); Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre (anth 1947); Far Boundaries (anth 1951; cut 1967); The Outer Reaches (anth 1951; cut 1958; vt in 2 vols as The Outer Reaches 1963 UK and The Time of Infinity 1963 UK); Night's Yawning Peal (anth 1952; much cut 1974); Beachheads in Space (anth 1952; cut 1954 UK; cut 1957 US; with 1 story cut, vt in 2 vols as Beachheads in Space 1964 UK and From Other Worlds 1964 UK); Worlds of Tomorrow (anth 1953; cut 1954 UK; cut 1958 US; vt in 2 vols as Worlds of Tomorrow 1963 UK and New Worlds for Old 1963 UK); Time to Come (anth 1954; cut 1959); Portals of Tomorrow (anth 1954); Fire and Sleet and Candlelight (anth 1961), poetry; Dark Mind, Dark Heart (anth 1962); When Evil Wakes (anth 1963 UK); Over the Edge (anth 1964); Travelers by Night (anth 1967); Dark Things (anth 1971).About the author: August Derleth: A Bibliography (1983) by Alison M. Wilson.See also: PUBLISHING; SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS. DERNIER COMBAT, LE (vt The Last Battle) Film (1983). Films du Loup. Dir Luc Besson, starring Pierre Jolivet, Jean Bouise, Jean Reno. Screenplay Besson, Jolivet. 92 mins. B/w.Made by Besson (later one of the best-known French directors of his generation) when only 23, the arty but vigorous LDC is low-budget and photographed in black-and-white Cinemascope, and has no dialogue at all. A young man (Jolivet) in an unspeaking post- HOLOCAUST world - holocaust and speechlessness remain unexplained - flies in a restored plane, meets an old doctor, matures, fights a swordsman, conquers a tribal leader and gets a girl. A dwarf lives in a locked car trunk; the tops of high-rise buildings project from the sand; fish fall from the sky; Samurai lurch and scuttle; women are imprisoned. [PN] De ROUEN, REED R(ANDOLPH) (1917-1986) US writer of half Native American (Oneida) extraction. His sf novel Split Image (1955 UK) mixes SPACE OPERA and speculation on POLITICS and RELIGION in its story of a space flight culminating in a landing on an exact duplicate of Earth. [PN/JC] DESART, THE EARL OF Working name of UK writer W.U.O'C. Cuffe (1845-1898), whose The Raid of the "Detrimental" (1897) describes a LOST WORLD in the South Atlantic transformed by its UK inhabitants into an advanced UTOPIA. [JC] DESMOND, SHAW (1877-1960) Irish novelist, poet, founder of the International Institute for Psychical Research (1934), and author of many works on the afterlife and several sf novels. Democracy (1919) predicts a revolution in the UK. The DYSTOPIAN Ragnarok (1926) envisages the destruction of civilization through a world WAR fought by armies equipped with radio-controlled planes and poisonous gases, the narrative concentrating on the derring-do of futuristic fighter pilots. His pessimism continued in Chaos (1938), which prophesies a future war between the UK and Germany. World-Birth (1938), possibly stimulated by the works of Olaf STAPLEDON, describes the troubled future history of mankind and the eventual development of an ideal state. This concluding optimism surfaces again in Black Dawn (1944), where world peace is the dream. His earlier works include two fantasies: Echo (1927) is a memory of past incarnation ( REINCARNATION) and Gods (1921) centres on industrial exploitation. Tales of the Little Sisters Of Saint Francis (coll 1929) includes some fantasy. [JE]See also: WEAPONS. DESTINATION MOON Up until the 1950s, science fiction films were few and far between. Destination Moon changed all that. Based on Robert Heinlein's successful book, Rocket Ship Galileo, Destination Moon started a major sci-fi movie boom.But unlike many of the creature features that followed, this film was relatively accurate. This was probably because the screenplay was written by Heinlein himself, and he and German rocket expert Hermann Oberth were technical advisors.The only thing that the team got wrong was not a scientific error. In the screenplay for Destination Moon, the moon project was paid for by private enterprise. Taxpayer dollars for space programs was a thing of the future. DESTINATION MOON Film (1950). A George Pal Production/Eagle-Lion. Dir Irving Pichel, starring John Archer, Warner Anderson, Dick Wesson, Tom Powers. Screenplay Robert A. HEINLEIN, "Rip" Van Ronkel, James O'Hanlon, based loosely on Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) by Heinlein. 92 mins. Colour.DM, the first of George PAL's many sf productions, has great historical importance: its commercial success initiated the sf film boom of the 1950s after a decade that had contained almost no sf CINEMA at all. It has interest in hindsight, too, in the partial accuracy with which it anticipated the actual Moon landing of 1969. To this day, DM stands as a film obviously made by people who knew about science: along with the German rocket expert Hermann Oberth (1894-1989), Heinlein himself acted as technical advisor. The special effects are relatively convincing: astronomical artist Chesley BONESTELL provided the backgrounds for the scenes on the Moon, working with art director Ernst Fegte. The film's biggest predictive error was political, not scientific: it predicted that the first Moon landing, described as "the greatest challenge ever hurled at American industry", would be a truly capitalist affair conducted by private enterprise. DM is an austere film, semidocumentary in nature and, aside from a sequence about fuel shortage near the end, rather placid and unexciting. But, despite its colourless script and its low-key performances (except for some ill judged comic relief from the blue-collar radio operator, played by Wesson), DM is a film with considerable dignity and, in a quiet way, a genuine SENSE OF WONDER. Its final message - THIS IS THE END OF THE BEGINNING in big block letters - can be seen, in retrospect, as an entirely justified claim. [PN]See also: MOON; ROCKETS; SPACE FLIGHT. DESTINATION MOONBASE-ALPHA SPACE 1999. DESTINATION SATURN BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY. DESTINIES US "magazine" in paperback-book format published by ACE BOOKS, ed James BAEN, 11 issues, Nov 1978-Aug 1981, last issue undated. The list of contributors to all sections of the magazine - which could equally be thought of as an original- ANTHOLOGY series - was impressive. Book reviews were by Spider ROBINSON, with Orson Scott CARD and Norman SPINRAD taking over from #6. Science-fact articles came from Jerry POURNELLE, among others, and included a five-part series by Poul ANDERSON on the interaction between sf and science. The fiction was mainly short stories and novelettes, many from well known authors like Gregory BENFORD, Card, Larry NIVEN (with Pournelle), Clifford D. SIMAK and Roger ZELAZNY. "Lost Dorsai" by Gordon R. DICKSON won the 1981 HUGO for Best Novella. The emphasis was on HARD SF. The series died when Baen left Ace. However, some time after Baen formed his publishing company Baen Books in 1983, and having published a very similar paperback magazine series, FAR FRONTIERS (1985-6), he resuscitated Destinies as New Destinies, beginning with New Destinies, Vol I: Spring 1987 ed Baen, apparently current (1992) though irregular, with 8 issues up to New Destinies Vol IX (anth 1990); there was no New Destinies Vol V. The mixture was, as before, of scientific articles and hard-sf stories by authors like Dean ING, Spider Robinson, Charles SHEFFIELD and Harry TURTLEDOVE, as well as pieces from several of the contributors to the original Destinies. [RR/PN] DESTROY ALL MONSTERS GOJIRA; RADON. DESTROY ALL PLANETS DAIKAIJU GAMERA. De TARDE, JEAN GABRIEL [r] Gabriel TARDE. DETECTIVES CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. De TIMMS, GRAEME A probable pseudonym. GDT's pulp-style paperback sf novels are Three Quarters (1963) and Split (1963). [JC] DETZER, DIANE Working name used by US writer Diane Detzer de Reyna (1930- ) for some of her sf, though she has also published much material as Adam Lukens, and some as Jorge de Reyna. She began publishing sf with "The Tomb" for Science Fiction Stories in 1958, and soon released a number of novels, from The Sea People (1959) to Eevalu (1963), as Adam Lukens. These are varied in subject matter but are generally routine SPACE OPERA. As Jorge de Reyna she published The Return of the Starships (1968), and under her own name The Planet of Fear (1968). [JC]Other works as Adam Lukens: Conquest of Life (1960); Sons of the Wolf (1961); The Glass Cage (1962); The World Within (1962); Alien World (1963). DEVER, JOE [r] Paul BARNETT; GAMES AND TOYS. DEVEREUX, EVE Paul BARNETT. De VET, CHARLES V(INCENT) (1911- ) US writer, mostly of short stories, of which he has written over 50 for sf magazines, beginning with "The Unexpected Weapon" for AMZ in 1950. In his first sf novel, Cosmic Checkmate (1958 ASF as "The Second Game"; exp 1962 chap dos; exp vt Second Game 1981) with Katherine MACLEAN, an Earthman is sent to investigate a hostile planet whose inhabitants' social advancement depends on proficiency at the national chess-like game ( GAMES AND SPORTS). His second novel, Special Feature (1958 ASF; exp 1975), rather flatly depicts media involvement in the filming of the depredations of an ALIEN monster in St Louis. After some years of silence, CVDV became active once again in the late 1980s. [JC] DEVIL-DOLL, THE Film (1936). MGM. Dir Tod Browning, starring Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Lawton. Screenplay Browning, Garrett Fort, S. Guy ENDORE, Erich von Stroheim, based on Burn, Witch, Burn! (1933) by A. MERRITT and "The Witch of Timbuctoo" by Browning. 79 mins. B/w.In this film by the director of Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932) a man (Barrymore) wrongly convicted and sent to Devil's Island returns to Paris, where he uses miniaturized people for revenge. He disguises himself as an old-lady toymaker and sends his 6in (15cm) humans as toys to the homes of his enemies; in the middle of the night the "toys" come to life and carry out his telepathic instructions. The illusion of miniaturization is perfectly created by the use of giant sets and skilfully executed travelling mattes - the work of the MGM special-effects department, then headed by A. Arnold Gillespie. Though the original novel used alchemy for miniaturization, this uses a supposedly scientific electrical device. [JB/PN] DEVLIN, ROY P. [s] Thomas P. KELLEY. DEVOLUTION Sf is usually an optimistic genre, and stories of EVOLUTION on the whole envisage humanity as slowly progressing to higher states. However, a persistent pessimistic note in GENRE SF generally, and to a degree in mainstream sf too, has been to imagine the opposite, the devolution or degeneration of mankind. The note was sounded most famously in H.G. WELLS's THE TIME MACHINE (1895), in which humankind evolves into two races, one physically degenerate, the other with few mental resources. At the end of the book humankind is gone, the Sun is cooling, and a solitary football-shaped creature is seen flopping in the last shallow sea. In George Allan ENGLAND's Darkness and Dawn (1914) a couple wake after SUSPENDED ANIMATION to find a desolate Earth peopled by subhuman descendants of the survivors of a natural DISASTER. The rhetoric is lurid. To this day, stories of the HOLOCAUST AND AFTER are often peopled by tribal savages and monstrous MUTANTS, though here the devolution tends to be social rather than biological in emphasis, as in Russell HOBAN's RIDDLEY WALKER (1980), which is unusual in its foregrounding of a devolved (but vivid) language ( LINGUISTICS). The possibility of biological devolution was mooted in pseudo-scientific circles a good deal in the early part of the century - it was a favourite notion of the Nazis - and H.P. LOVECRAFT often saw the adherents of his various disgusting cults as devolved into froglike or apelike creatures. The idea that humanity could revert to apedom was almost a CLICHE of pulp sf; it is central to, for example, The Iron Star (1930) by John TAINE, in which rays from a meteor are the mutagenic agent. La planete des singes (1963; trans as Planet of the Apes 1963 US; vt Monkey Planet 1964 UK) by Pierre BOULLE, filmed as PLANET OF THE APES (1968), put a later slant on the theme for satirical purposes by having the evolution of apes paralleled by the devolution of humans. The hero of Edmond HAMILTON's "The Man who Evolved" (1931) regresses finally to a blob. Hamilton enjoyed the cosmic pointlessness suggested by ideas of devolution, and often used the theme. On a more serious level, the idea comes up several times in LAST AND FIRST MEN (1930) by Olaf STAPLEDON, in which the upwards progression of the evolutionary thrust is several times interrupted by devolutionary sequences, rather like someone climbing a slippery hill and occasionally backsliding.Paddy CHAYEFSKY's Altered States (1978) gives a new twist to the idea in its interesting if absurd notion that altered states of consciousness (as in a sensory-deprivation tank) may lead to instant alteration of the way our genetic heritage is manifest, our oldest DNA finding bodily expression to produce, in this case, first an apeman and later a blob. This was filmed as ALTERED STATES (1980). Chayefsky admits that his inspiration was Robert Louis STEVENSON's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), a novel whose protagonist, after experimenting with chemicals, alternates between two states: the highly evolved doctor and the amoral, bestial Hyde. In Stevenson's book what is a subtext in most earlier devolution stories is almost overt: that devolution is a metaphorical equivalent of the Fall of Man.Social devolution was always a popular theme in genre sf, partly because it gave writers a chance to exploit colourful primitive societies and partly in deference to the cyclic view of HISTORY popularized by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975). The theme is also common in stories of GALACTIC EMPIRES, where commonly a social breakdown at the centre leads to cultural devolution on the fringes, much as in the Roman Empire. This is the theme of Isaac ASIMOV's Foundation trilogy.The theme of ENTROPY became popular in the 1960s, and with it came a new lease of life for devolution stories. Evolution ever upwards is an example of negentropy, or reverse entropy, and is counter to the general running-down of the cosmos, which in obedience to the laws of thermodynamics moves towards ever decreasing order, ever increasing randomness. (The pessimism of the 1950s and 1960s probably had more to do with the Vietnam War and problems of OVERPOPULATION and starvation than with any revelation from physics, but entropy provided a convenient metaphor for all this.) 1960s writers often envisaged increasing disorder in terms of biological devolution. The theme was touched on by Samuel R. DELANY in The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965), but an earlier and more substantial work was The Long Afternoon of Earth (1962 US; exp vt Hothouse 1962 UK) by Brian W. ALDISS, in which a devolved and jungle-like Earth, whose shrunken humans have taken to the trees again, is given a kind of weird charm; life continues fecund even while INTELLIGENCE is lost and the Galaxy subsides towards its heat-death.Devolution occurs in the work of other writers of FABULATIONS and NEW-WAVE sf, and nowhere are its attractions for the overintellectualized 20th century more clearly shown than in the works of J.G. BALLARD, whose most central and recurring theme this is. Its first clear expression was in his story "The Voices of Time" (1960), in which the countdown to the end of the Universe is accompanied by a series of baroque degenerate mutations and the hero's need for more and more sleep. The tone is as much celebratory as tragic. Ballard's The Drowned World (1962) has a hero ever more ready to slough off such human qualities as ambition or even self-preservation as he listens to the insistent call of his bloodstream, whose saltiness recalls a time before life had left the oceans. These inner changes are mirrored in the Earth itself, which has catastrophically reverted to the luxuriance of a new Carboniferous era.Tales of devolution from the 1970s and 1980s are often curiously close in feeling to their apparent opposite: the stories of evolutionary transcendence that we associate with, for example, Greg BEAR and Ian WATSON. Where we envisage an upwards there must necessarily be a downwards, too; this is an idea that has haunted many sf writers, notably Michael BISHOP, sometimes metaphorically and sometimes literally. It is close to the latter in his NO ENEMY BUT TIME (1982), in which a modern man travels back in time to find marriage and a home with hominids. Which evolutionary direction is upwards, which downwards, and which better, seems to several contemporary writers to be all a matter of perspective, as can be seen in the main 1980s variant on the theme: a devolution that is deliberately biologically (or psychologically) engineered. Several of the CYBERPUNK writers have envisaged such an operation as a means of simplifying the self to a creature who is less prone, perhaps, to the angst induced by information overload. A similar idea is found in David ZINDELL's Neverness (1988), a large part of which deals with the fierce, brave, ice-age Alaloi, a race which "because they wanted to live what they thought of as a natural life . . . back mutated some of their chromosomes, the better to grow strong, primitive children to live on the pristine worlds they hoped to discover". An interesting and even more ferocious devolution, more psychic than physical, is that envisaged in Robert P. HOLDSTOCK's Mythago Wood (1984) and its sequels, in which the human hind-brain conspires with the power of an ancient woodland to strip the minds of those who walk there down to the blood and bone of their Neolithic forebears and further, back into the days of ice. Most writers of the last few decades who have like Holdstock dealt with this theme have exhibited a strong if ambiguous attraction to the idea, though to an earlier generation devolution appeared straightforwardly repugnant.The class of stories in which primitive primates confront evolved primates in the present day is discussed under APES AND CAVEMEN; these stories, too, have a bearing on the devolution theme. [PN] DEWDNEY, A(LEXANDER) K(EEWATIN) (1941- ) Canadian writer whose sf novel, The Planiverse: ComputerContact with a Two-Dimensional World (1984 US), intriguingly updatesEdwin A. ABBOTT's Flatland(1884); its flatland protagonist, Yndrd,attempts to penetrate from his world of Arde into anepiphanous "reality beyond reality,"making contact as he does with a roundworld COMPUTER programmed to simulate2-dimensional existence. The portrayal of 2-dimensional life provided by AKD is remarkablysustained, and is an education in the understanding of mathematics. [JC] DeWEESE, GENE Working name of US technical writer and author Thomas Eugene DeWeese (1934- ), who began writing sf with two Man from U.N.C.L.E. ties, The Invisibility Affair * (1967) and The Mind-Twisters Affair * (1967), both with Robert COULSON and signed, collaboratively, Thomas Stratton. Other novels with Coulson, both authors now signing their own names, include a routine sf adventure for LASER BOOKS, Gates of the Universe (1975 Canada; rev vt Nightmare Universe 1985 US) and two spoof RECURSIVE novels about reporter Joe Karns, who gets into all kinds of trouble at sf CONVENTIONS; the large number of in-group references made it unlikely that either Now You See It/Him/Them (1975) and Charles Fort Never Mentioned Wombats (1977) would gain many readers outside the genre. In the 1980s, GDW concentrated on lively juveniles (see listing below) and on several equally lively Star Trek ties: for STAR TREK itself, Chain of Attack * (1987), its direct sequel The Final Nexus * (1988), and Renegade * (1991); and, for STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, The Peacekeepers * (1988). [JC/PN]Other works: Jeremy Case (1976 Canada); The Wanting Factor (1980); Something Answered (1983).For children: Major Corby and the Unidentified Flapping Object (1979); Nightmares from Space (1981); The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf (1983); the Calvin Willeford sequence, comprising Black Suits from Outer Space (1985; vt Beepers from Outer Space 1985), The Dandelion Caper (1986) and The Calvin Nullifier (1987); Whatever Became of Aunt Margaret? (1990).As Jean DeWeese: Various Gothics, of which The Reimann Curse (1975; vt A Different Darkness 1982 as GDW), The Moonstone Spirit (1975), The Carnelian Cat (1975) and Nightmare in Pewter (1978) have been registered as containing material of genre interest. DeWEESE, JEAN Gene DEWEESE. De WREDER, PAUL John HEMING. DEXTER, J.B. John S. GLASBY. DEXTER, WILLIAM Pseudonym of UK writer William Thomas Pritchard (1909- ), whose two sf novels make up a short series. In World of Eclipse (1954) humans return from internment on the planet of the Vulcanids to repopulate a devastated Earth; Children of the Void (1955) brings in a runaway world, nuclear conflicts in space, and communication with ethereal descendants of humanity. [JC] DEY, FREDERICK VAN RENSSELAER [r] Nick CARTER; DIME-NOVEL SF; " NONAME". DIABOLICAL DR MABUSE, THE Die TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR MABUSE . DIABOLIC INVENTION, THE VYNALEZ ZKAZY. DIABOLIK (vt Danger: Diabolik) Film (1967). Dino De Laurentiis/Marianne. Dir Mario Bava, starring John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Adolfo Celi, Terry-Thomas. Screenplay Bava, Dino Maiuri, Adriano Baracco, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, based on fumetti by Luciana and Angela Giussani. 105 mins, cut to 88 mins. Colour.This Italian/French coproduction is one of Di Laurentiis's several attempts to film sf COMIC strips, others being BARBARELLA (1967) and FLASH GORDON (1980). Law plays a stylish supercriminal, after the style of Fantomas, the fictional antihero of several thrillers, beginning with Fantomas (1913-14); he attempts to steal the entire gold reserves and destroy all the tax records of his country. He is caught at the denouement in a shower of radiactive molten gold, becoming his own memorial. Directed with visual panache and a sense of fun by Bava, D is futuristic but only marginally sf. [PN] DIAMOND, JOHN [s] Barrington J. BAYLEY. DIANETICS According to its adherents a science, according to its disbelievers a PSEUDO-SCIENCE, founded by L. Ron HUBBARD, at the time a pulp writer whose main market was the sf magazines. Hubbard's sf had always emphasized the powers of the mind and deployed protagonists who maintained to the end a heroic stance against a corrupt Universe. The former interest was translated into real-life terms in the late 1940s, and the latter vision may be what sustained Hubbard against the widespread execration he and his movement received from some quarters, both outside and inside sf.The editor of ASF, John W. CAMPBELL Jr, began experimenting with Hubbard's ideas in 1949 and believed them valid. In May 1950 ASF (after much prior publicity) published a long article on Dianetics, seen as a form of psychotherapy that could achieve miraculous results in sweeping away the dross that encumbers ordinary minds, to leave uncovered the SUPERMAN latent in us all. Follow-up publicity went well beyond the sf magazines. Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950) was published in the same year, and immediately became a bestseller. The attractions of Dianetics were manifold: it could be practised after mere hours of training, with no formal education necessary; it proposed an apparently simple and coherent model of the mind; it offered an explanation of why so many people feel themselves to be unappreciated failures - and, better than that, it offered a cure.In Dianetics an "auditor" (the therapist) encourages the patient to babble out his/her fantasies. The E-meter, a form of lie-detector, early on came to be an essential item of equipment. In theory, the needle on the meter swings over whenever a traumatic area of memory is uncovered, and the auditor then disposes of the trauma by revealing its meaning. So far, this is rather like an sf version of conventional psychoanalysis. However, Hubbard also taught that traumas could be pre-natal, and eventually that they could have been suffered during previous incarnations ( REINCARNATION) right back to the dawn of time. A "clear" - a person who had successfully rid himself/herself of aberrations - would possess radically increased intelligence, powers of telepathy, the ability to move outside the body and to control such somatic processes as growing new teeth, and a photographic memory. Here was the superman figure of so much contemporary pulp sf made flesh - at least if Dianetics worked ( EDISONADE).Film stars took up Dianetics; centres were opened all over the USA; many thousands were converted, including A.E. VAN VOGT, whose own sf had produced many protagonists not unlike Dianetics's "clears". One of Hubbard's assistants was Perry CHAPDELAINE, who later became an sf writer himself. In 1952, after an organizational rift, Hubbard left the Dianetic Foundation and soon advertised his new advance on Dianetics, SCIENTOLOGY, in the entry for which this story is continued. [PN]See also: PARANOIA. DIBELL, ANSEN Pseudonym of US writer Ann Dibble (1942- ) whose sf sequence, the Strange and Fantastic History of the King of Kantmorie, comprises 3 PLANETARY ROMANCE tales-Pursuit of the Screamer (1978), Circle, Crescent, Star (1981) and Summerfair (1982)-set in a world inhabited by GENETICALLY ENGINEERED races in exile from a forgotten galactic civilization, along with a dying group of CLONES; and intimately affected by an organic COMPUTER named Shai which (or who) eventually offers the protagonist the opportunity of space flight. The outcome of the sequence is unclear, as is its ultimate success as a work of art; the release of its 2 final volumes, Tidestorm Limit and The Sun of Return, might resolve these issues, and help establish the Fantastic History as a significant contribution to the genre. [JC] DICK, KAY (1915- ) UK writer and editor whose novel, They: A Sequence of Unease (1977), resembles thematically and in its experimental structure much of her previous fiction, but is set in a NEAR-FUTURE England where freedom of travel is restricted and cultural activities are actively persecuted. Constructed as a set of linked stories that mirror one another, They relates ENTROPY and the youth-culture as enemies of creative values (and middle-class individualism); in relating these levels of meaning, KD sets up a very moving, though abstract, model of humanistic response to a straitened future. [JC]Other works as editor: The Mandrake Root (anth 1946) as Jeremy Scott, At Close of Eve (anth 1947) as Scott and The Uncertain Element (anth 1950), all fantasy anthologies. DICK, PHILIP K(INDRED) (1928-1982) US writer, one of the two or three most important figures in 20th-century US sf and an author of general significance. He lived most of his life in California, where most of his fiction was set, either literally or by displacing sf protocols into a nightmare of the Pacific Rim. He attended college for one year at Berkeley, operated a record store and ran a classical-music programme for a local radio station; he was married five times, and had three children. From 1950 to 1970 he was intensely and constantly productive - a circumstance only posthumously made clear by the publication of several mainstream novels written during the first years of his career. The order in which he wrote his many novels is of importance in assessing their interrelation, and so the relevant dates are indicated in the discussion below.He began his career with short magazine fiction-his first published story was "Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952) - and over the next few years came a number of ironic and idiosyncratic short stories, some of which were collected in A Handful of Darkness (written 1952-4; coll 1955 UK; with 2 stories cut 1966 UK), The Variable Man and Other Stories (written 1952-4; coll 1957) and The Book of Philip K. Dick (written 1952-5; coll 1973; vt The Turning Wheel and Other Stories 1977 UK). The first three and a half volumes of THE COLLECTED STORIES OF PHILIP K. DICK are devoted to these early years. This set, which is definitive, consists of 5 separate titles, all of which suffer from a singularly unhelpful array of vts: Beyond Lies the Wub (coll 1987; vt The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford 1990); Second Variety (coll 1987; vt We Can Remember it for You Wholesale, with "Second Variety" dropped and the new title story added, 1990); The Father-Thing (coll 1987; rev with "Second Variety" added, vt Second Variety 1991); The Days of Perky Pat (coll 1987; vt The Minority Report 1991) and The Little Black Box (coll 1987; vt We Can Remember it for you Wholesale 1991 UK; vt The Eye of the Sibyl 1992 US).PKD's first novels - The Cosmic Puppets (written 1953; 1956 Satellite as "A Glass of Darkness"; exp 1957 dos) and Dr Futurity (written 1953; 1954 TWS as "Time Pawn"; exp 1959 dos) - were professional expansions of magazine tales and reveal his fingerprints to hindsight; the former interestingly returns a man to his home-town which, overlaid by manufactured illusion, serves as a battleground for two warring forces who bear the aspects of Ormazd and Ahriman (the opposing principles of Zoroastrian cosmology). PKD's PARANOIA about godlike manipulations of consensual reality marks a theme he would obsessively repeat in less crude form, just as the confusion of humans and mechanical simulacra adumbrated in the second book might be considered one particular variant of the major theme which runs right through PKD's work: the juxtaposition of two "levels of reality" - one "objectively" determined, the other a world of appearances imposed upon characters by various means and processes.His first published book, SOLAR LOTTERY (written 1953-541955 dos; rev vt World of Chance 1955 UK - each text printing some material the other excludes), has an immediate impact; it is a story belonging to, if not rather dominating, a category prevalent in the early 1950s-the tale in which future society is distorted by some particular set of idiosyncratic priorities: in this case social opportunity is governed by lottery. The plot of the novel is reminiscent of A.E. VAN VOGT, and juxtaposes political intrigues with the utopian quest of the disciples of an eccentric MESSIAH. This interest in messianic figures runs throughout PKD's work as an important subsidiary theme. There are versions of it in The World Jones Made (written 1954; 1956 dos), Vulcan's Hammer (1956 Future Science Fiction; exp 1960), and in his sf of the 1960s.But, after writing The World Jones Made, a heated authoritarian DYSTOPIA, Eye in the Sky (written 1955; 1957), which sophisticates the reality diseases of his first novel, and the routine The Man who Japed (written 1955; 1956 dos), PKD began an exceedingly ambitious - and totally unsuccessful - attempt to break into the mainstream-novel market. From this period came Mary and the Giant (written 1953-5; 1987), The Broken Bubble (written 1956; 1988), Puttering About in a Small Land (written 1957; 1985), In Milton Lumky Territory (written 1958-9; 1985), Confessions of a Crap Artist (written 1959; 1975), The Man whose Teeth were All Exactly Alike (written 1960; 1984) and Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (written 1960; 1986 UK). Graceful, wry, vulnerable, pessimistic and wise, they are novels less good only than the best of PKD's intense prime, which began immediately.Time Out of Joint (written 1958; 1959) is a bridge novel: its central character, who lives in a peaceful POCKET-UNIVERSE enclave created for him by a war-torn society so that it can exploit his precognitive talents, retains the desire and capacity to defeat illusion and regain objective reality. In later books the author became more and more fascinated by the various unreal worlds he created. In the first of these, the HUGO-winning THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE (written 1961; 1962), his best-known single book, the characters live in an ALTERNATE WORLD in which the Allies lost WWII ( HITLER WINS), but one of them eventually learns from the I-Ching that the real world - manifest in the alternate through the pages of a novel - is one in which the Allies won (though it is not our world). After this major novel came, in close succession, the writing of three further books which together constitute his finest achievement. Martian Time-Slip (written 1962; 1963 Worlds of Tomorrow as "All We Marsmen"; exp 1964) creates a world irradiated by schizophrenic ( PARANOIA) perceptions, and moves with frightening intensity - and hilarity - to an elegant transcendental finale. Dr Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (written 1963; 1965), is built more intricately than any other PKD novel upon a plot-structure whose interconnections and layers themselves work as a portrayal of the world - in this case a post- HOLOCAUST USA. THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH (written 1964; 1965), more extremely than any previous PKD book, inhabits the badlands within which the real and the ersatz interpenetrate: suppliers of a hallucinogenic drug which makes life tolerable for Martian colonists face opposition from the sinister Eldritch, whose own new drug (imaged in language which recalls the Communion wafer) pre-empts reality entirely.The complexity and stature of these four books were perhaps muffled in the 1960s through their being outnumbered by the less achieved PKD works that were being composed or released at this same time - We Can Build You (written 1962; 1969 AMZ as "A. Lincoln, Simulacrum", with last chapter added by Ted WHITE; text restored 1972), The Game-Players of Titan (written 1963; 1963), The Simulacra (written 1963; 1964), Now Wait for Last Year (written 1963; 1966), Clans of the Alphane Moon (written 1963-4; 1964), The Crack in Space (written 1963-4; 1966), The Zap Gun (written 1964; 1967), The Penultimate Truth (written 1964; 1964), The Unteleported Man (written 1964-5; first half only 1966 dos; both halves rev 1983; with short inserts by John T. SLADEK rev vt Lies, Inc 1984 UK) and Counter-Clock World (written 1965; 1967). None of these stories quite jell in the end - though much happens of considerable interest - and none lack moments of extraordinary cultural and psychological insight, sometimes presented in a language singularly familiar with the large repertory of mind-states accessible through the use of drugs. It was only with a late novel, A SCANNER DARKLY (written 1973; 1977), that he would explore the more negative human implications of drug-taking, though with an almost hallucinated vehemence.In his next major novel, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (written 1966; 1968; vt Blade Runner 1982), filmed in 1982 by Ridley SCOTT as BLADE RUNNER, PKD effectively climaxed the series of novels in which mechanical simulacra of human beings - sometimes eminent - figure as agents of illusion. In this tale, which became much more widely known after the film, android animals are marketed to help expiate the guilt people experience because real ones have been virtually exterminated; simultaneously the protagonist must hunt down androids illegally imported from MARS. In so doing, he learns that the society's new MESSIAH may also be a fake; and that the landscapes of decay and imposture may in fact only mirror his own condition. As with so many of PKD's best books - like Martian-Time Slip, Dr Bloodmoney and THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH - the story takes place in a depleted environment, with a small population existing in a derelict world. This sense of a shrinking world intensifies in PKD's last two "untroubled" works of genius: Ubik (written 1966; 1969), which features the creation of a subjective world by a group of people killed in an accident but restored to a kind of consciousness within a preservative machine, though any final determination of what is real in the book is made superbly problematical; and A Maze of Death (written 1968; 1970), a bleak poisoned exercise in theology which has been described as his single finest work.From this point in PKD's life, metaphysical questions began to dominate. GALACTIC POT-HEALER (written 1967-8; 1969) begins almost as a parody, but soon becomes involved in questions of predetermination and the Dualistic conflict between darkness and light. Theological issues are paramount also in the novelette "Faith of Our Fathers" (1967) and in Our Friends From Frolix 8 (written 1968-9; 1970), the composition of which is illuminated by Outline for Our Friends from Frolix 8 (written 1968; 1989 chap).As the 1970s began, theology gradually segued in PKD's own life into episodes of paranoia and epiphany, climaxing in a religious experience in March 1974 which he spent much of the rest of his life analysing in the form of an "Exegesis", of which a small, integral portion has been published as Cosmogony and Cosmology (written 1978; 1987 chap UK); a large selection from this material has been assembled as In Pursuit of VALIS: Selections from the Exegesis (1991). The Selected Letters of Philip K.Dick: 1972-1973 (coll 1993), The Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick: 1974 (coll 1991) andThe Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick: 1975-76 (coll 1992) focus on the same material; further volumes are projected.And, after 20 years, the stream of novels became intermittent. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (written 1970-73; 1974), which won the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD, mainly retreads old ground. It was followed by a rather unsatisfactory collaboration with Roger ZELAZNY, Deus Irae (written 1964-75; fixup 1976). Radio Free Albemuth (written 1976; 1985), which began to deal in "healthy" fictional terms with the Exegesis material, was published only after PKD's death.This latter novel is, in any case, a kind of draft of the finest book of PKD's last years, VALIS (written 1978; 1981), a fragile but deeply valiant self-analysis - he is two characters in the novel, a man who is mad and a man who is not - conducted within the framework of a longing search for the structure of meaning, the Vast Active Living Intelligence System. The Divine Invasion (written 1980; 1981) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (written 1981; 1982), which were assembled with their predecessor as The VALIS Trilogy (omni 1989), share obsessional search-patterns but little else. They were the books of a finished writer, in every sense.The earlier PKD often lost control of his material in ideative mazes and, sidetracked, was unable to find any resolution; but, when he found the tale within his grasp, he was brilliantly inventive, gaining access to imaginative realms which no other writer of sf had reached. His sympathy for the plight of his characters - often far-from-heroic, small, ordinary people trapped in difficult existential circumstances - was unfailing, and his work had a human interest absent from that of writers engaged by complexity and convolution for their own sake. Even the most perilous metaphysical terrors of his finest novels wore a complaining, vulnerable, human face. In all his work he was astonishingly intimate, self-exposed, and very dangerous. He was the funniest sf writer of his time, and perhaps the most terrifying. His dreads were our own, spoken as we could not have spoken them. [BS/JC]Other works: The Ganymede Takeover (written 1964-6; 1967) with Ray (R.F.) NELSON; The Preserving Machine (written 1953-66; coll 1969; with 1 story dropped 1971 UK); The Best of Philip K. Dick (written 1952-73; coll 1977) ed John BRUNNER; A Letter from Philip K. Dick (written 1960; 1983 chap); Nazism and the High Castle (written 1964?; 1964 Niekas; 1987 chap dos), published with Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes (written 1965?; 1965 Niekas; 1987 chap dos); We Can Remember it for You Wholesale (written 1965; 1966 FSF; 1990 chap), filmed as TOTAL RECALL (1990); Nick and the Glimmung (written 1966; 1988 UK), for children; Warning: We Are Your Police (written 1967; 1985 chap); The Golden Man (written 1952-73; coll 1980); The Dark-Haired Girl (written 1972-5; coll 1988), mostly nonfiction; Ubik: The Screenplay (written 1974; 1985).About the author: The literature on PKD is enormous and daily growing. Here are a few representative volumes: Philip K. Dick: Electric Shepherd (anth 1975) ed Bruce GILLESPIE; Science-Fiction Studies, Mar 1975 and July 1988, 2 special issues devoted to PKD; The Novels of Philip K. Dick (1984) by Kim Stanley ROBINSON; Only Apparently Real: The World of Philip K. Dick (1986) by Paul WILLIAMS; Mind in Motion: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick (1987) by Patricia WARRICK; To the High Castle: Philip K. Dick: A Life 1928-1962 (1989) by Gregg Rickman; Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (1989) by Lawrence Sutin, perhaps the most clear-sighted of the biographical studies; Philip Kindred Dick, Metaphysical Conjurer: A Working Bibliography (latest edn 1990) by Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ACE BOOKS; ALIENS; ANDROIDS; AUTOMATION; BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; CITIES; COLLECTIONS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; COMICS; COMPUTERS; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CYBERNETICS; CYBORGS; ENTROPY; ESP; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FRANCE; GAMES AND SPORTS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GODS AND DEMONS; GOTHIC SF; GREAT AND SMALL; HISTORY OF SF; HUMOUR; INVASION; LONGEVITY (IN WRITERS AND PUBLICATIONS); MACHINES; MATTER TRANSMISSION; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; METAPHYSICS; MUSIC; NEW WAVE; NEW WORLDS; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; OUTER PLANETS; PERCEPTION; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGY; RECURSIVE SF; REINCARNATION; RELIGION; ROBOTS; SATIRE; TIMESCAPE BOOKS; TIME TRAVEL; VIRTUAL REALITY; WEAPONS. DICKENS, CHARLES (JOHN HUFFHAM) (1812-1870) UK writer, almost certainly the greatest novelist in the English language. CD wrote considerable fantasy - including most famously A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843) - but no sf proper. However, it has been argued, most recently by John CLUTE in Horror: 100 Best Books (anth 1988; rev 1992) ed Stephen Jones and Kim NEWMAN, that the nightmarish, almost futuristic London which figures in several of his later novels, from Bleak House (1853) through Our Mutual Friend (1865), was a central influence - via G.K. CHESTERTON, Robert Louis STEVENSON and others - in the creation of 19th-century urban England as a stamping-ground for STEAMPUNK. Like William MORRIS, Lord DUNSANY and J.R.R. TOLKIEN after him, CD is central to the geography of sf.It is also arguable that Mugby Junction (anth 1866 chap), a self-contained volume published as an extra Christmas number of CD's magazine All the Year Round, may constitute the first SHARED-WORLD anthology of genre interest. [JC]Other works: The Chimes (dated 1845 but 1844); The Cricket on the Hearth (dated 1846 but 1845); The Haunted Man, and The Ghost's Bargain (coll 1848).See also: ENTROPY. DICKINSON, PETER (MALCOLM de BRISSAC) (1927- ) UK writer, born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge; for 17 years assistant editor of the humorous magazine Punch. PD is best known for his detective stories, but he has written one adult sf novel, The Green Gene (1973), an amusing SATIRE on many issues including racial prejudice, set in an ALTERNATE-WORLD UK, where all Celts possess a gene that gives them green skin. It was runner-up for the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD. An adult detective novel, King and Joker (1976), is set in an alternate England where George V's elder brother Clarence did not die of pneumonia but lived to become King Victor I; its belated sequel was Skeleton-in-Waiting (1989). Two other adult thrillers have ambiguously fantastic elements, Sleep and his Brother (1971) and Walking Dead (1977).PD's most important contribution to sf is his Changes trilogy for children: in order of internal chronology the novels are The Devil's Children (1971), Heartsease (1970) and THE WEATHERMONGER (1968; with chapters 10 and 11 rev, 1969 US), all assembled as The Changes (omni 1975; vt The Changes Trilogy 1985; vt The Changes: A Trilogy 1991 US). They deal with an inexplicable change in English life when the population suddenly turns against MACHINES and adopts medieval superstitions. The Devil's Children, where a 12-year-old girl is adopted by a band of travelling Sikhs, is the most sensitive, and THE WEATHERMONGER, which features Merlin, the most fantastic and baroque. There are minor inconsistencies in the world picture from book to book.In 1972 the BBC presented a six-episode sf serial for children, Man Dog, written by PD, and novelized as Mandog * (1972) by Lois LAMPLUGH. Escapees from the 26th century transfer their leader's mind into a dog belonging to one of a group of children in the present. They are pursued by future police.Many of PD's other juveniles have fantastic elements: Emma Tupper's Diary (1971) is a Loch Ness Monster story; The Dancing Bear (1972) is a fantasy set in the 5th century; The Gift (1973) has a telepathic boy in a thriller with mythic overtones; The Blue Hawk (1976), which won the Guardian Award for Best Children's Book of the year, is set in an imaginary ancient kingdom, where the gods are withdrawing their magic from the world; Chance, Luck and Destiny (coll 1975) contains an sf story, "Mr Monnow"; Annerton Pit (1977) features an ambiguous presence - it may be sciencefictional rather than fantastic - lurking in a mineshaft of ill repute; Tulku (1979) has fantastic happenings in Tibet; Healer (1983; vt The Healer 1985 US) has a girl with special powers; and Eva (1988) has a girl's personality transferred to a chimpanzee after a car accident - much social adjustment is necessary.PD's juveniles are uneven, but at their best they are among the finest in the genre: various, nonconformist and vivid, often giving old themes new life by thinking them through afresh from the beginning, rather than accepting them as givens. [PN]Other works (all juveniles): The Iron Lion (1972 chap US; rev 1983 chap UK); The Flight of Dragons (1979), nonfiction; The Seventh Raven (1983); Giant Cold (1984 chap); Hundreds and Hundreds (anth 1984);A Box of Nothing (1985); Merlin Dreams (coll of linked stories 1988); AK (1990); A Bone from a Dry Sea (1992); Time and the Clockmice, Etcetera (1993); Shadow of a Hero (1994).See also: APES AND CAVEMEN (IN THE HUMAN WORLD); CHILDREN'S SF; MAGIC. DICK-LAUDER, [Sir] GEORGE (ANDREW) (1917-1981) British Army officer who began a writing career after his retirement from the service. His two sf novels, Our Man for Ganymede (1969) and A Skull and Two Crystals (1972), though not innovative, do explore the conventions of SPACE OPERA in a manner both literate and alert. [JC] DICKSON, CARTER John Dickson CARR. DICKSON, GORDON R(UPERT) (1923- ) Canadian-born writer, resident in the USA since age 13 and long a US citizen. He was educated (along with Poul ANDERSON) at the University of Minnesota, taking his BA in English in 1948, and remains in Minnesota. Through the Minneapolis Fantasy Society, which he re-established after WWII, he became friends with Anderson, with whom he later collaborated on the Hoka series - Earthman's Burden (coll 1957), Star Prince Charlie (1975) and Hoka! (coll 1982) - and with Clifford D. SIMAK. Along with these writers, GRD has shown a liking, often indulged, for hinterland settings peopled by solid farming or small-town stock whose ideologies, when expressed, violate any simple, conservative-liberal polarity, though urban readers and critics tend to respond to them as right-wing. As late as Wolf and Iron (1974 FSF as "In Iron Years"; much exp 1990) - which embodies a SURVIVALIST plot considerably deepened by the author's detailed and compassionate attachment to the kind of hero who understands and loves the physical world - he was still mining this fertile venue.GRD began publishing sf in 1950 with "Trespass" for Fantastic Story Quarterly, written with Anderson, and he has since been a prolific and consistent short-story author; much of this material was assembled in the 1980s in volumes like The Man from Earth (coll 1983), Dickson! (coll 1984; rev vt Steel Brother 1985) and Forward! (coll 1985), the latter ed Sandra MIESEL, long an advocate of his works.GRD's first novel, Alien from Arcturus (1956 dos; rev vt Arcturus Landing 1979), established from an early date the tone of underlying and rather relentless seriousness which became so marked in later works, while at the same time succumbing to a tendency to displace emotional intensities from human relations between the sexes to those obtaining between human and dependent ALIEN (or, as in Wolf and Iron, Terran mammal). The aliens in Alien from Arcturus are decidedly cuddly, with shining black noses, and much resemble those who appear in Space Winners (1965), a juvenile, and The Alien Way (1965), about an Earthman's telepathic rapport with the representative of a species that may invade. But the strong narrative skills deployed in these comparatively rudimentary SPACE-OPERA tales, along with an idiomatic capacity to write novel-length fiction, has ensured the survival of these relatively unambitious works. Some later singletons - like Sleepwalker's World (1971), a dystopian vision of OVERPOPULATION, and The R-Master (1973; rev vt The Last Master 1983), in which a society is ambiguously guided by a saviour whose origins lie more in PULP-MAGAZINE ideas than in philosophy-failed to maintain the elation of the earlier books.While continuing to produce prolifically in the 1950s and 1960s, GRD simultaneously engaged upon a sequence of novels which was to occupy much of his energy for decades. The ongoing Childe Cycle - the sf volumes of which are often known as the Dorsai series - is intended to present an evolutionary blueprint, in highly dramatized fictional terms, for humanity's ultimate expansion through the Galaxy, as an inherently ethical species. "In order to make this type of story work effectively," GRD has said, "I developed by the late 1950s a new fictional pattern that I have called the 'consciously thematic story'. This was specifically designed to create an unconscious involvement of the reader with the philosophical thematic argument that the story action renders and demonstrates. Because this new type of story has represented a pattern hitherto unknown to readers and writers, my work has historically been criticized in terms that do not apply to it - primarily as if it were drama alone." However, though GRD originally planned to present his thesis through a phased publication of the entire sequence - to include at least three historical titles and three contemporary novels as well as the several books set in the future - only the Dorsai books have yet been released, and the full integrity of GRD's argument remains, therefore, undemonstrated.In rough order of internal chronology, the Childe Cycle comprises (1995): Necromancer (1962; vt No Room for Man 1963), The Tactics of Mistake (1971), Soldier, Ask Not (1964 Gal; exp 1967), the short form of which won a HUGO for 1964, and The Genetic General (1959 ASF as "Dorsai!"; cut 1960 dos; text restored vt DORSAI! 1976), all but Soldier, Ask Not being assembled as Three to Dorsai! (omni 1975); The Spirit of Dorsai (coll of linked stories 1979) and Lost Dorsai (coll of linked stories 1980; rev 1988 UK), whose title story won a 1981 Hugo, most of both volumes being reassembled with some material preceding The Genetic General as The Dorsai Companion (coll of linked stories 1986); and a final grouping of texts, all set about 100 years further into the future: the overlong Young Bleys (1991), Other (1994),The Final Encyclopedia (1984) and The Chantry Guild (1988), the last volume - GRD claimed as early as 1983 - being hived off from a projected final volume to be called Childe. As the sequence develops, human space is divided into four spheres plus Old Earth herself, with her vast genetic pool; Dorsai, whose inhabitants are bred as professional soldiers; the Exotic worlds, whose inhabitants are bred to creative (sometimes sybaritic) mind-arts; the worlds (like Newton) which emphasize physical science; and the God-haunted Friendly worlds, where folk are bred for faith. The task of mankind's genetic elite is somehow to merge these variant strains, and the philosophical burden of the sequence tends to be conveyed through plots whose origins lie unabashedly in the SUPERMAN tales of earlier sf. The Genetic General, which in its restored form remains the most arousing of these, features Donal Graeme, the central incarnation of a triune evolutionary superman whose earlier life is told in Necromancer, and who is reborn as Hal Mayne to climax the series - and the genetic elitism it promulgates - through its final (to date) volumes. The terms GRD uses to describe his superman's capacities - Graeme, for instance, being capable of a potent sort of cognitive intuition - are perhaps best appreciated within the massive, ongoing rhythm of the series; for it is as a novelist, not as a philosopher, that GRD reveals his strength.Very little of GRD's later fiction, however hastily written some of it may seem, fails to pose questions and arguments about humankind's fundamental nature. From 1960 much of his work has specifically reflected his preoccupation with the concept that humankind is inevitably driven to higher evolutionary states, a notion often expressed, however, in tales - like None But Man (1969; with 1 story added, as coll 1989) or Hour of the Horde (1970) - that contrast humankind's indomitable spirit with that of ALIENS whose lack of comparable elan makes them into straw horses for Homo sapiens to defeat. More serious presentations of material - from the fine Timestorm (fixup 1977) on to ponderous later tales like Way of the Pilgrim (1980 ASF as "The Cloak and the Staff"; much exp 1987) - do generally avoid the graver pitfalls of pulp. Though his sometimes unremitting use of genre conventions to provide solutions to serious arguments has undoubtedly retarded full recognition of his talent and seriousness, the later volumes of the Childe Cycle series increasingly enforce a more measured response to his life work.GRD won the NEBULA for Best Novelette with "Call Him Lord" (1966). He was President of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA 1969-71. In 1981, he won Hugos not only for "Lost Dorsai" but also for a short story, "The Cloak and the Staff". [JC]Other works: Mankind on the Run (1956 dos; vt On the Run 1979); Time to Teleport (1955 Science Fiction Stories as "No More Barriers"; 1960 chap dos) and Delusion World (1955 Science Fiction Stories as "Perfectly Adjusted"; exp 1961 dos), both later published in omnibus format (omni 1981); the Dilbia series, comprising Spacial Delivery (1961 dos) and Spacepaw (1969); Naked to the Stars (1961); the Underseas series, later assembled as Secrets of the Deep (omni 1985) and comprising Secret Under the Sea (1960), Secret Under Antarctica (1963) and Secret Under the Caribbean (1964); Mission to Universe (1965; rev 1977); Planet Run (1967; rev as coll with 2 stories added, vt Planet Run, Plus Two Bonus Stories 1982) with Keith LAUMER; The Space Swimmers (1967), which serves as a sequel to Home from the Shore (1963 Gal; exp 1978); Wolfling (1969); Mutants: A Science Fiction Adventure (coll 1970), in which the stories are linked thematically; Danger-Human (coll 1970; vt The Book of Gordon R. Dickson 1973); The Pritcher Mass (1972); The Outposter (1972); The Day the Sun Stood Still (anth 1972), a common-theme anthology with Poul Anderson and Robert SILVERBERG; The Star Road (coll 1973); Alien Art (1973), a juvenile, later assembled with Arcturus Landing as Alien Art; Arcturus Landing (omni 1978); Ancient, My Enemy (coll 1974); Gremlins, Go Home! (1974), a juvenile with Ben BOVA; The Lifeship (1976; vt Lifeboat 1978 UK) with Harry HARRISON; the Dragon and the George fantasy sequence comprising The Dragon and the George (as "St Dragon and the George" FSF 1957; exp 1976), The Dragon Knight (1990), The Dragon on the Border (1992), The Dragon at War (1993) and The Dragon, the Earl and the Troll (1994) Gordon R. Dickson's SF Best (coll 1978; exp vt In the Bone 1987); The Far Call (1978), a rare NEAR-FUTURE tale of the space programme; Pro (1978); Masters of Everon (1979); In Iron Years (coll 1980); Love Not Human (coll 1981); Survival! (coll 1984); Jamie the Red (1984) with Roland GREEN; Beyond the Dar al-Harb (coll 1985); Invaders! (coll 1985); The Man the Worlds Rejected (coll 1986); The Last Dream (coll 1986); Mindspan (coll 1986) ed Sandra Miesel; The Forever Man (1986); Stranger (coll 1986); Guided Tour (coll 1988); Beginnings (coll 1988); Ends (coll 1988); The Earth Lords (1989).As Editor: Rod Serling's Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves (anth 1963); Rod Serling's Devils and Demons (anth 1967); Combat SF (anth 1975); Nebula Winners Twelve (anth 1978); the War and Honor sequence of SHARED-WORLD anthologies, beginning with The Harriers * (anth 1991) and The Harriers #2: Blood and Honor * (anth 1993); Robot Warriors (anth 1991).About the author: Gordon R. Dickson: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1983) by Raymond H. Thompson; Gordon Rupert Dickson, First Dorsai: A Working Bibliography (latest edn 1990 chap) by Gordon BENSON Jr and Phil STEPHENSEN-PAYNE.See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION; CANADA; CHILDREN'S SF; COMPUTERS; CYBORGS; ECOLOGY; ECONOMICS; EVOLUTION; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; HUMOUR; INVASION; LINGUISTICS; MATHEMATICS; PARALLEL WORLDS; POLITICS; PSI POWERS; ROBERT HALE LIMITED; SPACESHIPS; TIME TRAVEL; UNDER THE SEA; WAR; WEAPONS. DIETZ, WILLIAM C(OREY) (1945- ) US writer who began to publish sf with War World (1986), the first volume of his Sam McCade sequence of sf adventures about an interstellar bounty hunter, which continued with Imperial Bounty (1988), Alien Bounty (1990) and McCade's Bounty (1990). The galactic venue of the series exhibits some interesting kinks, and McCade himself gradually gains individuality. Singletons include Freehold (1987), military sf; Prison Planet (1989); Cluster Command (1989) with David A. DRAKE, - one of the latter's Crisis of Empire sequence; Matrix Man (1990), a complicated, fast-moving tale set in a NEAR-FUTURE Earth whose seas and population are continuing to rise, and where a nefarious peace foundation (run in fact by a huge corporation) opposes attempts by the Exodus Society to foment emigration; Mars Prime (1992); Legion of the Damned (1993) and Bodyguard (1994) As in his work in general, the right side wins. As an author of entertainments, WCD stands out for his thorough grasp of the devices of sf. [JC] DIEUDONNE, FLORENCE (LUCINDA) CARPENTER (1850-? ) US writer. In her Rondah, or Thirty-Three Years in a Star (1887) the tale's several protagonists travel through the Solar System in a large ASTEROID (not a star). Transported to this asteroid by a pre-arranged explosion, the central figure of the tale becomes king of the native bird-people, in fact of vegetable origin, who are replaced by ferocious elves when the worldlet cools down. Much happens. In the end, the protagonist, with his woman, seems destined to rule the Universe. The book is a cacophony of irreconcilable elements, but the author's extremely fertile imagination, when harnessed, manages to create a tale which significantly prefigures 20th-century cosmological SPACE OPERA. Xartella (1891), self-published, is fantasy. [JC] Di FATE, VINCENT (1945- ) US sf illustrator (name sometimes rendered DiFate). He was born in Yonkers, New York, and like many other sf illustrators attended the New York-Phoenix Institute. He began his career doing tv animation for Ralph Bakshi; his first professional sf illustration was for Analog (Aug 1969) and most of his magazine work has been for ASF. Many of his paintings have been for paperback book covers. His artwork, suprisingly impressionistic for someone who frequently works with technological subjects like spacecraft, is often moody and sombre. He was one of the NASA artists for the Apollo/Soyuz programme in 1975 and has worked for NASA since. He won the HUGO for Best Professional Artist in 1979 and has been nominated many other times. VDF lectures on art and is also well known for his occasional, interesting, long-running column about sf illustration, Sketches, from 1976 in the semiprozine ALGOL and in its surviving sister magazine SF CHRONICLE. A book of his work is Di Fate's Catalog of Science Fiction Hardware (1980) by VDF and Ian Summers. [JG/PN]See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. DIGEST A term used to describe a magazine format, in contrast to, for example, BEDSHEET and pulp ( PULP MAGAZINES), which are both larger. The page size of a digest is approximately 5.5 x 7.5in (about 140 x 190mm), though it can vary slightly; for example, Gal was normally a little smaller than ASF. ASF was the first important sf magazine to turn digest, in 1943, and by the mid-1950s almost all SF MAGAZINES had followed suit, the pulp-magazine format disappearing. By the 1980s, however, many sf magazines had turned to a small-bedsheet, stapled, "slick" format. The digest format is just a little larger than that of the normal paperback book, which averages 4.5 x 7in (about 115 x 180mm); the paperback format has also been used for some magazines, notably NW in the mid-1960s. [PN] DIKTY, T(HADDEUS MAXIM) E(UGENE) (1920-1991) US editor and publisher, married from 1953 to Julian MAY, about whose work he compiled The Work of Julian May: An Annotated Bibliography & Guide (1985) with R. REGINALD. An early sf fan, TED started an sf checklist on index cards with the collector Frederick Shoyer in 1939, but the cards were lost in WWII. After the war, with Erle Korshak and Mark Reinsberg, he became a bookseller and passed the partially reassembled checklist on to Everett F. BLEILER, who used it to compile The Checklist of Fantastic Literature (1948) - the first comprehensive BIBLIOGRAPHY in the sf field - which TED and Korshak founded SHASTA PUBLISHERS to put into print. TED was also associated with the setting-up of the publishers Carcosa House. With Bleiler, TED edited an annual ANTHOLOGY series - the first "year's-best" series to appear in the field: The Best Science Fiction Stories, 1949 (anth 1949) and The Best Science Fiction Stories, 1950 (anth 1950; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories 1951 UK), both assembled as Science Fiction Omnibus (omni 1952); The Best Science Fiction Stories, 1951 (anth 1951; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Second Series 1952 UK; further cut vt The Mindworm 1967 UK); The Best Science-Fiction Stories, 1952 (anth 1952; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Third Series 1953 UK); The Best Science-Fiction Stories, 1953 (anth 1953; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Fourth Series 1955 UK); The Best Science Fiction Stories, 1954 (anth 1954; cut vt The Best Science Fiction Stories, Fifth Series 1956 UK). Frontiers in Space (anth 1955) contains a selection from the second, third and fourth volumes. A second series, Year's Best Science Fiction Novels, presented a selection of longer stories: Year's Best Science Fiction Novels, 1952 (anth 1952; cut vt Year's Best Science Fiction Novels 1953 UK), 1953 (anth 1953; cut vt Category Phoenix 1955 UK) and 1954 (anth 1954; cut vt Year's Best Science Fiction Novels, Second Series 1955 UK). Together they also edited Imagination Unlimited (anth 1952; cut vt Men of Space and Time 1953 UK), which contains stories on each of 15 sciences.After the collaboration with Bleiler ended, TED went on to produce three further "best" volumes as sole editor: The Best Science-Fiction Stories and Novels, 1955 (anth 1955; cut vt 5 Tales from Tomorrow 1957), The Best Science-Fiction Stories and Novels, 1956 (anth 1956; cut vt 6 from Worlds Beyond 1958) and The Best Science-Fiction Stories and Novels, Ninth Series (anth 1958). He also edited Every Boy's Book of Outer Space Stories (anth 1960) and two theme anthologies about MARS and the MOON: Great Science Fiction about Mars (anth 1966) and Great Science Fiction Stories about the Moon (anth 1967).In the 1950s, after Shasta had collapsed in ignominy, TED formed Publication Associates with Julian May, and worked closely with her on various projects for the rest of his life, acting as her agent and editor on all her mature work. In 1972, with Darrell C. Richardson, he founded and, with the added help of Robert E. WEINBERG, ran FAX COLLECTOR'S EDITIONS, a publishing enterprise aimed at reprinting material, often in facsimile, from old magazines; at about the same time (though its first title did not appear until 1976), and also with Weinberg (who dropped out after a year), he founded STARMONT HOUSE to produce monographs on individual sf writers, along with some bibliographies and fiction, anonymously editing for the firm one anthology, Worlds Within Worlds: Four Classic Argosy Tales of Science Fiction (anth 1991). Two of his and Julian May's children carried on with the firm after his death. [JC/MJE]See also: SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS. DILLARD, J(EANNE) M. (1954- ) US writer. Most of her works are STAR TREK ties, including Mindshadow * (1986), Demons * (1986), Bloodthirst * (1987), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier * (1989), which novelizes the 1989 film, The Lost Years * (1989), The Undiscovered Country * (1992), which novelizes STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Emissary * (1993), and the non- fictionStar Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History in Pictures (1994). JMD has also written War of the Worlds: The Resurrection * (1988), tied to the tv series, and Specters (1991), a horror novel. [JC] DILLON, LEO (1933- ) and DIANE (1933- ) US illustrators, the only team (married in 1957) ever to win a HUGO for Best Professional Artist, which they did in 1971. They have been freelancing since 1958, at first working separately. Together their work has covered many fields: record album covers, advertising art, Christmas cards, children's books and movie posters among them; they are among the most respected commercial artists in the USA. Their sf work for ACE BOOKS in the late 1960s (notably for the Ace Specials) was particularly good, though perhaps their most celebrated work has been for children's books, winning them Caldecott Medals for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears (1976) and Ashanti to Zulu (1977). They have designed especially strong covers for books by Harlan ELLISON. Their sf production has been only occasional since about 1972. Their work is often similar to wood-block prints: rough, sometimes semi-abstract shapes powerfully assembled. They are, however, extremely versatile and work in a variety of styles and media, notably an Art Nouveau-derived look reminiscent of Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), as can be seen in The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon (1981) ed Byron PREISS. Richard M. POWERS was one of the first to show that semi-abstract images of some sophistication could sell sf; the Dillons went on to prove the point incontrovertibly. [JG/PN]See also: FANTASY; ILLUSTRATION. DILOV, LJUBEN [r] BULGARIA. DIME-NOVEL SF Dime-novel sf, which was almost wholly boys' fiction, appeared in two media: serially in such BOYS' PAPERS as Golden Hours, Happy Days, The Boys of New York and Young Men of America, or as complete stories in series publications like The Wide Awake Weekly, The Boy's Star Library, New York Five Cent Library, the FRANK READE LIBRARY and The Nugget Library. The most important publishers were Frank Tousey, Publisher, Norman L. Munro and STREET & SMITH.Formats varied considerably, from crown-8vo-size books to 9 x 121/2in (about 230 x 320mm) saddle-wired (saddle-stitched) pamphlets, but from the turn of the century most dime novels were either saddle-wired single-signature pamphlets of around 81/2 x 11in (about 215 x 280mm) or 5 x 7in (about 125 x 180mm) side-stapled paperbound books of several signatures. (All of these formats are rendered here in the US style; i.e., width followed by height.) It is the 81/2 x 11in pamphlet - similar in dimension to BEDSHEET-format - that is usually, though not very logically, described as "dime-novel format", but then the term "dime novel" itself is inaccurate, since most commonly they cost a nickel (5cents) or 6cents, rather than a dime (10cents). All dime novels were printed on cheap paper - sometimes very poor indeed - and it is therefore now difficult to locate examples in good condition.Almost all dime-novel sf falls into three basic categories: the invention story ( DISCOVERY AND INVENTION), the lost-race story ( LOST WORLDS) and the marvel story. These types occasionally overlap in minor ways.The invention story originated with Edward S. ELLIS's The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), in which Ellis, a prolific and popular writer, adapted the historical Newark Steam Man into a conventional Western story. This first publication seems to have been without influence, but one of the later reprintings (as The Huge Hunter, 1876) came to the attention of Frank Tousey, a rival publisher, who commissioned a similar work, Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains (The Boys of New York 1876 as "The Steam Man of the Plains"; 1892 as by "Noname"), from Harry Enton (pseudonym of Harold Cohen [1854-1927]). This initiated the important series about the Frank Reade family of inventors ( FRANK READE LIBRARY). Enton followed this with two sequels about Frank Reade, with steam engines shaped into horses.These stories, together with Ellis's work, set the pattern for future invention stories. The initial model was the dime-novel Western. Stress was on iron technology, with little or no science; narratives contained random, thrilling incidents, often presented in a disjointed and puerile way. Typical social patterns were: a conscious attempt to capitalize on age conflict, with boy inventors outdoing their elders ( EDISONADE); aggressive, exploitative capitalism, particularly at the expense of "primitive" peoples; the frontier mentality, with slaughter of "primitives" (in the first Frank Reade, Jr. story Frank kills about 250 Native Americans, to say nothing of destroying an inhabited village); strong elements of sadism; ethnic rancour focused on Native Americans, Blacks, Irish and, later, Mexicans and Jews.After Enton's three stories and a fourth of unknown authorship, the invention dime novel was taken over by Luis SENARENS, who (with anonymous associates) wrote a long series of Frank Reade, Jr. stories 1882-98, culminating in the Frank Reade Library. In this series the type of invention shifted to electric air vessels, land rovers and submarines, all showing the strong influence of Jules VERNE. The narrative more typically became one of (frequently inaccurate) geographical exploration and adventure, sometimes incorporating minor lost-race episodes.The Frank Reade, Jr. stories were historically the most important invention stories, but other story chains existed, as did individual stories about other boy inventors with airships or submarines. When the sales of the Frank Reade Library languished, Tousey issued a companion series, the Jack Wright stories, again by Senarens. Competing boy-inventor series from Street & Smith appeared: the doings of Tom Edison, Jr., written mostly by Philip READE, and Electric Bob, written by Robert Toombes. Both series are much superior to the Frank Reade, Jr. stories in content and writing, and both are morally less offensive, but neither of them had the cultural impact of Tousey's Frank Reade Library.The dime-novel lost-race story did not necessarily follow the full pattern of its adult counterpart (colonial exploitation, mythic elements, sacred-vs-secular clashes, exotic sex partners, destruction of the land, etc.), but was often a frank chronicle of smugly justified looting. As Senarens said in Jack Wright and his Prairie Engine (The Boys' Star Library 1892; 1908), Jack having "liberated" an enormous diamond: "There was no crime in taking it. It was part of an idol, worshipped in lieu of heaven, and wresting such an object from infidels is no crime in the eyes of the Almighty." Typical lost-race dime novels are: Frank Reade, Jr., and His Electric Coach (The Boys of New York 1890-91; 1893) by "Noname", with Ancient Hebrews; The Missing Island (1894) by "Noname", with Aztecs; A Trip to the Center of the Earth (New York Boys' Weekly 1878; 1894) by Howard De Vere (pseudonym of Howard Van Orden), which has acculturated early Americans with interesting speech changes; The Lost Captain (1880; 1906) by Frederick Whittaker, with Old Norse at the North Pole; Lost at the South Pole (The Boys of New York 1888 as by J.G. Bradley; 1899 as by Capt. Thomas H. Wilson), with strange races; Among the Fire Worshipers (The Boys of New York 1880 as by Berton Bertrew; 1902 as by Howard Austin), with Aztecs; "Underground" (Golden Hours May-July 1890) by Thomas P. Montfort, with Toltecs in Australia; and Across the Frozen Sea (1894) by "Noname", again with Old Norse at the North Pole. An unusual dime novel for adults is El Rubio Bravo, King of the Swordsmen (1881) by Col. Thomas Hoyer Monstery, about Aztecs.Lost-race stories turned up unexpectedly elsewhere. The detective stories about Nick CARTER written by Frederic Rensselaer Dey (1861-1922) under the pseudonym Chickering Carter provide several examples. In The Index of Seven Stars (1907) and An Amazonian Queen (1907) Nick has adventures among a lost race of mixed Old Norse and Indian origin, ruled by women, and excels in the gladiatorial arena. A 7-vol series beginning with Facing an Unseen Terror (1907) and ending with The Seven-Headed Monster (1907) describes a supercivilization hidden in the foothills of the Himalayas, with flying machines lofted by a new radioactive element: the hidden race has also mastered electricity, vibration and the lifeforce. This time the mighty Nick meets his superior in the wicked scientist Zanabayah.Lost-race incidents of a more marginal kind frequently occur in invention and geographical-adventure dime novels. In most cases they are concerned with Pre-Columbian American peoples, based loosely on popular American archaeology, and sometimes influenced by the work of H. Rider HAGGARD. In "marvel" dime novels lost-race situations are also common, usually concerning themselves with imaginary peoples possessing high civilizations.This third group of dime novels, stressing "marvel" elements, emerged in the late 1880s and reached its fullest development in the 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century. The "marvel" tale was no longer a Vernean yarn of geographical adventure or one of Wild West thrills and high jinks, but frankly set its protagonist into extremely fantastic circumstances, often seemingly supernatural, which were almost always rationalized. Instead of savage Indians, Western badmen, malicious "Greasers", pirates, bears, giant snakes, sea serpents, frenzied whales and giant octopuses, it utilized dwarfs, giants, strangely teratological races, outlandish customs, mammoths, magical gems and crystals, bobbing and ducking islands, wonderful cavern worlds and mysterious appearances and disappearances. Inventions, when they appeared, were more likely to be the product of alien races than the brainchildren of boy inventors. Instead of operating steam or electric land rovers, flying ship-hulls and Nautilus-like submarines, heroes might encounter bizarre means of transportation: ANTIGRAVITY airships or vehicles powered by fantastic new energies, sometimes suggested by Bulwer LYTTON's "vril". The purportedly realistic geography of the Vernean dime novel yielded to outlandish ambiences in Antarctica, inside the HOLLOW EARTH or even on other planets.The central theme of the "marvel" story was no longer mechanical exploitation or destruction of the environment (and weaker peoples), as in the Frank Reade, Jr. stories, but encounter with the strange, grotesque, magical and inexplicable. The note of sadism and ethnic rancour that permeated the earlier invention stories was usually lacking, or at least much toned down.Some marvel elements appeared in the later Frank Reade, Jr. stories, but they were found in much finer form in the sometimes very imaginative work of Francis W. DOUGHTY, Fred THORPE and Cornelius SHEA. Other significant marvel stories included Six Weeks in the Moon (1896) by "Noname" (perhaps Senarens), Under the World (Golden Hours as "Into the Maelstrom" 1894; 1906) by John DE MORGAN and "Three Boys from the Moon" (Happy Days Aug-Sep 1901) as by Gaston Garne (a Norman L. Munro house name).Apart from the work of Verne and Haggard, contemporary adult sf had almost no influence on dime-novel sf. Imaginary- WAR stories are rare, the only significant one being "Holland, the Destroyer" (Golden Hours 1900-1) by Hal Harkaway (house name used here by Edward T. STRATEMEYER), in which the USA, at war with almost the entire world, is saved by a supersubmarine. Interplanetary elements enter the last Frank Reade, Jr. stories and Doughty's pseudonymous Two Boys on a Trip to an Unknown Planet (The Boys of New York 1989 as by Albert J. Booth; 1901 as by Richard R. Montgomery), but they are fantastic and show no knowledge of contemporary adult work. Weldon J. COBB, a Chicago author, presumably read a US newspaper adaptation of H.G. WELLS's THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (Pearson's Magazine 1897; 1898): his At War with Mars (Golden Hours Sep-Nov 1897; 1907) reads as near-plagiarism, with Martian cylinders striking in the USA - as an original element, the Martians have fitted out Phobos as an armed space station for the attack on Earth. Cobb's "To Mars with Tesla" (New Golden Hours Mar-May 1901) contains an abortive space flight - the landing point proves to be the Southwest desert, not MARS as planned.The sf dime novel has had a larger influence on later sf than has been generally recognized. The invention story of the Frank Reade, Jr. sort led directly, through the Stratemeyer Syndicate, to such boys' fiction as TOM SWIFT (see also JUVENILE SERIES). Many early PULP-MAGAZINE sf-adventure stories are simply dime novels translated for an older readership, while individual points of influence are common enough. The situations in Edgar Rice BURROUGHS's Opar and A. MERRITT's Muria ("The Conquest of the Moon Pool" 1919) seem to be indebted to dime novels, while Rex STOUT's Under the Andes (All-Story 1914; 1984) is simply a Cornelius Shea sort of story with modifications. A. Conan DOYLE's The Lost World (1912) was probably influenced by "Noname"'s The Island in the Air (1896), and David LINDSAY's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920) possibly by Doughty's Two Boys on a Trip to an Unknown Planet. One can also link the episodic structure and strange races in L. Frank BAUM's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) with "marvel" dime novels.There were European equivalents and near-equivalents of Dime Novels, one of the most interesting being the German periodical Der LUFTPIRAT UND SEIN LENKBARES LUFTSCHIFF , featuring Captain Mors, which was a pure SPACE-OPERA series, the earliest known. (For UK equivalents BOYS' PAPERS.) [EFB] DIMENSION 5 (vt Dimension Four US) Film (1966). United Pictures and Harold Goldman Associates. Dir Franklin Adreon, starring Jeffrey Hunter, France Nuyen, Harold Sakata, Donald Woods. Screenplay Arthur C. Pierce. 92 mins, cut to 88 mins. Colour.Adreon and Pierce were the team that made CYBORG 2087 (also 1966). This equally cheap production has Sakata, who played the villain Oddjob in the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964), as one of the Chinese communists who plan to blow up Los Angeles by planting an H-bomb. They are foiled by a US secret agent who can go back and forth in time by pressing a button on his belt. [JB] DIMENSION FOUR DIMENSION 5. DIMENSIONS We perceive three spatial dimensions, but theoretical MATHEMATICS is easily capable of dealing with many more. Conventional graphical analysis frequently represents time as a dimension, encouraging consideration of it as the "fourth dimension". The possible existence of PARALLEL WORLDS displaced from ours along a fourth spatial dimension (in the same way that a series of two-dimensional universes might lie next to one another like the pages of a book) is a popular hypothesis in sf, and such worlds are frequently referred to as "other dimensions". The COSMOLOGY of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (1916), which proposes a four-dimensional model of the Universe in which the notions of space and time are collapsed into a single "spacetime continuum", offered considerable encouragement to sf notions of a multidimensional Universe (or "multiverse"). Many modern occultists and pseudoscientists have followed in the tracks of Johann Zollner (1834-1882), author of Transcendental Physics (1865), who borrowed mathematical notions to "justify" the idea of the "astral plane" beloved by spiritualists and Theosophists. J.W. DUNNE used the notion to explain prophetic dreams, eventually constructing a theory of the "Serial Universe", and P.D. Ouspensky (1878-1947) built a more complex model of the Universe in which time"moves" in a spiral and there are six spatial dimensions.The possible dimensional limitations of human existence and perception were dramatized by Edwin A. ABBOTT in Flatland (1884) as by "A Square", which describes a world of two-dimensional beings, one of whom is challenged to imagine our three-dimensional world - encouraging readers, by analogy, to attempt to imagine a four-dimensional world. The challenge was taken up by C.H. HINTON, whose many essays on the subject attempt to "explain" ghosts and to imagine a four-dimensional God from whom nothing in the human world can be hidden. In his story "An Unfinished Communication" (1895) the afterlife involves freedom to move along the time dimension ( TIME TRAVEL) to relive and reassess moments of life; he also wrote a Flatland novel, An Episode of Flatland (1907). H.G. WELLS borrowed Hintonian arguments to "explain" the working of the device in THE TIME MACHINE (1895). The eponymous figure of E.V. ODLE's The Clockwork Man (1923) could perceive many dimensions when working properly, but while malfunctioning could do no more than flutter back and forth in time, offering the merest hint of the quality of multidimensional life. Algernon BLACKWOOD's "The Pikestaffe Case" (1924) attempts to evoke the non-Euclidean geometry of a dimensional trap lurking within a mirror.Early GENRE-SF writers who found the notion of dimensions fascinating included Miles J. BREUER, most notably in "The Appendix and the Spectacles" (1928) and"The Captured Cross-Section" (1929), and Donald WANDREI, notably in "The Monster from Nowhere" (1935) and"Infinity Zero" (1936). In E.E."Doc" SMITH's Skylark of Valeron (1934; 1949) the heroes briefly enter a four-dimensional reality, and in Clifford D. SIMAK's "Hellhounds of the Cosmos" (1932), 99 men enter the fourth dimension in a single grotesque body to fight a four-dimensional monster. Henry KUTTNER's and C.L. MOORE's classic "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" (1943 as by Lewis Padgett) features toys from the future which educate children into four-dimensional habits of thought, but, like most stories of the period, this uses dimensional trickery casually to tie up its plot with a neat knot.The mathematical discipline of topology inspired several dimensional fantasies: Moebius strips feature in Martin GARDNER's "No-Sided Professor" (1946) and "The Island of Five Colours" (1952), Theodore STURGEON's "What Dead Men Tell" (1949), Arthur C. CLARKE's "Wall of Darkness" (1949) and Homer NEARING Jr's "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" (1954); Klein bottles and tesseracts feature in "The Last Magician" (1951) by Bruce ELLIOTT, "And He Built a Crooked House" (1941) by Robert A. HEINLEIN and "Star, Bright" (1952) by Mark CLIFTON. Occam's Razor by David DUNCAN (1957) also deploys topological jargon to shore up its dimensional speculations. George GAMOW's popularization of ideas in modern physics, Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (coll 1939), dramatizes certain odd situations very well (although its contents are didactic essays rather than stories).The notion that spaceships might make use of a fourth-dimensional HYPERSPACE in order to evade the limiting velocity of light is very common in sf, having been initially popularized by Isaac ASIMOV among others, but few stories actually attempt to describe it; it is usually imagined as a chaotic environment which utterly confuses the senses, as in Frederik POHL's "The Mapmakers" (1955) and Clifford D. Simak's "All the Traps of Earth" (1960). The dimensional chaos that might be associated with BLACK HOLES has received closer attention, though these too are most often used as "wormholes" permitting very long journeys to be taken more or less instantaneously. Among the more effective representations of experience in dimensionally distorted environments are Norman KAGAN's "The Mathenauts" (1964), David I. MASSON's "Traveller's Rest" (1965) and Christopher PRIEST's INVERTED WORLD (1974; vt The Inverted World US).In recent years C.H. Hinton's ideas have been revived by Rudy RUCKER, who has used dimensional mathematics very extravagantly in a number of his novels and short stories, including the afterlife fantasy WHITE LIGHT (1980), the comedy of fourth-dimensional intrusions The Sex Sphere (1983) and many of the shorter pieces first published in The 57th Franz Kafka (coll 1983) and reprinted, with others, in Transreal! (coll 1991). Rucker is the only modern author to have answered "A Square's" challenge with authentic verve and authority, but A.J. Dewdney's The Planiverse (1984) is an interesting drama-documentary about a two-dimensional world whose topography recalls Hinton's Flatland more than Abbott's.Relevant theme anthologies include Fantasia Mathematica (anth 1958) and The Mathematical Magpie (anth 1962), both ed Clifton Fadiman, and Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension (anth 1953) ed Groff CONKLIN. [BS]See also: INVASION. DIOMEDE, JOHN K. [s] George Alec EFFINGER. DIOSCORIDES, Dr Pieter HARTING. DIRAC COMMUNICATOR A device invented by James BLISH for the story "Beep" (1954; exp as The Quincunx of Time 1973), and used by him also in other stories. It is an instantaneous communicator, named after the great theoretical physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984). Others have since borrowed the device, but more recently Ursula K. LE GUIN's ANSIBLE has been the communicator of preference for sf writers. [PN]See also: FASTER THAN LIGHT. DISASTER Cataclysm, natural or manmade, is one of the most popular themes in sf. Tales of future WAR and INVASION belong here, but for convenience are dealt with under those separate headings. Stories which emphasize the nature of the societies which spring up after a great disaster are dealt with under HOLOCAUST AND AFTER.Central to the disaster tradition are stories of vast biospheric changes which drastically affect human life. Tales of universal floods are at least as old as The Epic of Gilgamesh (c2000BC), and other motifs, such as plagues, fires and famines, have an obvious source in the Bible, particularly the Revelation of St John (also known as the Apocalypse, whence the adjective "apocalyptic", frequently applied to this form of sf). Disaster stories appeal because they represent everything we most fear and at the same time, perhaps, secretly desire: a depopulated world, escape from the constraints of a highly organized industrial society, the opportunity to prove one's ability as a survivor. Perhaps because they represent a punishment meted out for the hubris of technological Man, such stories have not been particularly popular in the US sf magazines. The ideology of disaster stories runs counter to the optimistic and expansionist attitudes associated with ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION and its long-time editor, John W. CAMPBELL Jr. In fact, most examples of the type are from the UK, and it has been suggested that this may be associated with the UK's decline as a world power throughout the 20th century.However, some of the earliest examples were written at the height of Empire. H.G. WELLS's "The Star" (1897) and M.P. SHIEL's The Purple Cloud (1901; rev 1929) are both tales of cataclysm. In the first a runaway star collides with the Earth, and in the second a mysterious gas kills all but two people, a new Adam and Eve. Arthur Conan DOYLE's The Poison Belt (1913) also features a gas, but in this case it turns out not to be fatal. After WWI the disaster theme became more common. J.J. CONNINGTON's Nordenholt's Million (1923) portrays the social chaos following an agricultural blight caused by a mutation in nitrogen-fixing bacteria. S. Fowler WRIGHT's Deluge (1928) and Dawn (1929) depict the destruction of civilization by earthquakes and floods, and subsequent attempts to build a new society. John COLLIER's Tom's A-Cold (1933; vt Full Circle US) and Alun LLEWELLYN's The Strange Invaders (1934) both deal effectively with survival in a post-holocaust world. R.C. SHERRIFF's The Hopkins Manuscript (1939; rev vt The Cataclysm) depicts the Moon's collision with Earth, and is a SATIRE on UK complacency in the face of impending war.After WWII there was a resurgence, to an even higher level, of the disaster theme. John WYNDHAM's The Day of the Triffids (1951) is an enjoyable tale of a world in which all but a few have been blinded and everyone is menaced by huge, poisonous plants. His The Kraken Wakes (1953; vt Out of the Deeps US) is also a successful blend of invasion and catastrophe themes: sea-dwelling aliens melt Earth's icecaps and cause the inundation of the civilized world. The success of Wyndham's novels inspired many emulators. The most distinguished was John CHRISTOPHER, whose The Death of Grass (1956; vt No Blade of Grass US) is a fine study of the breakdown of civilized values when a virus kills all crops. The same author's The World in Winter (1962; vt The Long Winter US) and A Wrinkle in the Skin (1965; vt The Ragged Edge US) are also above-average works: one concerns a new Ice Age and the other features earthquakes. Many other UK novelists have dealt in similar catastrophes; e.g., J.T. MCINTOSH in One in Three Hundred (1954), John BOLAND in White August (1955), Charles Eric MAINE in The Tide Went Out (1958; rev vt Thirst! 1977), Edmund COOPER in All Fools' Day (1966), D.F. JONES in Don't Pick the Flowers (1971; vt Denver is Missing US) and Kit PEDLER and Gerry DAVIS in Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters * (1972). Keith ROBERTS's The Furies (1966), D.G. COMPTON's The Silent Multitude (1966) and Richard COWPER's The Twilight of Briareus (1974) combine disaster and invasion themes in the Wyndham manner. Fred and Geoffrey HOYLE's The Inferno (1973) deals with humanity's attempts to survive devastating cosmic radiation.There have been several more personal uses of the disaster theme by UK writers - studies in character and psychology rather than adventure stories. An early example was John BOWEN's After the Rain (1958). More impressive are J.G. BALLARD's examinations of human "collaborations" with natural disasters: The Drowned World (1962 US), The Burning World (1964 US; rev vt The Drought UK) and THE CRYSTAL WORLD (1966), which concern the psychological attractions of flooded, arid and crystalline landscapes. Brian W. ALDISS's Greybeard (1964) is a well written tale of universal sterility and the impending death of the human race. Several younger UK writers, influenced by Aldiss and Ballard, have produced variations on the cataclysmic theme: Charles PLATT in "The Disaster Story" (1966) and The City Dwellers (1970), M. John HARRISON in The Committed Men (1971) and Christopher PRIEST in Fugue for a Darkening Island (1972). John BRUNNER has made strong admonitory use of the form in his novel of ecological catastrophe, The Sheep Look Up (1972). Angela CARTER's HEROES AND VILLAINS (1969) is a powerful love story set in the aftermath of a disaster, and Doris LESSING's Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) is about a passive woman who observes society's collapse from her window.US disaster novels are fewer in number. Oddly enough, where UK writers reveal an obsession with the weather, US writers show a strong concern for disease. Disastrous epidemics feature in Jack LONDON's The Scarlet Plague (1915), George R. STEWART's EARTH ABIDES (1949), Richard MATHESON's I Am Legend (1954), Algis BUDRYS's Some Will Not Die (1961), Michael CRICHTON's The Andromeda Strain (1969), Chelsea Quinn YARBRO's Time of the Fourth Horseman (1976) and Stephen KING's THE STAND (cut from manuscript 1978; text largely restored and rev 1990). Of these, Stewart's EARTH ABIDES is the outstanding work, containing much sensitive description of landscape and of the moral problems of the survivors. Other notable disaster stories by US writers include The Second Deluge (1912) by Garrett P. SERVISS, Darkness and Dawn (1914) by George Allan ENGLAND, When Worlds Collide (1933) by Edwin BALMER and Philip WYLIE, Greener Than You Think (1947) by Ward MOORE, "The XI Effect" (1950) by Philip LATHAM, Cat's Cradle (1963) by Kurt VONNEGUT Jr, The Genocides (1965) by Thomas M. DISCH, "And Us, Too, I Guess" (1973) by George Alec EFFINGER, The Swarm (1974) by Arthur HERZOG and Lucifer's Hammer (1977) by Larry NIVEN and Jerry POURNELLE.Japanese sf seems to have a leaning towards disaster themes. Two notable examples are Kobo A BE's Dai-Yon Kampyoki (1959; trans as Inter Ice Age 4 1970 US) and Sakyo KOMATSU's Nippon Chinbotsu (1973; cut trans as Japan Sinks 1976). The latter was filmed in 1973 as NIPPON CHINBOTSU (vt The Submersion of Japan; vt Tidal Wave).Disaster is a popular motif in sf in the CINEMA and on TELEVISION. Examples are the US film EARTHQUAKE (1975) and the UK tv series SURVIVORS (1975-7). The disaster-movie boom in the US took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and featured disasters both domestic and sciencefictional; a producer associated with films of both kinds was Irwin ALLEN. Another form is the MONSTER MOVIE (which see).Curiously enough, although the 1980s were generally regarded as a pessimistic decade, the disaster theme in sf seemed largely played out, with only occasional books of any consequence. Among them were The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica (1983) by John Calvin BATCHELOR, which is an ironic account of civilization's collapse, James MORROW's THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS (1986), which puts survivors of a global holocaust on trial, Greg BEAR's The Forge of God (1987), which has Earth destroyed by alien machines, and David BRIN's Earth (1990), which has Earth in danger of being swallowed up by a small BLACK HOLE at its core. [DP/PN]See also: COSY CATASTROPHE; DYSTOPIAS; ECOLOGY; END OF THE WORLD; ENTROPY; MUTANTS; NUCLEAR POWER; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM. DISASTER IN TIME (vt Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, vt Timescape) Made-for-tv movie (1991). Channel Communications presents a Wild Street Pictures Production. Dir David N.Twohy; prod John A. O'Connor; screenplay by Twohy, based on "Vintage Season" (1946 ASF) by Lawrence O'Donnell (probably C.L. MOORE writing solo); starring Jeff Daniels,Ariana Richards, Emilia Crow, George Murdock. 99 mins (cut to 90). Colour.This is a classy little movie, quite without pretension, based on the famous story of time-travelling tourists from a future suffering from ennui, who stimulate themselves by attending great disasters in the past. Daniels plays an innkeeper (he has lost his wife in tragic circumstances) in a small New England town who is baffled by his unusual guests; disaster (a meteor) strikes the nearby town, his daughter Hilary (Ariana Richards) is subsequently killed,but his access to the tourists' time-travelling device enables a replay of history during which there are two innkeepers in the same time frame, and after which things end well, maybe more than once. Adroit and intelligent, with a pleasant sting in the tail. [PN] DISCH, THOMAS M(ICHAEL) (1940- ) US writer, raised in Minnesota but for many years intermittently resident in New York where, before becoming a full-time writer in the mid-1960s, he worked in an advertising agency and in a bank; he has subsequently lived (and set several tales) in the UK, Turkey, Italy and Mexico. He began publishing sf with "The Double-Timer" for Fantastic in 1962; much of his early work appears in One Hundred and Two H Bombs (coll 1966 UK; with 2 stories omitted and 2 added 1971 USA; with those 2 new stories omitted along with 2 previous stories, and 7 new stories added vt White Fang Goes Dingo and Other Funny SF Stories 1971 UK). "White Fang Goes Dingo", which appears only in the first and third versions of the collection, soon became TMD's second (and rather minor) novel, Mankind Under the Leash (1965 Worlds of If as "White Fang Goes Dingo"; exp 1966 dos; vt The Puppies of Terra 1978 UK); in it ALIENS take over Earth and make pets of mankind for aesthetic reasons. The hero, White Fang, eventually drives the aliens off, but his feelings towards his period of effortless slavery as a dancing pet remain ambivalent. The first version of One Hundred and Two H Bombs, plus one of the stories added to the second edition, plus Mankind Under the Leash under its vt The Puppies of Terra, all appear in The Early Science Fiction Stories of Thomas M. Disch (coll 1977) ed David G. HARTWELL.TMD's first novel, The Genocides (1965), his most formidable early work, also involves alien manipulation of Earth from a perspective indifferent (this time chillingly) to any human values or priorities or conventions of storytelling; this sense of the indifference of society or the Universe pervades his work, helping to distinguish it from US sf in general, which remained fundamentally optimistic about the relevance of human values through the 1960s. In The Genocides the aliens seed Earth with enormous plants, in effect transforming the planet into a monoculture agribusiness, an environment in which it gradually becomes impossible for humans to survive. When groups attempt to fight back, the aliens treat them as vermin, worms in the apple of the planet; and, in one of the most chilling conclusions to any sf novel published in the USA, fumigate them.Echo Round his Bones (1967) - later assembled with The Genocides and Mankind Under the Leash as Triplicity (omni 1980) - is another minor work, but CAMP CONCENTRATION (1967 NW; 1968 UK) is TMD's most sustained sf invention, and represents the highwater mark of his involvement with the UK NEW WAVE (he was one of several Americans, including John T. SLADEK, to be strongly associated with UK rather than US sf in the late 1960s). Told entirely in journal form, CAMP CONCENTRATION recounts its narrator's experiences as an inmate in a NEAR-FUTURE US concentration camp where the military has treated him with Pallidine, a wonder drug which heightens human INTELLIGENCE but causes death within months. Along with his fellow-inmates, the narrator understands he is being used as a kind of self-destructing think tank, experiencing the ecstasy of enhanced intelligence and the agonies of "retribution" - the analogies with Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (1947 Sweden; trans 1948 US) are explicit - but his death is averted by a trope-quoting sf climax which has been sharply criticized as a begging of the issues raised.The next books were less weighty. Black Alice (1968) with Sladek, writing together as Thom DEMIJOHN, though not sf is reminiscent of both writers. The Prisoner * (1969) is a tie to the tv series The PRISONER . Much of TMD's best work in the years around CAMP CONCENTRATION is in shorter forms, most of the stories being assembled in Under Compulsion (coll 1968 UK; vt Fun with Your New Head 1971 US) and Getting into Death (coll 1973 UK), a title superseded by the superior US edition, Getting into Death and Other Stories (coll 1976), which deletes 5 stories and adds 4. TMD's most famous single story, "The Asian Shore" (1970), which appears in both versions of the collection, renders with gripping verisimilitude the transmutation of a bourgeois Western man into a lower-class urban Turk with family, through a process of possession. Other notable stories from this period include "The Master of the Milford Altarpiece" (1968), "Displaying the Flag" (1973) and "The Jocelyn Shrager Story" (1975). Increasingly, during the 1970s, TMD's best work made use of sf components (if at all) as background to stories of character; in much of this work his protagonists are directly involved, whether or not successfully, in the making of ART, and he increasingly devoted himself to studies of the nature of the artist and of the world s/he attempts to mould but which generally, crushingly, moulds her/him. From this period date his first volumes of poetry (he writes much of his POETRY as "Tom Disch"), the contents of which evince a sharp speculative clarity whose roots are almost certainly generic. After Highway Sandwiches (coll 1970 chap), with Marilyn Hacker (1942- ) and Charles PLATT, and The Best Way to Figure Plumbing (coll 1972), further work appeared in ABCDEFG HIJKLM NPOQRST UVWXYZ (coll 1981 chap UK) (the ordering NPOQRST being sic), Burn This (coll 1982 chap UK), Here I Am, There You Are, Where Were We? (coll 1984 chap UK), Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poems (coll 1989), and Dark Verses and Light (coll 1991). Tom Disch is for many readers primarily a poet whose connection with sf, if known, seems secondary.TMD's most enduring single work of the 1970s is, however, sf. 334 (coll of linked stories 1972 UK), possibly his best book, is set in a near-future Manhattan; the stories, whose linkings are so subtle and elaborate that it is possible - and probably desirable - to read the book as a novel, pivot about the apartment building whose address (334 East 11th Street) is the title of the book (the numbers 3,3,4 also serve as an arithmetical base [ OULIPO] for the design and proportions of the text). 334 comprises a social portrait of urban life in about AD2025 in a New York where existence has become even more difficult, intense and straitened than it is now, and where the authorities treat humans no better than TMD's aliens do; but the essence of the book lies in the patterns of survival achieved by its numerous characters, whose aspirations and successes and failures in this darkened urban world do not step over the bounds of what we may expect will become normal experience. ON WINGS OF SONG (1979 UK) is likewise set mainly in a near-future New York, and thematically sums up most of the abiding concerns of TMD's career, as well as presenting an exemplary portrait of the pleasures and miseries of art in a world made barbarous by material scarcities and spiritual lassitude; in the final analysis, however, it lacks the complex, energetic denseness of the earlier book.By this point, he had in any case begun significantly to lessen his production of sf. Neither his massive Gothic novel Clara Reeve (1975) as by Leonie Hargrave - earlier, with Sladek, he had collaborated on a more routine Gothic, The House that Fear Built (1966), the two writing together as Cassandra Knye - nor Neighboring Lives (1981) with Charles Naylor (1941- ), an historical analysis in fictional terms of mid-19th-century English literary life, has any genre content. There followed two collections of literate but significantly less engaged genre work - FUNDAMENTAL DISCH (coll 1980; cut 1981 UK) and The Man who Had No Idea (coll 1982 UK) - as well as The Businessman: A Tale of Terror (1984), an intricately metaphysical horror novel. Its thematic partners - The MD: A Horror Story (1991), a massive and ambitious exercise in the supernatural whose conclusion takes place in a complexly devastated near future; and The Priest: A Gothic Romance (1994 UK), which savagely satirizes the sexual hypocrises and obsessions of the modern Roman Catholic Church through a plot involving pedophilia and doppelgangers - mark only a partial return to the instrumental sf of his early work; however, as a requiem for and an ethical indictment of the US this century, it is as punishing as any of the more conspicuously radical works from the beginning of his career. Amnesia (written and programed 1986) is an engaging piece of interactive software. He is the author of two plays, Ben Hur (produced 1989) and The Cardinal Detoxes (produced 1990; 1993 chap), the latter being the subject of a controversy instigated by the Roman Catholic Church. TMD has been theatre critic for The Nation for several years, with an intermission in 1991-2.His virtual departure from sf may be not unconnected to the nature of the field's response to him. Because of his intellectual audacity, the chillingly distanced mannerism of his narrative art, the austerity of the pleasures he affords, and the fine cruelty of his wit, TMD has been perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied and least read of all modern first-rank sf writers. He received the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD for ON WINGS OF SONG in 1980, but has otherwise gone relatively unhonoured by a field normally over-generous with its kudos. [JC]Other works: Alfred the Great * (1969) as by Victor Hastings, an associational film tie; Orders of the Retina (coll 1982 chap), poetry; Ringtime: A Story (1983 chap); Torturing Mr Amberwell (1985 chap); The Tale of Dan de Lion (1986 chap), a tale in verse; The Brave Little Toaster (1981 Fantasy Annual IV; 1986 chap) and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1988 chap), juveniles; The Silver Pillow: A Tale of Witchcraft (dated 1987 but 1988).As Editor: A series of incisive theme anthologies of unusually high calibre, comprising The Ruins of Earth (anth 1973), Bad Moon Rising (original anth 1973) and The New Improved Sun: An Anthology of Utopian Science Fiction (anth 1975); two additional anthologies with Charles Naylor, New Constellations (anth 1976) and Strangeness (anth 1977).About the author: The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch - Angouleme (1978) by Samuel R. DELANY; A Tom Disch Checklist: Notes Toward a Bibliography (1983 chap) by Chris DRUMM.See also: BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD; CHILDREN IN SF; CITIES; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DISASTER; DYSTOPIAS; END OF THE WORLD; ENTROPY; ESCHATOLOGY; FANTASY; GOTHIC SF; HORROR IN SF; HUMOUR; INVASION; MATTER TRANSMISSION; MESSIAHS; MUSIC; MYTHOLOGY; NEW WORLDS; OMNI; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; OVERPOPULATION; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD; POLLUTION; PSYCHOLOGY; SEX; SUPERMAN; UTOPIAS; VENUS. DISCOVERY AND INVENTION These two topics are dealt with together because it is difficult to separate them, the discovery of a new principle usually being followed by the invention of a means of exploiting it. The discovery of new places is dealt with in COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS and LOST WORLDS. Invention, too, is discussed in other entries, including IMAGINARY SCIENCE, MACHINES, POWER SOURCES, PREDICTION, TECHNOLOGY and TRANSPORTATION.The invention story was prominent in 19th-century sf, notably in the works of Jules VERNE, who could almost be said to have invented it. Vernean inventions, particularly of new kinds of transport, were a feature of DIME-NOVEL SF. Yankee knowhow and inventiveness were carried into the past with Mark TWAIN's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). (A modern version of Twain's story, with a more sophisticated view of HISTORY, is LEST DARKNESS FALL [1941] by L. Sprague DE CAMP.) Edward Everett HALE invented orbital satellites in "The Brick Moon" (1869). Later in the century the US inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) became a hero figure; his exploits were much imitated in sf, and his name often borrowed ( EDISONADE); some of these stories are also described under SCIENTISTS. Rudyard KIPLING invented the transatlantic airmail postal service in "With the Night Mail" (1905). H.G. WELLS invented a huge number of devices - some fantastic, as in THE TIME MACHINE (1895), and some realistic, as with the tanks in "The Land Ironclads" (1903) and atomic war in The World Set Free (1914). Samuel CHAPMAN's Doctor Jones' Picnic (1898) features a busy inventor who creates a huge aluminium BALLOON and a homoeopathic cure for cancer. The index of Everett F. BLEILER's Science-Fiction: The Early Years (1990) lists 134 stories and novels according to their particular inventions, those for "g" being "gasoline substitute, ghost condensor, gravity storage apparatus, gunpowder engine"; other letters of the alphabet produce examples just as eccentric.The invention story had an especially strong vogue in the early PULP MAGAZINES, where it was equalled in popularity as an sf subject only by the future- WAR story and the lost-race story. Examples are: George Allan ENGLAND's The Golden Blight (1912 Cavalier; 1916), in which a gold-disintegrator effects economic revolution; William Wallace COOK's The Eighth Wonder (1906-7 Argosy; 1925), in which an eccentric inventor threatens to steal the world's electricity supply with a huge electromagnet; and Garrett P. SERVISS's The Moon Metal (1900), in which a MATTER TRANSMITTER is invented to obtain artemisium, a rare valuable metal, from the Moon.The years 1900-30 were largely those of scientific OPTIMISM, and in the pulps Hugo GERNSBACK was one of its prophets. Before founding AMAZING STORIES he did well with his magazine SCIENCE AND INVENTION, which featured much technological fiction. His own Ralph 124C 41+ (1911-12 Modern Electrics; fixup 1925) is one of the most celebrated of those novels whose raison d'etre is to catalogue the inventions of the future; they include tv.The discovery/invention story continued to pop up every now and then outside GENRE SF, as in C.S. FORESTER's The Peacemaker (1934), in which a pacifist invents a magnetic disrupter which stops machinery; E.C. LARGE's Sugar in the Air (1937), in which a process for artificial photosynthesis is discovered; and William GOLDING's play The Brass Butterfly (1956 as "Envoy Extraordinary"; 1958), in which a brilliant inventor in ancient Greece is given short shrift by his ruler, who sees the new inventions as an unpleasing threat to the status quo. But it was inside genre sf that the invention story found its true home, though tending to become more sombre when the central metaphor of Mary SHELLEY's Frankenstein (1818) - the inventor being destroyed by his creation - was given contemporary relevance by the dropping of the atom bomb over Hiroshima. Even before that, stories featuring NUCLEAR POWER, such as Lester DEL REY's "Nerves" (1942), had been very much aware of the dangers of such inventions. John W. CAMPBELL Jr, both as a writer and as editor of ASF, was taking a gloomier view of technological advance by the late 1930s, although his own The Mightiest Machine (1934 ASF; 1947) had been a jolly romp, featuring the invention of a SPACESHIP which can take its energy direct from the stars. Campbell's ASF continued through the 1940s to publish a number of invention stories, in which scientific plausibility was emphasized as never before in genre sf. The results included Robert A. HEINLEIN's "Waldo" (1942 ASF as by Anson MacDonald; vt Waldo: Genius in Orbit 1958). This is a gripping, optimistic invention story; the term WALDO is still used today for remote-control devices. George O. SMITH's Venus Equilateral stories (ASF 1942-5; coll as Venus Equilateral 1947) feature much inventive work in radio COMMUNICATIONS across the Solar System. ASF's invention syndrome was given a boost by James BLISH's Okie stories, which feature the SPINDIZZY, one of the most attractive of all sf inventions; they appeared 1950-54, and in book form as the first 2 vols of the Cities in Flight tetralogy: Earthman, Come Home (1955) and They Shall Have Stars (1956 UK; vt Year 2018! US). ASF sometimes struck a lighter note vis-a-vis inventions, notably in the Galloway Gallegher stories (1943-8) by Lewis Padgett (Henry KUTTNER). These feature an inventor whose creative faculties are released by the intake of large quantities of alcohol, and his irritating robot sidekick; they were collected as Robots Have No Tails (coll of linked stories 1952) as by Kuttner. Meanwhile ASF's competitors were also featuring lighthearted invention stories alongside the more doom-laden variety. A notable example of the former was the Lancelot Biggs series of SPACE OPERAS by Nelson S. BOND, which appeared mostly in Fantastic Adventures (1939-40) and were collected in revised form as Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman (coll of linked stories 1950). Biggs, the thin genius who bumbles around but gets there in the end, is typical of sf's more stereotyped inventors. Many other relevant genre-sf stories are collected in Science Fiction Inventions (anth 1967) ed Damon KNIGHT.Many famous sf discoveries have been made through a process of CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH, and about 40 of them are discussed under that rubric. One in particular is worthy of attention here: "Noise Level" (1952) by Raymond F. JONES. In this tale, which in its emphasis on the potential power of the human mind sums up the whole ethos of Campbell's ASF, a counterfeit invention is the occasion of conceptual breakthrough. A group of scientists are shown an apparently bona fide film of an ANTIGRAVITY device, the inventor of which has been killed. In their attempt to duplicate it they break through to a new understanding of physics, only to discover that the original was a fraud, the stratagem having been devised to exert psychological pressure on them to rethink their worldviews.Discovery/invention themes still proliferate in sf, as by the nature of the genre they always will. Important examples from the 1950s onward have been: Fred HOYLE's Ossian's Ride (1959), in which a sinister-seeming cartel has cordoned off southwest Ireland as an invention-producing area; Kurt VONNEGUT Jr's Cat's Cradle (1963), in which havoc is wreaked by a newly discovered form of ice which freezes everything it touches; Isaac ASIMOV's THE GODS THEMSELVES (1972), in which a new energy source, the positron pump, is invented with a great show of plausibility; and Bob SHAW's Other Days, Other Eyes (fixup 1972), based on his short story "Light of Other Days" (1966), which features "slow glass", one of the most convincing and original inventions of sf (it slows down light, thus effectively allowing events to be viewed after a time-lapse; the privacy-invading social consequences are intriguingly explored). Arthur C. CLARKE's Fountains of Paradise (1979), a classically optimistic work of technological invention, envisages the building in a NEAR-FUTURE Earth of a 36,000km (22,400 mile) tower to be used as a space elevator.One of the most interesting subthemes, which has persisted strongly into the 1990s, is found in stories relating the discoveries of ALIEN artefacts, very often with a subsequent desire to exploit them. Some, such as A.E. VAN VOGT's "A Can of Paint" (1944) and Robert SHECKLEY's "One Man's Poison" (1953; vt "Untouched by Human Hands") and "Hands Off" (1954), are basically comedies about the dangers of the incomprehensible ("One Man's Poison" contains the line "I don't eat anything that giggles"). But the theme has serious ramifications, too. Such stories often create a tension between the longing and wonder aroused by the thought that we are not alone, together with a sense of despair at the ambiguity of such objects and the doubt whether they will ever be understood. Such is Arthur C. Clarke's "Sentinel of Eternity" (1951; vt "The Sentinel"), the basis for the film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968); the story tells of the discovery of a strange monolith on the Moon. Clarke's RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA (1973) is entirely devoted to the exploration of, and failure to fully comprehend, a vast, apparently unmanned spaceship which enters the Solar System ( BIG DUMB OBJECTS). The psychological repercussions of Man's inability to comprehend the alien are well explored in Frederik POHL's GATEWAY (1977), where abandoned alien spaceships are discovered and used, but not understood; the reaching out so symbolized is obsessive, seductive and murderous.GATEWAY and the subsequent novels in Pohl's Heechee series are sociologically almost the reverse of the ASF stories referred to above, perhaps reflecting the lowering of self-esteem and morale in the West from the late 1960s onward. Whereas ASF published tales of human ingenuity conquering the unknown, Pohl's stories envisage humanity as bewildered by the discovery of superior technology in much the same way as Bushmen in our own world might be baffled by the products of the industrial West. The metaphor for this in Arkady and Boris STRUGATSKI's novella "Piknik na obochine" (1972; trans as "Roadside Picnic" in Roadside Picnic/Tale of the Troika, coll 1977) is of humans discovering enigma as they scrabble like rats through trash left by alien picnickers. The theme, not always so pessimistically expressed, is common in the sophisticated new wave of 1980s space opera as represented by authors like Greg BEAR and Paul J. MCAULEY, and also by Charles SHEFFIELD's Divergence (1991). A GOTHIC-SF variant of the theme appears in the malign consequences of the discovery of a long-buried alien spacecraft on Earth in Stephen KING's The Tommyknockers (1987). [PN] DiSILVESTRO, ROGER L. (1949- ) US writer whose first novel of genre interest was Ursula's Gift (1988), a humorous fantasy. His second, Living with the Reptiles (1990), spoofs the ethical tomfooleries of that form of the TIME-TRAVEL tale in which the protagonist changes history to save/destroy/play with the future. In this case the protagonists, after acquiring the necessary equipment in what remains of the Amazon jungle, pass into the 9th century, where shenanigans are soon afoot. [JC] DISINTEGRATOR In sf TERMINOLOGY, one of the commonest items of the sf armoury ( WEAPONS), especially in SPACE OPERA of the 1930s and 1940s. The device may have been a product of squeamishness-or perhaps just neatness - since it creates a maximum of destruction with a minimum of bleeding pieces left to sweep up afterwards. The disintegrator first reached a wide audience with the COMIC strip BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY in 1935, as a result of which toy disintegrators were very popular with kids in the late 1930s. [PN] DISRAELI, BENJAMIN (1804-1881) UK novelist and statesman, MP from 1837 and, in 1868 and again 1874-80, Prime Minister. He became Lord Beaconsfield. His almost-forgotten youthful novel The Voyage of Captain Popanilla (1828; published anon) has an innocent savage from a South Seas UTOPIA voyaging to an imaginary country closely resembling a satirized England. Modern sf normally uses actual ALIENS rather than savages as their innocent observers in books of this kind, but the principle is the same. BD features RECURSIVELY in THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE (1990 UK) by Bruce STERLING and William GIBSON. [PN] DITMAR AWARDS AWARDS. DIXIE, [Lady] FLORENCE (CAROLINE) (1855-1905) UK traveller and writer whose nonfiction Across Patagonia (1880) captures something of her FEMINIST urgency. In Gloriana, or The Revolution of 1900 (1890) a woman disguised as a man is elected Prime Minister of the UK and, though unmasked, establishes full equality between the sexes; by 1999, a woman-ruled UK beneficently dominates its Federated Empire. Isola, or The Disinherited: A Revolt for Women and All the Disinherited (1903), a play, depicts the coming to UTOPIAN plenitude of the society of Saxcoberland on the planet Erth, which is similar but not identical to Earth. [JC]About the author: Victorian Women Travel Writers (1982) by Catherine Barnes Stevenson. DIXON, CHARLES UK writer, problematically identified as Charles Dixon (1858-1926), an ornithologist of some renown. The sf novel written by him or some other CD is Fifteen Hundred Miles an Hour (1895), a boys' tale featuring the interplanetary exploits of some young protagonists who travel to MARS via an electric SPACESHIP. [JC] DIXON, DOUGAL (1947- ) UK writer whose After Man: A Zoology of the Future (1981) and Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future (1990) provide quasifactual views of a FAR-FUTURE Earth in which Homo sapiens, having exhausted the planet, soon becomes extinct, giving way (in a fashion reminiscent of the work of Olaf STAPLEDON) to succeeding forms of life. Similarly couched in a TIME-TRAVEL framework, but less taxing in its assumptions, is a Byron PREISS tie, Time Machine #7: Ice Age Explorer * (1985). [JC]See also: EVOLUTION. DIXON, FRANKLIN W. Harriet S. ADAMS. DIXON, ROGER (1930- ) UK accountant and writer whose epic adventure about humankind's future fate, Noah II (1970 US; rev 1975 UK), is based on a story idea by RD and his agent, Basil Bova, and began the aborted Quest series. A second novel, The Cain Factor (1975) as by Charles Lewis, mixes SEX and apocalypse as a man and a woman escape a post- HOLOCAUST Earth to become the ADAM AND EVE of a new planet. [JC]See also: GENERATION STARSHIPS; SPACESHIPS. DIXON, THOMAS (1864-1946) US writer whose The Fall of the Nation (1915-16 National Sunday Magazine; 1916) graphically depicts the conquest of the USA by the Imperial Confederation of Europe, dominated by Germany. After years of occupation, a singularly ferocious US womanhood helps the men of the USA expel the enemy. [JC]See also: INVASION. DOBLIN, ALFRED [r] GERMANY. DOCKWEILER, JOSEPH H. [r] Dirk WYLIE. DOC SAVAGE US PULP MAGAZINE, pulp-size Mar 1933-Dec 1943, DIGEST-size Jan 1944-Sep/Oct 1948, pulp-size Winter 1948-Summer 1949. 181 issues Mar 1933-Summer 1949. Monthly until Feb 1947, then 4 bimonthly issues, then quarterly from Winter 1948. Published by STREET & SMITH; ed John NANOVIC 1933-43. DS was perhaps the best of the sf-oriented pulp-hero magazines. Each issue had a novel published under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson, and many contained short adventure stories as well; a considerable majority of the novels were the work of Lester DENT (whom see, and especially ROBESON for further Doc Savage details). The most usual sf elements were superscientific WEAPONS and visits to LOST WORLDS; TELEPORTATION featured once. A master SCIENTIST, almost superhuman in intelligence and strength, Doc Savage was actually Clark Savage, the "Man of Bronze"- the surname is a Street & Smith homage to Colonel Richard Henry Savage, an early contributor to the firm's journals; the given name is from Clark Gable. The success of the series led to imitations, most notably SUPERMAN, whose debt to DS is evident in his name - Clark Kent, the "Man of Steel". [FHP/MJE] DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE Film (1975). Warner Bros. Dir Michael Anderson, starring Ron Ely, Paul Wexler. Screenplay George PAL, Joseph Morheim based on "The Man of Bronze" (1933) by Kenneth ROBESON. 100 mins. Colour.There were 181 novels in DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE, and at one point producer George Pal announced that he hoped to film them all, but this, based on the first of them, was a flop. Muscular superscientist hero Doc fights with a villain over a fountain of liquid gold owned by a remote tribe in South America. The sf elements are very marginal. The film is treated in a joky manner reminiscent of the 1966-8 Batman tv series, but Anderson, who later made the disappointing LOGAN'S RUN (1976), is too ponderous a director to carry off this sort of camp nostalgia with flair. It was not until Steven SPIELBERG's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) that the ambience of the sf/adventure pulps was recreated with the right mixture of respect and amusement. [PN/JB] DR CYCLOPS Film (1940). Paramount. Dir Ernest B. Schoedsack, starring Albert Dekker, Janice Logan, Thomas Coley, Charles Halton. Screenplay Tom Kilpatrick. 75 mins. Colour.A mad scientist in the Peruvian jungle is using radioactivity to miniaturize living things, and shrinks some US explorers who find his laboratory to an average height of 12in (30cm). Made by the director of KING KONG (1933), DC is a fast-paced, visually inventive film (though the dialogue is leaden), largely taken up by desperate efforts to survive a series of perils. Dekker's portrayal of the ruthless Dr Thorkel - shaven head, bulky body, thick-lensed glasses - as the "god" toying sadistically with his little creations before casually destroying them is truly menacing; whether by design or accident, he resembles what was to become the caricature of the "beastly Jap" during WWII. The illusion of miniaturization-supervised by Farciot Edouart, one of the innovators in that area of trick photography - is very convincing. The novelization, Dr Cyclops * (1940), was published under the house name Will GARTH, and was probably the work of Alexander SAMALMAN. [JB/PN]See also: GREAT AND SMALL. DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE 1. Film (1932). Paramount. Prod and dir Rouben Mamoulian, starring Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart. Screenplay Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath, based on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis STEVENSON. 98 mins, cut to 90 mins, cut to 81 mins. B/w.While Stevenson's suggestion is that civilization may be only skin-deep, his tale of a decent, prim society doctor, Dr Jekyll, who transforms himself with a new drug into the brutal libertine, Mr Hyde, does not exactly abandon the religious concept of original sin; it does, however, reconcile it with 19th-century scientific thought, calling on Darwin (humanity's animal heritage) and prefiguring Freud (the id sometimes overwhelming the ego). Silent film versions (made in 1908, 1910, 1912, 1913 and three in 1920) were usually taken from one of the several melodramatic stage productions rather than directly from the original novel, and tended to present Hyde (as in the 1920 version played by John Barrymore) as a caricature of evil - that is, as a victim of his own Original Sin.In Mamoulian's 1932 version, which remains the most interesting, Hyde's appearance is almost that of Neanderthal Man ( APES AND CAVEMEN), and his joyfully ferocious behaviour results not from inherent evil but from uncontrollable primitive drives. The most compelling of these is sexual - this is one of the classic loci of the theme of SEX in sf - though as the film progresses it is accompanied by an increasing capacity for cruelty. All this comments, apparently deliberately, on the repressed society in which Jekyll has been reared. The film, atmospheric and convincing, is an acknowledged classic, especially famous for the heartbeats on the soundtrack and the convincing transformation scenes. When re-released after the Hollywood Production Code was established in 1934, it had 10 minutes cut (sexual censorship), seldom restored since.2. Film (1941). MGM. Dir Victor Fleming, starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman. Screenplay John Lee Mahin. 127 mins. B/w.Growing pressures of censorship took some of the sexual edge from this glossy remake and, although the film is still gripping - largely because of Bergman's appealing vulnerability as the tart - it seems bland after the raw energy of Mamoulian's version.3. Subsequent film versions - including The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960; vt House of Fright US), which had a plain Jekyll turning into a handsome Hyde, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1967), a made-for-tv film, I, Monster (1970), Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), where Martine Beswick plays Hyde as a woman in a film seemingly designed for fetishists, The Man with Two Heads (1972; vt Dr Jekyll and Mr Blood), Dr Black and Mr Hyde (1975) and Docteur Jekyll et les femmes (1981; vt The Blood of Dr Jekyll), a particularly perverse version dir Walerian Borowczyk - have simply been variations of the formula, some more ingenious than others, but none with the impact of the 1932 production. [PN/JB] DR. M Film (1989). NEF Filmproduktion/Ellepi Film/Clea Productions. Dir Claude Chabrol, starring Alan Bates, Jennifer Beals, Jan Niklas, Hanns Zischler. Screenplay Sollace Mitchell from a story by Thomas Bauermeister, inspired by Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler (1920 ; trans Lilian A. Clare as Dr.Mabuse, Master of Mystery1923 UK) by Norbert Jacques (1880-1954). 116 mins. Colour.Although in clear homage to Fritz LANG's three Dr Mabuse films ( DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER), this German, Italian and French coproduction is not Langian in style. An epidemic of suicides in a NEAR-FUTURE Berlin, investigated by detectives from both East (Zischler) and West (Niklas), is connected to the Theratos holiday camps whose mysterious owner (the "Mabuse" figure, Marsfeldt, played by Bates) has been conditioning holiday-makers by hypnosis to kill themselves, his thesis being that death is fundamentally what we all crave. Marsfeldt, a perversely charming philosopher surviving thanks to a life-support system, has wide media holdings and intends to brainwash the whole of Berlin into oblivion via a tv broadcast. This sophisticated film focuses on the dream-like quality of a world dominated by media images and on the difficulty of locating any firm reality within it. [PN] DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER (vt Dr Mabuse, the Gambler) Film (1922). Ullstein/UCO Film/Decla Bioscop/UFA. Dir Fritz LANG, starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Alfred Abel, Aud Egede Nissen, Gertrud Welcker, Bernhard Goetzke. Screenplay Thea VON HARBOU, loosely based onDoktor Mabuse, der Spieler (1920; trans Lilian A. Clare as Dr.Mabuse, Master of Mystery). In 2 parts, 95 mins and 100 mins. B/W.Although on the face of it just a sensational melodrama about a ruthless businessman/scientist intent on world gangsterism, this film anticipates several 20th-century sf themes, both written and filmed. It pictures a Germany sinking into anarchy and corruption, ready to be exploited by a man-more of an evil genius - to whom chaos is almost an end in itself. Mabuse (Klein-Rogge) has strong hypnotic powers and can summon visions to control the weak. The DYSTOPIA depicted looks forward to any number of sf books and films. The chaos-lover whose weapons are as much psychological as technological seems to anticipate, for example, the novels of Alfred BESTER. The idea of a decaying society controlled and exploited by a secret group - the essence of cultural PARANOIA - appears throughout sf, often in the early novels of C.M. KORNBLUTH and Frederik POHL, for example. The film shows how artistically potent the themes of pulp fiction can be when distilled and concentrated, and imaged with such ferocity. In Part One, Ein Bild der Zeit ["An Image of our Time"], Mabuse and his web of henchmen penetrate and corrupt society at all levels. In Part Two, Inferno - Menschen der Zeit ["Inferno - Men of our Time"], Mabuse becomes wholly mad and is incarcerated in an asylum. Lang, who went on to make the sf films METROPOLIS (1926) and Die FRAU IM MOND (1929; vt The Woman in the Moon), also made two Mabuse sequels, Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (1933; vt The Testament of Dr Mabuse) and Die TAUSEND AUGEN DES DR MABUSE (1960; vt The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse; vt The Diabolical Dr Mabuse). In the early 1960s five further Mabuse films were made in Germany, not by Lang. [PN]See also: DR. M. DR MABUSE THE GAMBLER DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER. DR NO Film (1962). Eon/United Artists. Dir Terence Young, starring Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Joseph Wiseman, Jack Lord. Screenplay Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, Berkely Mather, based on Dr No (1958) by Ian FLEMING. 105 mins. Colour.This UK film was the first in the hugely successful James Bond series, at first loosely based on Fleming's novels and later featuring original stories. The villain, whose cinematic forebears include Fu Manchu, Captain Nemo and METROPOLIS's Rotwang - like Rotwang, Dr No possesses mechanical hands - attempts to blackmail the USA, working from a remote Caribbean island, by deflecting its Cape Canaveral rockets off course. UK secret agent Bond brings his plans to an end by boiling him in a pool containing an atomic reactor. DN's mordant humour, its sexism, its visual flashiness and the foiled attempt by a supervillain to rule the world with a superscientific device set the pattern for the entire series, most of which are marginally sf in the pulp-adventure manner of Doc Savage ( DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE). The two most obviously sciencefictional sequels are YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) and MOONRAKER (1979). [JB]See also: CINEMA. DOCTOROW, E(DGAR) L(AURENCE) (1931- ) US writer who remains best known for Ragtime (1975), a novel that evokes the past with an hallucinatory power which edges its real-life and fictional characters into a fable-like milieu ( FABULATION). His first sf novel, Big as Life (1966), depicts satirically what happens in New York when enormous beings suddenly appear in the city streets; The Waterworks (1994), set in a STEAMPUNK version of the 19th century city, is an intricate tale of conspiracy and SUSPENDED ANIMATION [JC] DR STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING... Full title: Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Film (1963). Hawk/Columbia. Prod and dir Stanley KUBRICK, starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens. Screenplay Kubrick, Terry Southern (1924- ), Peter GEORGE, based on Two Hours to Doom (1958; vt Red Alert US) by Peter Bryant (pseudonym of Peter George). 94 mins. B/w.This, the first of Kubrick's three sf films, has worn well, with its curious blend of black comedy, documentary realism and almost poetic homage to the very machines (B-52s and their nuclear cargo) that he shows as destroying the world. The original novel was a serious story about an insane US general who launches a pre-emptive attack on Russia without presidential authority, but Kubrick opted for a grotesquely satirical and very funny treatment, helped by a strong cast including Peter Sellers, who plays three roles: one is Dr Strangelove, a sinister ex-Nazi, generally seen as burlesquing a distinguished real-life SCIENTIST. The appalling point of the film is the way the vision of Armageddon attracts the very protagonists whose job it is to prevent it: Strangelove is sexually aroused by the idea of cleansing HOLOCAUST, and it excites the lunatic general and even the bomber pilot (Pickens), who rides his own bomb down with Texan whoops of triumph. At the end of the movie Vera Lynn's voice rises plangently into "We'll Meet Again" as the screen is covered with mushroom clouds. The novelization is Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb * (1963) by Peter George.The film received the 1965 HUGO for Best Dramatic Presentation. [PN/JB]See also: CINEMA; PARANOIA. DOCTOR WHO UK tv series (1963- ). BBC TV. Created by Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson. 1st-season prod Verity Lambert, story editor David Whitaker; the Doctor played by William Hartnell Nov 1963-Oct 1966. 26 seasons to date, 695 episodes to Dec 1989, mostly 25 mins per episode. Seasons 1-6 b/w; subsequent seasons colour.In this longest-running UK sf tv series for children, the Doctor, generally known as Dr Who because of the show's enigmatic title (it is not actually his name), eventually revealed as a Time Lord, travels back and forth in time and space; he is accompanied by various people (sometimes children, sometimes men, usually young women), in his TIME MACHINE, the TARDIS, an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. Stories have varied in length from 1 to 14 episodes, the most common length through 1974 being 6 episodes, and subsequently 4.The first episode (Nov 1963) concerned a young girl who puzzles two of her schoolteachers with her unusual knowledge of history. They follow her into what appears to be a police telephone box but is in fact a time machine (whose interior is many times larger than its exterior) owned by her irritable and eccentric grandfather, the Doctor. As the machine cannot be properly controlled they are all whisked off to the Stone Age, where they remain for the following 3 episodes.The series had a modest following at first; it was not until the second story, The Dead Planet, written by Terry NATION, that it achieved mass popularity, mainly because of the introduction of the DALEKS. Until 1990 the series returned to UK tv every year; it was not introduced to US tv until the Tom Baker episodes that were played there in 1982, when it quickly developed a cult following.(A previous attempt in the 1970s to export the programme to the USA - a package of the Jon Pertwee episodes - had flopped.)Because the Doctor has the ability periodically to regenerate his entire body, the series has been able to outlast its original star, the crusty William Hartnell, and to introduce a succession of new leading men: Patrick Troughton (Nov 1966-June 1969), Jon Pertwee (Jan 1970-June 1974), Tom Baker (Dec 1974-Mar 1981), Peter Davison (Jan 1982-Mar 1984), Colin Baker (Mar 1984-Dec 1986) and Sylvester McCoy (Sep 1987 onwards). Peter Cushing took the role in two films, DR WHO AND THE DALEKS (1965) and DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. (1966); Richard Hurndall took the place of the late Hartnell in The Five Doctors (1983); and Michael Jayston played the Doctor's evil incarnation from the future in the 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord (1986).While the b/w episodes featuring Hartnell and Troughton are spikier and stranger, the show probably hit its peak between the Pertwee and Davison versions, with Tom Baker's long-lived, Harpo-Marxish Time Lord the most popular of all and the writers of the 1970s gradually revealing more of the secrets of the Time Lords that had been hinted at since the first. In the late 1980s the show lost direction (some say thanks to the tiredness of John Nathan-Turner's regime as producer, begun Aug 1980) and the BBC experimented with it - lengthening it, moving it from its long-established Saturday teatime slot to a weekday, and, finally, putting it on an indefinite suspension where, neither cancelled nor renewed, it remains as of 1994.A 30th anniversary tv programme planned for 1993 was shelved at the last minute, though there was a Doctor Who radio drama in 1993. While early seasons were 10 months long, in the 1970s most seasons were 6-7 months, and from 1982 they were 3 months.Although the programme has long since settled into a pattern, with stories usually featuring at least one monster, there has been plenty of room for experiment. The authors have unblushingly pirated hundreds of ideas from PULP-MAGAZINE sf, but often make intelligent and sometimes quite complex use of them. It seems probable that, certainly in the 1970s, the programme attracted as many adult viewers as children. With the increasing sophistication of the scripts and the expertise of the special effects and make-up - from which many other programmes could learn a great deal about what can be done on a low budget - DW became a notably self-confident series, juggling expertly with many of the great tropes and images of the genre. It is the most successful SPACE OPERA in the history of tv, not excluding STAR TREK. Storylines often feature political SATIRE. At its worst merely silly, at its best it has been spellbinding.Other notable cast members over the years have included Carole Ann Ford (the Doctor's granddaughter), Frazer Hines (Jamie), Anneke Wills (Polly), Michael Craze (Ben), Deborah Watling (Victoria), Wendy Padbury (Zoe), Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier), Katy Manning (Jo), Roger Delgado (the Doctor's great enemy, the Master), Elizabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (the voice of K-9, the Doctor's robot dog, one of the most successful of the media's cute ROBOTS), Mary Tamm (Romana), Lalla Ward (the regenerated Romana), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Anthony Ainley (the Master again), Bonnie Langford (Mel) and Sophie Aldred (Ace). Producers of the series after Verity Lambert (who lasted into the 3rd season) have included Innes Lloyd, Peter Bryant, Barry Letts, Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner. Story editors, all of whom have written episodes, have included Dennis Spooner, Gerry DAVIS, Derrick Sherwin, Terrance Dicks (1968-74), Robert Holmes, Anthony Read, Douglas ADAMS, Christopher H. Bidmead, Eric Saward (1982-6) and Andrew Cartmell. Other writers have included Terry Nation, David Whitaker, John Lucarotti, Brian Hayles, Kit PEDLER, Malcolm Hulke, Don Houghton, Robert Sloman, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, Robert Banks Stewart, David Fisher, Stephen GALLAGHER, Johnny Byrne, Terence Dudley, Peter Grimwade, Pip and Jane Baker, and Ben Aaronovitch.There are now very many spin-off books from the series, ranging from episode guides through annuals, encyclopedias, scholarly studies and published scripts to a TARDIS cookbook. There is a magazine, Dr Who Monthly, with more than 160 issues. All but four stories have now been novelized, with 151 titles published from the 1970s through late 1990. (The un-novelized scripts are "The Pirate Planet"by Douglas Adams, "City of Death" by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams writing as David Agnew, "Resurrection of the Daleks" by Eric Saward and "Revelation of the Daleks"by Eric Saward. In 1991, most existing scripts having been novelized, a post-tv sequence of releases, The New Doctor Who Adventures, was instituted, the first sequence being the Timewyrm series: Timewyrm: Genesys * (1991) by John Peel, Exodus * (1991) by Terrance Dicks, Apocalypse * (1991) by Nigel Robinson and Revelation * (1991) by Paul Cornell. A comprehensive Doctor Who bibliography would itself be book-size. [JB/PN/KN]See also: SHARED WORLDS; STEAMPUNK. DR WHO AND THE DALEKS Film (1965). AARU. Dir Gordon Flemyng, starring Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jenny Linden, Roberta Tovey. Screenplay Milton Subotsky, based on the second DR WHO tv story, 1963-4, the 7-episode The Dead Planet by Terry NATION. 85 mins. Colour.Dr Who - played colourlessly by Cushing as a polite old man - is inadvertently taken to a dying planet with his granddaughters and an accident-prone young man (Castle) as a result of the latter falling onto the controls of the Doctor's time-and-space machine, the Tardis. They find a city occupied by DALEKS about to wipe out their ancient human enemies, the Thals, with a neutron bomb; despite their fierceness the Daleks prove ridiculously easy to immobilize. DWATD shows something about the 1960s in having Dr Who, famous in later incarnations as a crafty expert in nonviolent resolution of conflict, hawkishly urging the pacifist Thals to war. This crudely made children's-film remake of the early tv story in which the Daleks made their debut is of interest mainly to Dr Who completists wishing to see Cushing in the role, which he never played on tv; though inferior to its original, it is at least superior to the even more tepid film sequel, DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. (1966). [PN] DOCTOR X Film (1932). First National/Warner Bros. Dir Michael Curtiz (1888-1962), starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Lee Tracy, Preston Foster. Screenplay Robert Tasker, Earl Baldwin, based on a play by Howard W. Comstock and Allen C. Miller. 77 mins. Original prints two-strip Technicolor, later b/w.A series of cannibalistic murders committed when the Moon is full prove, in this blend of sf, HORROR and the whodunnit, to have been committed by a SCIENTIST maddened by the effect of his newly invented synthetic flesh, from which he can grow a temporary artificial arm. Curtiz's customary hard-edged direction enlivens this early, low-budget potboiler. A more sophisticated version of the central idea is found in DARKMAN (1990). [JB/PN] DR. YEN SIN US PULP MAGAZINE. 3 bimonthly issues, May/June-Sep/Oct 1936. Published by Popular Publications; ed Rogers Terrill. DYS was a follow-up to an earlier Popular title, The MYSTERIOUS WU FANG , itself intended to capitalize on the popularity of Sax ROHMER's Fu Manchu; in fact the cover of #1 had originally been painted for the previous title. All issues featured lead novels by Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988), whose several books on flying saucers later helped foment the UFO craze of the early 1950s. Yen Sin was a conventional yellow-peril supervillain, intent on world conquest with the aid of superscience. His opponent, Michael Traile, had been accidentally deprived of the ability to sleep, so read a lot. The lead novel of #1 was reprinted by Robert E. WEINBERG as Pulp Classics No. 9 (1976). [MJE/PN] DODD, ANNA BOWMAN (1855-1929) US writer whose anti-socialist sf novel, The Republic of the Future, or Socialism a Reality (1887), set in AD2050, offers a scathing and comical portrait of egalitarianism brought to the uttermost, resulting in a technologically advanced antlike society. The tale actively deprecates FEMINISM. [JC] DODDERIDGE, ESME (1916- ) US writer whose The New Gulliver, or The Adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, Jr. in Capovolta (1979) brings its protagonist into a matriarchal society, dystopian to its male visitor, in which by an ironic role reversal all the men, who are subservient to women, carry out the child-rearing and sexual-object functions which in the real USA at the time the book was written were generally the roles of women. [JC/PN] DOENIM, SUSAN [s] George Alec EFFINGER. DOLAN, BILL Tom WILLARD. DOLD, DOUGLAS (MERIWETHER) (c1890-1932/6) US editor and writer, elder brother of Elliott DOLD, with whom in 1915 he joined the Serbian army. As a result of injuries sustained in combat, he gradually became blind, but this affliction did not prevent him from editing The Danger Trail magazine, presiding over Clues, Incorporated (which published Clues: A Magazine of Detective Stories), or publishing several borderline sf/adventure tales. The last of these appears to have been "Valley of Sin" in Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories (which he also helped edit) in 1931. According to Murray LEINSTER, DD died of pneumonia after his house caught fire and the firemen sprayed him with water. [RB]See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. DOLD, (WILLIAM) ELLIOTT (Jr) (1892-1957) US illustrator, son of noted psychiatrist William Elliott Dold (1856-1942) and younger brother of Douglas DOLD. ED studied art at the College of William and Mary in Virginia to 1912, and with his brother joined the Serbian army in 1915. Although his 44 Art Deco drawings for Harold HERSEY's Night (1923) are perhaps his finest work, ED is now best remembered for his interior ILLUSTRATIONS for the early sf PULP MAGAZINES, also in an Art Deco idiom. Using only black and white (with virtually no greys), he was a master at depicting looming, massive, superbly detailed and intricate MACHINES that dwarfed their human operators, whom he depicted with relative indifference. ED contributed to ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 1934-8, and was one of that magazine's finest interior illustrators; his illustrations for its serialization of E.E. "Doc" SMITH's Skylark of Valeron (1934 ASF; 1949) are considered classics. He edited, did colour covers and wrote a lead story for Hersey's short-lived MIRACLE SCIENCE AND FANTASY STORIES (1931). His last sf appearances were in 1941, when he painted covers for COSMIC STORIES and STIRRING SCIENCE STORIES. [RB/JG]See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION. DOLEZAL, ERICH [r] AUSTRIA. DOLINSKY, MIKE Working name used by US screenwriter Meyer Dolinsky (1923-1993?) for his sf novel, Mind One (1972), in which two psychiatrists discover that a drug meant to treat psychosis actually engenders TELEPATHY (see also ESP), and find themselves relating warmly to each other (they are of opposite sexes); as one of them is a Jesuit priest, an element of RELIGION soon enriches the tale. As Meyer Dolinsky, MD wrote 3 episodes for the tv series The OUTER LIMITS . [JC] DOLPIN, REX [r] Peter SAXON. DOMECQ, H. BUSTOS Adolfo BIOY CASARES; Jorge Luis BORGES. DOMINIK, HANS [r] GERMANY. DONALDSON, STEPHEN R(EEDER) (1947- ) US writer who remains best known for the two formidably ambitious Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever high-fantasy sequences. Although he was a FANTASY writer of central importance in the 1970s and 1980s, and winner of the JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD for most promising writer in 1979, and although characters in Mordant's Need (see listing below) shift worlds via gates which arguably work according to sf conventions governing MATTER TRANSMISSION, SRD did not become of strong sf interest until the publication of the first volumes of his ongoing Gap sequence of Galaxy-spanning SPACE OPERAS: The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story (1990 UK), The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge (1991), The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises (1992) and The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (1994), with at least one further volume, projected. The volumes to date are characterized by a pounding bluntness of prose, a plot-pattern which makes some superficial homage to traditional space opera, and an underlying extremism in the creation of character (both the villain and the seeming hero are almost supernaturally monstrous) and in the expression of sexual violence. It is hard to predict what dark climax is being mounted. [JC]Other works: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, comprising Lord Foul's Bane (1977), The Illearth War (1977) and The Power that Preserves (1977); its sequel, the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, comprising The Wounded Land (1980), The One Tree (1982) and White Gold Wielder (1983); a slim pendant to the sequences, Gilden-Fire (1981 chap); Daughter of Regals and Other Tales (coll 1984), not to be confused with Daughter of Regals (1984), which prints only the title story of the previous volume; Epic Fantasy in the Modern World: A Few Observations (1986 chap), nonfiction; the Mordant's Need books, in effect one novel published in 2 vols as The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986 UK) and A Man Rides Through (1987).As Reed Stephens: An associational detective-novel sequence comprising The Man who Killed his Brother (1980), The Man who Risked his Partner (1984) and The Man who Tried to Get Away (1990).See also: DEL REY BOOKS; SWORD AND SORCERY. DONNE, MAXIM Madelaine DUKE. DONNELLY, IGNATIUS (1831-1901) US writer and politician, famous for his study Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), which was responsible for a considerable resurgence of interest in the legend of ATLANTIS, and for The Great Cryptogram (1888), in which he attempted to prove by cryptographic analysis that Francis BACON wrote Shakespeare's early plays. His most important sf novel was Caesar's Column (1890; early editions under the pseudonym Edmund Boisgilbert), which countered the UTOPIAN optimism of Edward BELLAMY with the argument that society was evolving towards greater inequality and catastrophic WAR rather than towards peace and plenty. ID wrote two other fantasies of social criticism: Doctor Huguet (1891), in which the racist protagonist exchanges bodies with a Black man, and The Golden Bottle (1892), in which a gold-making device is instrumental in the overthrow of capitalism. [BS]See also: CITIES; LOST WORLDS; POLITICS; SOCIAL DARWINISM. DONOVAN, DICK J.E. Preston MUDDOCK. DONOVAN'S BRAIN Film (1953). Dowling Productions/United Artists. Dir Felix Feist, starring Lew Ayres, Gene Evans, Nancy Davis. Screenplay Feist, based on Donovan's Brain (1943) by Curt SIODMAK. 83 mins. B/w.One of three films based on Siodmak's novel of the same name, the others being The LADY AND THE MONSTER (1944) and VENGEANCE (vt The Brain) (1963). A scientist keeps a dead businessman's brain artificially alive, but it has an evil, telepathic influence over him. Feist, whose previous sf film was DELUGE (1933), directs unspectacularly, but gets a good performance from Ayres, who accomplishes the transitions from his natural to his possessed state very well. The female lead later married Ronald Reagan. Despite its sf elements, the film is more GOTHIC than scientific - the brain itself is ludicrous. DB was parodied in The MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (1983). [JB] DONSON, CYRIL [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. DOOMWATCH 1. UK tv series (1970-72). BBC TV. Prod Terence Dudley. Series devised by Kit PEDLER, Gerry DAVIS. Starring John Paul, Simon Oates, Robert Powell, Wendy Hall, Joby Blanchard. Writers included Dudley, Pedler, Davis, Dennis Spooner, Don Shaw, Martin Worth, Brian Hayles, John Gould. Dirs included Dudley, Jonathan Alwyn, David Proudfoot, Lennie Mayne, Eric Hills, Darrol Blake. 3 seasons, 57 50min episodes. Colour.In this drama series, the first about dangers to Earth's ECOLOGY, a group of scientists - aggressively ready to take on the Establishment and headed by caustic Dr Quist (John Paul) - is set up as a watchdog over the rest of the scientific community. Stronger safeguards in the use of everything from chemical weapons and pesticides to new drugs and in vitro fertilization are urged, while some lines of research should be abandoned altogether; the not too deeply hidden subtext appeared to be that scientific research is dangerous per se. Pedler and Davis departed before the 3rd season, repudiating what they claimed was D's increasing lack of seriousness, but in fact from the beginning the hoariest sf CLICHES had appeared beneath the display of social conscience; apart from its overbearingly moralizing tone there was little difference between D and the mad- SCIENTIST movies of the 1930s and 1940s.2. Film (1972). Tigon. Dir Peter Sasdy, starring Ian Bannen, Judy Geeson, John Paul, Simon Oates, George Sanders. Screenplay Clive Exton, based on the BBC TV series. 92 mins. Colour.A familiar horror-film plot is given a fashionable rationale, in what is effectively a feature-film episode of the tv series. Visitors to a fishing village on a remote offshore island are met with hostility; grossly malformed people are being hidden away. The distortions - in fact, acromegaly - have resulted not from the workings of Hell but from the dumping of pituitary growth hormone (intended as an additive to animal feed) in the sea nearby, although the horror stereotypes suggest the two possible causes are topologically identical. Sasdy directed with style but was handicapped by a banal script. [JB/PN] DOONER, PIERTON W. (1844-?1907) US writer whose Last Days of the Republic (1880) was the first US Yellow Peril novel, and demonstrates the terribly common dynamic by which a guilty party, or nation, feels compelled to transfer its guilt to the victim or victim-nation: in 1880, the year of the book's publication, the USA had been using Chinese coolies for some time as forced labour, and in terms of this dynamic it was high time to accuse them of being a menace. In the novel, the coolies nefariously gain civil rights from cowardly Whites, and use their ill gotten power to gain control of the Pacific coastal states, from which point the collapse of Washington is only a matter of time. [JC] DOPPELGANGER (vt Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) Film (1969). Century 21 Productions/Universal. Prods Gerry and Sylvia ANDERSON. Dir Robert Parrish, starring Ian Hendry, Roy Thinnes, Patrick Wymark, Lyn Loring, Herbert Lom. Screenplay by the Andersons, Donald James. 101 mins, cut to 94 mins (US). Colour.The first live-action feature from the Anderson production team responsible for a number of tv series featuring puppets in sf adventure scenarios, D, though panned by most critics, displays its illogical plot with some style. Scientists discover a counter-Earth, an exact duplicate of Earth that is always hidden on the opposite side of the Sun - a centuries-old idea that popped up occasionally in pulp sf, as in Split Image (1955) by Reed DE ROUEN. An expedition is mounted to reach the counter-Earth, and the confusions of the subsequent story, involving sabotage, characters meeting themselves and apparent conspiracy between the two planets, are compounded by the fact that the story is told in flashbacks by a scientist in a mental asylum, giving a Dr Caligari-like ambiguity to the whole film. [JB/PN] DORER, FRANCES (CATHERINE) (? - ) US writer, always with Nancy Dorer, who began to publish work of genre interest with When Next I Wake (dated 1978 but 1979) as by Frank Dorn, and whose most ambitious effort was the Eagle sequence of sf adventures, all dated 1979 but published 1980: By Daybreak the Eagle (1980), Wings of the Eagle (1980) and Return of the Eagle (1980). Singletons include Appointment with Yesterday (dated 1978 but 1979) as by Dorn, Sunwatch (1979) as by Dorn, Where No Man has Trod (dated 1979 but 1980) and Two Came Calling (dated 1979 but 1980). [JC] DORER, NANCY (JANE) [r] Frances DORER. DORMAN, SONYA (HESS) (1924- ) US writer who began publishing sf in 1963 with "The Putnam Tradition" for AMZ, and who established a reputation in the field for intensely written, sometimes highly metaphorical stories. They are surprisingly unlike her rather straightforward POETRY, for which she is generally best known; the first of her verse collections was Poems (coll 1970). Planet Patrol (fixup 1978), a juvenile, is sf. [JC] DORN, FRANK Frances DORER. DORRINGTON, ALBERT (1871-? ) UK writer whose death-date is undetermined: he may have been the AD who died in Australia in 1953. He was best known for The Radium Terrors (1912), which combines Yellow Peril fears with the then widespread fascination for the powers of radium. The plot unmemorably details a conspiracy on the part of the former to use the latter. The Half-God (1933) features super-radium. [JC]Other works: Our Lady of the Leopards (1911), a fantasy. DORSEY, CANDAS JANE (1952- ) Canadian writer, arts journalist and social worker, author of three early volumes of poetry and co-editor of Tesseracts(3) (anth 1991) with Gerry Truscott (1955- ). CJD began publishing work of genre interest with "Columbus Hits the Shoreline Rag" in Getting Here (anth 1977) ed Rudy Weibe; her terse, complex stories, assembled in Machine Sex (coll 1988), polemically re-use and rework sf and fantasy tropes from a FEMINIST perspective, engaging most memorably, and fascinatedly, in the title story, "(Learning About) Machine Sex", with the phallocentrisms of much CYBERPUNK. The protagonist of the tale, a computer-design prodigy and occasional hooker, debuted in CJD's first novel, the undistinguished Hardwired Angel (1987), written with Nora Abercrombie (1960- ). [RK]See also: CANADA. DOS(-a-DOS) When two books are bound together so that they share one spine, but with their texts printed upside-down in respect to each other, the composite volume is described in the publishing trade as being bound dos-a-dos (literally "back-to-back"). Such a volume has two front covers and two title pages, which the reader can confirm by turning any example upside-down, revealing a second front cover, right way up, and a second text, likewise. Almost always - though not invariably - the format has been used in sf for paperback originals, the two best known mass-market publishers to have done this being ACE BOOKS in their Ace Doubles series and TOR BOOKS in their Tor Doubles series; some SMALL PRESSES have also engaged in the practice. For the convenience of readers and collectors we use the word "dos" in our book ascriptions in this encyclopedia to designate any edition of a title making up one half of a dos-a-dos twin.A problem arises. Towards the end of their existence as a line, Tor Doubles began to appear with the 2 titles presented sequentially; in strict bibliographical terms these late issues were, in fact, anthologies, just as two earlier series - the Belmont Doubles and the Dell Binary Stars - were, strictly speaking, anthologies. If - as was almost never the case - any of the individual titles reprinted in these series had been originally published as books, the resulting volume would have then been technically describable as an omnibus. But readers do not tend to think of the volumes in these series as being either anthologies or omnibuses; readers (and we) tend to think of them as two titles bound together. We have therefore - in deliberate violation of bibliographical protocol - extended the use of the word "dos" in our book ascriptions to include all titles of publishers' series which "feel" "dos"-like.In this encyclopedia we designate as "dos" all genuine dos-a-dos bindings; we also designate as "dos" all other series-linked bindings that contain two but no more than two titles, each title being named on the cover. [JC/PN] DOUBLEDAY US general publisher which in the 1950s was one of the first US hardcover houses to institute an sf line, an early title being Pebble in the Sky (1950), which was Isaac ASIMOV'S first novel. (The Doubleday imprint, Doubleday & Company, Inc., should not be confused with that of their associated company, Nelson Doubleday, Inc., publishers of the US SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB.) Once the Doubleday line was established it published about 30 titles a year, its authors in due course including many who at the time were comparatively unknown, such as George Alec EFFINGER, Octavia BUTLER, John CROWLEY, M. John HARRISON, Stephen KING, Josephine SAXTON and Kate WILHELM. D also published many established authors, some of whom had previously published mainly in paperback: they included Avram DAVIDSON, Philip K. DICK, Harry HARRISON, Robert A. HEINLEIN, C.M. KORNBLUTH, Barry MALZBERG, Bob SHAW and Roger ZELAZNY. D's anthology series have included CHRYSALIS, UNIVERSE and Nebula Award Stories ( NEBULA). D was both loved and loathed by sf authors: loved because it was a reliable market not afraid to take risks with innovative material that was not obviously commercial, loathed because its advances were small, its book production often cheap, and its book promotion negligible. In 1981 D (whose sf editor for the difficult years 1977-89 was Pat LoBrutto) halved the size of the list. In 1986 it and associated companies, including Dell/Delacorte and the Science Fiction Book Club (but not the New York Mets) were sold for $475 million to the German company Bertelsmann, which already owned BANTAM BOOKS and which thereby became one of the largest sf/fantasy publishers in the USA, with around 170 titles a year.In 1987 the old Doubleday line was revamped, the imprint now being called Doubleday Foundation after Isaac Asimov's Foundation books (they had not initially been published by Doubleday, but Asimov had treated the firm as his main publisher from 1950, and remained faithful to it until his death). The new list was very much more consciously innovative than its predecessors, and ambitious novels by authors like Dan SIMMONS and Sheri S. TEPPER soon began to appear; books under this imprint often went on to be paperbacked by Bantam Spectra. During 1991, however, Doubleday Foundation was merged into Bantam Spectra, and the Doubleday name ceased to be relevant to sf publishing. [PN] DOUGHTY, CHARLES M(ONTAGU) (1843-1926) UK explorer and writer whose Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888) profoundly influenced T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), among others. The difficult, archaic language of CMD's later work, a series of book-length poems, has kept them from wide circulation. Two are of some sf interest: The Cliffs (1909) features an airborne "Persanian" invasion of England, which is successfully repelled; in The Clouds (1912) a similar invasion is successful, and England occupied. Both poems are designed as warnings to complacent Britons, and share many of the characteristics of the INVASION stories popular before WWI. [JC] DOUGHTY, FRANCIS W(ORCESTER) (1850-1917) US numismatist, scholar and miscellaneous writer whose well written, ingenious and original dime novels ( DIME-NOVEL SF) have often been considered the finest examples of the category. His better stories present a succession of highly imaginative strokes, often with good historical backgrounds. "I" (1887) describes a double quest, for a beautiful She Who Is Never Seen and for a remarkable manuscript hidden by Saint Cyprian. The Cavern of Fire (1888) uses as its departure points (a) the theory that the Mound Builders were ancient Greeks and (b) a HOLLOW EARTH filled with teratological peoples. Two Boys' Trip to an Unknown Planet (1889) is an astronomical fantasy, often on a mythic level, set on a planet circling Sirius; it may have been a source of motifs for David LINDSAY's A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS (1920). "Where?" (1889-90) takes place in a strange Antarctica filled with grotesque peoples and superscientific devices reminiscent of Bulwer LYTTON's vril. 3,000 Miles through the Clouds (1892), which takes elements from Jules VERNE's The Mysterious Island (trans 1875), puts three comrades into wildly imaginative situations in an Arctic crater. Perhaps also by Doughty is Al and his Air-Ship (1903) as by Gaston Garne, which describes scientifically advanced giants in Antarctica, remarkable flying machines powered by a vril-like source, and other marvels. An adult sf novel, Mirrikh (1892), although highly imaginative, was not especially successful. [EFB] DOUGLAS, CAROLE NELSON (1944- ) US writer who began her career as a feature writer 1967-84 for the St Paul Pioneer Press. Her first novels, like Amberleigh (1980), were historical romances. She has become best known for energetic, layered high-fantasy tales like Six of Swords (1982), the first volume in her Kendric and Irissa sequence, which continues with Exiles of the Rynth (1984), Keepers of Edanvant (1987), Heir of Rengarth (1988) and Seven of Swords (1989). Though she has been an infrequent author of sf, the Probe sequence - Probe (1985) and Counterprobe (1988) - is of some interest for its slow unfolding of the mystery behind the amnesia afflicting a young woman who has PSI POWERS and who turns out to be what the title says she is: a probe inserted by ALIENS into the human world to gather data. But love intervenes. It may be the case that CND will never wish to shake herself completely free of romance idioms and plotlines; but, if she does so, she might become one of the significant genre writers of the 1990s. [JC]Other works:Fair Wind, Fiery Star (1981; much exp restored text 1994), pirate tale set partly in the Bermuda Triangle; The Crystal books, Crystal Days (1990) and Crystal Nights (coll 1990), associational, with some of the same cast appearing in the Midnight Louie fantasy sequence comprising Catnap: A Midnight Louie Mystery (1992) Pussyfoo (1993) and Cat on a Blue Monday (1994); Good Night, Mr Holmes * (1990), Good Morning, Irene * (1991) and Irene at Large (1993), associational pastiches of Sherlock Holmes; the projected Taliswoman Trilogy, beginning with Cup of Clay (1991) and Seed Upon the Wind (1992).See also: SUPERMAN. DOUGLAS, GARRY Garry KILWORTH. DOUGLAS, IAIN [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. DOUGLAS, JEFF Andrew J. OFFUTT. DOUGLAS, (GEORGE) NORMAN (1868-1952) UK writer of superb meditative travel books and some fiction, his best known novel being South Wind (1917). Unprofessional Tales (coll 1901), as by Normyx, consists mainly of fantasies; but in two novels of his late maturity he dramatized his strongly misogynist and persuasively "pagan" views in venues familiar to the reader of sf. They Went (1920; rev 1921) subversively promulgates a UTOPIAN aestheticism in a land much like doomed Lyonesse. Through the tale of half-divine Linus and his imposition of a rigid civilization upon the world, In the Beginning (1927 Italy), an example of prehistoric sf, expresses - with a more vigorous loathing than Thomas Burnett SWANN could muster 40 years later - the sense that humanity's rise entailed the destruction of Eden, and of the sentient, pagan, amoral creatures who dwelt there. [JC]Other works: Nerinda (1929 Italy). DOUGLASS, ELLSWORTH Probably the pseudonym of Elmer Dwiggins (? -? ), about whom little is known. ED wrote "The Wheels of Dr Ginochio Gyves" (1899 Cassell's Magazine), about a gyroscopically controlled space vessel, with Edwin PALLANDER. His sf novel, Pharoah's Broker: Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner (Written by Himself) (1899 UK), is an interplanetary romance set on MARS, where parallel EVOLUTION has resulted in a society almost identical to that of Egypt in the time of Joseph. In the end the hero, having been a grain-broker in Chicago, is able to take on Joseph's role. [PN/JC] DOWDING, HENRY WALLACE (?1888-?1967) US writer who was most active in the 1920s. His sf novel, The Man from Mars, or Service, for Service's Sake (1910), is occupied for much of its length with its protagonist's search for a MCGUFFIN document, but shifts in its later moments to be a long description, on the part of the protagonist's employer, of his time on MARS, which planet is small, quite close to Earth, and UTOPIAN. [JC] DOWLING, TERRY (1947- ) Australian lecturer in English, tv performer, songwriter and writer. One of the most interesting new voices in local sf, TD is beginning to glean international praise as well. His master's thesis was, unusually for AUSTRALIA, about sf - its topic was J.G. BALLARD and the Surrealists. "The Man who Walks Away behind the Eyes" (1982 OMEGA SCIENCE DIGEST) inaugurated an sf career that has so far been devoted exclusively to short fiction (over 30 stories to date); his work was at first too obviously indebted to Cordwainer SMITH and Jack VANCE, but later developed an individual voice. TD's idiosyncratic but vivid between-the-lines style is perhaps best displayed in his Tyson stories, some of which are collected in Rynosseros (coll of linked stories 1990), Wormwood (coll of linked stories 1991), Blue Tyson (coll 1992)and Twilight Beach (coll of linked stories 1993): though many characters are featured, they tell centrally : of Tom Tyson, captain of the sandship Rynosseros, in which he roams the strange, high-tech Ab'o societies of a future Australia's outback, occasionally undergoing mystical epiphanies. With Richard DELAP and Gil Lamont (1947- ) he edited The Essential Ellison (coll 1987) by Harlan ELLISONand with Van Ikin he put together in Mortal Fire: Best Australian SF (anth 1993), which presents the sf of his native land as evolving its own characteristic themes and timbre. [PN] DOWNING, PAULA E. Working name of US attorney, municipal judge and writer Paula Elaine Downing King (1951- ), who writes also as Paula King; she is married to T. Jackson KING. PED began publishing work of genre interest with "Loni's Promise" for Discoveries in 1989. Her first novel, Mad Roy's Light (1990) as Paula King, is an sf adventure featuring a human woman who must come to terms with her life within an interstellar trade guild while at the same time striving to comprehend the ALIEN Li Fawn, who mercilessly use biological engineering ( GENETIC ENGINEERING) to modify other species for their own purposes. Her second, Rinn's Star (1990), plays something of a game of words with its title, as the telepathic protagonist Rinn, who lives on an interesting planet and travels between the stars, also sees her own personal star wax and wane erratically as she shoots from one culture to another, each having a different attitude towards her background and her gift. In Flare Star (1992) a colony planet is devastated when its sun flares; Fallway (1993) treated similar material; and A Whisper of Time (1994) set up a complex First Contact plot ( COMMUNICATIONS) involving an alien orphan who, brought up on Earth, has fantasies about Mayan ruins, which resemble her own deepest memories of some other place. [JC] DOWNMAN, FRANCIS Ernest OLDMEADOW. DOYLE, [Sir] ARTHUR CONAN (1859-1930) UK writer known primarily for his work outside the sf field and in particular for his Sherlock Holmes stories. Born in Edinburgh and educated by Jesuits, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University and initiated his own practice in Portsmouth in 1882, supplementing his income by writing. The first Holmes novel was A Study in Scarlet (1887). His historical novels, Micah Clarke (1889) and The White Company (1891), were relatively unsuccessful, but the first series of Holmes short stories in The STRAND MAGAZINE (1891-2) secured his popularity. His interest in subjects on the borderline between science and mysticism is evident in a potboiler about supernatural vengeance from the mysterious East, The Mystery of Cloomber (1889), and in a short novel of telepathic vampirism, The Parasite (1895). Although the Holmes stories suggest an incisively analytical and determinedly rationalistic mind, ACD was fascinated by all manner of occult disciplines, including hypnotism, Theosophy and oriental mysticism; following the death of his son he became an ardent convert to Spiritualism.ACD's first SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, The Doings of Raffles Haw (1891), is a hurriedly written account of a gold-maker who becomes disenchanted with the fruits of his philanthropy. His early sf short stories include "The Los Amigos Fiasco" (1892), in which an experimental electric chair "supercharges" a criminal instead of killing him, and the personality-exchange story "The Great Keinplatz Experiment" (1894). ACD abandoned sf during the early decades of his literary success but returned before WWI to make his most important contribution to the genre: following "The Terror of Blue John Gap" (1910) - about a monstrous visitor from an underground world - and a satirical account of "The Great Brown-Pericord Motor" (1911) came The Lost World (1912), a classic LOST-WORLD novel in which the redoubtable Professor Challenger leads an expedition to a plateau in South America where dinosaurs still survive. In a sequel, The Poison Belt (1913), the Earth faces disaster as a result of atmospheric poisoning. "The Horror of the Heights" (1913) is an account of strange forms of life inhabiting the upper atmosphere. The novelette "Danger!" (1914; reprinted in Danger!, and Other Stories, coll 1918) is Doyle's contribution to the imminent- WAR genre, anticipating submarine attacks on shipping - a prophecy received sceptically by the Admiralty but validated within months.ACD's post-WWI passion for the paranormal, which led him to such excesses as the endorsement of Elsie Wright's and Frances Griffiths's clumsily faked photographs of the "Cottingley fairies" in The Coming of the Fairies (1922), strongly infects his later sf. In The Land of Mist (1926) Challenger is converted to spiritualism; the remaining stories in the series-which can be found alongside the titular occult romance in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories (coll 1929) as well as in The Professor Challenger Stories (omni 1952; vt The Complete Professor Challenger) - are weak, though "When the World Screamed" (1929) is a striking early LIVING-WORLD tale.ACD's earlier short stories, including numerous fantasies and a few trivial sf stories not mentioned above, exist in many collections, including The Captain of the Polestar and Other Tales (coll 1890), The Great Keinplatz Experiment, and Other Stories (coll 1894 US; rev vt The Great Keinplatz Experiment, and Other Tales of Twilight and the Unseen 1919 US), and Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life (coll 1894), most of whose contents are reprinted in The Conan Doyle Stories (coll 1929). The Best Science Fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle (coll 1981), ed Charles G. WAUGH and Martin H. GREENBERG, collects almost all of his shorter sf; one notable exception is an interesting essay in alternative history ( ALTERNATE WORLDS), "The Death Voyage" (The Strand 1929).Since Sherlock Holmes fell into the public domain the character has been popular in sf stories, appearing in key roles in, among others, Morlock Night * (1979) by K.W. JETER, Sherlock Holmes' War of the Worlds * (1975) by Manly Wade and Wade WELLMAN, Exit Sherlock Holmes * (1977) by Robert Lee HALL, Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes * (1979) by Loren D. Estleman and Time for Sherlock Holmes * (1983) by David DVORKIN. Druid's Blood (1988) by Esther M. Friesner features Holmes (here called Brihtric Donne) in an alternate world where MAGIC works; ACD himself appears as Arthur Elric Boyle. The first novel of this "revival", The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) by Nicholas Meyer is of sf interest in that it involves early psychoanalysis ( PSYCHOLOGY) and the father of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). A relevant anthology is Sherlock Holmes through Time and Space (anth 1984) ed Isaac ASIMOV, Martin H. GREENBERG and Charles G. WAUGH. [BS]Other works: The Best Supernatural Tales of Arthur Conan Doyle (coll 1979 US) ed E.F. BLEILER; The Supernatural Tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (anth 1987) ed Peter Haining. See also: ATLANTIS; BIOLOGY; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; DIME-NOVEL SF; DISASTER; ESCHATOLOGY; HISTORY OF SF; HORROR IN SF; MACHINES; MEDICINE; MONEY; PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS; POWER SOURCES; PSI POWERS; RADIO; SCIENTISTS; SERIES; UNDER THE SEA. DOYLE, DEBRA (1952- ) US writer who began publishing work of genre interest with "Bad Blood" in Werewolves (anth 1988) ed Jane YOLEN and Martin H. GREENBERG, which was expanded into a novel (see Bad Blood below); all her books have been written with James D(ouglas) MacDonald (1954- ), and we follow the alphabet-and make no estimate of seniority in this partnership-in treating all their joint work under DD. Most of this work has been fantasy (see Other Works below), and some has been TIES such as their 2 titles in the Planet Builders sequence, Night of Ghosts and Lightning * (1989) and Zero-Sum Games * (1989), both as by Robyn Tallis; Horror High: Pep Rally * (1991) as by Nicholas Adams; and their 2 titles in the 4th Tom Swift sequence (see TOM SWIFT): Monster Machine * (1991) and Aquatech Warriors * (1991), both as by Victor APPLETON. Robert Silverberg's Time Tours #3: Timecrime, Inc * (1991) and Daniel M. Pinkwater's Melvinge of the Megaverse #2: Night of the Living Rat * (1992) are also ties.Their first novel in their own right, Knight's Wyrd (1992), is fantasy; but the Mageworlds series-comprising The Price of the Stars (1992), Starpilot's Grave (1993) and By Honor Betray'd (1994)-moves into space opera with some flair, though not without recourse to fantasy outcomes when the going gets tough for the exile princess who becomes a space pilot and stirs up trouble, hither and yon, around the galaxy. Bad Blood (1993)-which incorporates DD's solo first story-and Hunter's Moon (1994) make up a children's series about werewolves and vampires. [JC]Other Works: the Circle of Magic sequence, comprising School of Wizardry (1990), Tournament and Tower (1990), City by the Sea (1990), The Prince's Players (1990), The Prisoners of Bell Castle (1990) and The High King's Daughter (1990). DOZOIS, GARDNER (RAYMOND) (1947- ) US writer, anthologist and, from 1985 (with the Jan 1986 issue), editor of ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, winning 5 HUGOS between 1988 and 1992; he is married to Susan CASPER. He began publishing sf in 1966 with "The Empty Man" for If, but it was not until after military service (in which he worked as a military journalist) that he began producing such stories as "A Special Kind of Morning" (1971) and "Chains of the Sea" (1972), which made him a figure of some note in the latter-day US NEW WAVE, causing some misapplied criticism of his "pessimism" and general lack of interest in storytelling; both stories are included in The Visible Man (coll 1977), which assembles his best early work, and reappear inGeodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois (coll 1992).His first novel, Nightmare Blue (1975) with George Alec EFFINGER, a fast-paced adventure, demonstrates a dangerous facility on both authors' parts. Much more important - and less "professional" - is his first solo novel, STRANGERS (1974 New Dimensions; exp 1978), an intense and well told love story between a human male and an ALIEN female, set on her home planet, in a Galaxy humans signally do not dominate; her death from bearing his child is biologically inevitable (the plot's derivation from Philip Jose FARMER's THE LOVERS [1961] can be seen as homage) and stems from a mutual incomprehension rooted in culture and the intrinsic solitude of beings (see also SEX). Never a prolific author, though fluently capable as an editor, GD has collaborated frequently with associates in the writing of stories, many of which are assembled in Slow Dancing through Time (coll 1990) with Susan CASPER, Jack DANN, Jack C. HALDEMAN II and Michael SWANWICK. The Peacemaker (1983 IASFM; 1991 chap) won a NEBULA for 1983 and "Morning Child" a Nebula for 1984.GD has written considerable sf criticism, and in The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr (1977 chap) he constructed an analysis which was not to be disqualified by Alice Sheldon's revelation that she was TIPTREE. An anthology, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy: Twenty Dynamic Essays by Today's Top Professionals (anth 1991) co-edited with Tina Lee, Stanley Schmidt, Ian Randal Strock and Sheila Williams, extols dynamic professionalism. His first fiction anthologies, intelligently edited and of continuing interest, are A Day in the Life (anth 1972), Future Power (anth 1976) with Dann, and Another World (anth 1977). Subsequent anthologies, all ed with Dann (except as noted), are Aliens! (anth 1980), Unicorns! (anth 1982), Magicats! (anth 1984), Bestiary! (anth 1985), Mermaids! (anth 1985), Sorcerers! (anth 1986), Demons! (anth 1987), Dogtales! (anth 1988), Ripper! (anth 1988; vt Jack the Ripper 1988 UK) with Casper, Seaserpents! (anth 1989), Dinosaurs! (anth 1990), Magicats II (anth 1991), Little People! (anth 1991) and Horses! (anth 1994). Later singleton anthologies were The Best of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (anth 1988), Time Travelers (anth 1989), Transcendental Tales from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (anth 1989), Isaac Asimov's Aliens (anth 1991), Isaac Asimov's Robots (anth 1991) with Sheila Williams, and The Legend Book of Science Fiction (anth 1991 UK; vt Modern Classics of Science Fiction 1992 US), Isaac Asimov's SF Lite (anth 1993), Isaac Asimov's War (anth 1993), Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (anth 1994) and Isaac Asimov's Cyberdreams (anth 1994).In 1977 GD took over an ongoing year's-best anthology from Lester DEL REY and edited several Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year ANTHOLOGIES: Sixth Annual Collection (anth 1977), Seventh Annual Collection (anth 1978), Eighth Annual Collection (anth (1979), Ninth Annual Collection (anth 1980) and Tenth Annual Collection (anth 1981). After the termination of this series, he launched a further ongoing sequence, The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (anth 1984), Second Annual Collection (anth 1985), Third Annual Collection (anth 1986), Fourth Annual Collection (anth 1987; vt The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 1987 UK), Fifth Annual Collection (anth 1988; vt Best New SF 2 1988 UK), Sixth Annual Collection (anth 1989; vt Best New SF 3 1989 UK) Seventh Annual Collection (anth 1990; vt Best New SF 4 1990 UK), Eighth Annual Collection (anth 1991; vt Best New SF 5 1991 UK), Ninth Annual Collection (anth 1992), Tenth Annual Collection (anth 1993; vt Best New SF 7 1993 UK) and Eleventh Annual Collection (anth 1994). [JC]See also: CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; CYBERPUNK; HISTORY OF SF; INVISIBILITY; OMNI; PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS; POLLUTION; SHARECROP. DR In this encyclopedia's alphabetical listing, "Dr" is, as is conventional, treated as if spelled out in full-i.e., as "Doctor". DRAGON GAMES AND TOYS. DRAGON PUBLICATIONS VARGO STATTEN SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE. DRAGONS SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. DRAKE, DAVID A(LLEN) (1945- ) US lawyer and writer who served as the Assistant Town Attorney in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1972-80. He became a full-time writer in 1981, although his first story, the H.P. LOVECR AFT pastiche "Denkirch", had appeared much earlier, in Travellers by Night (anth 1967) ed August W. DERLETH. Though the wide success of his various military-sf novels and series and SHARED-WORLD enterprises has perhaps had a simplifying effect on his reputation, DAD has, in fact, from the beginning of his career written a wide variety of work, both stories and novels, a range perhaps best encapsulated in his first collection of unconnected stories, From the Heart of Darkness (coll 1983), which assembles sf, fantasy and horror tales written from 1974 onwards and set in the past, present and future. From early in his career, his prose has been spare and telling though occasionally, in some of the more routine sf adventures, seemingly no more than cost-efficient.DAD first came to wide notice with his Hammer's Slammers sequence of military-sf tales set in a SPACE-OPERA Galaxy: Hammer's Slammers (coll 1979; exp 1987), #2: Cross the Stars (1984), #3: At Any Price (1985), #4: Counting the Cost (1987), #5: Rolling Hot (1989), #6: The Warrior (1991), #7: The Sharp End (1993), and The Voyage (1994), set in the Hammer universe and retellilng the tale of Jason and the Argonauts. It is very noticeable that the mercenaries involved in this sequence, and in most of DAD's other military sf, are (as it were) soldiers on the ground, and that representatives of the officer class generally merit the suspicion with which they are greeted. Though its general political vision could not be described as anarchist, DAD's work lacks-possibly as a consequence of his indifference to the loquacious cod stoicism ascribed by other writers to officer classes in general - a sense of philosophizing import, gaining much thereby, so that he can concentrate on the moment-to-moment exigencies of honorable mercenary soldiering. The Fleet sequence of SHARED-WORLD anthologies, created and ed by DAD and Bill FAWCETT - The Fleet * (anth 1988), #2: Counter Attack * (anth 1988), #3: Breakthrough * (anth 1989), #4: Sworn Allies * (anth 1990), #5: Total War * (anth 1990) and #6: Crisis * (anth 1991) - does not depart markedly from this mature restraint, which is further manifested in a sequel series, the Battlestation sequence comprising Battlestation * (anth 1992) and Vanguard * (anth 1993). The Crisis of Empire sequence, essentially written as TIES by his collaborators - Crisis of Empire #1: An Honorable Defense * (1988) with Thomas T. THOMAS, #2: Cluster Command * (1989) with William C. DIETZ and #3: The War Machine * (1989) with Roger MacBride ALLEN - rather more flamboyantly follows the plummeting career of a captain who reaches bottom in the third volume but whom we expect, in projected continuations, to save the Empire. The Northworld sequence - Northworld (1990), #2: Vengeance (1991) and #3: Justice (1992) - sets its military operations on a world which operates as a gateway to several ALTERNATE-WORLD settings. The General sequence with S.M. STIRLING - expected to run several volumes beyond The Forge (1991), The Hammer1992 - features yet another military officer, befriended on his far-off planetary home by a battle COMPUTER planning to re-establish a Galactic Federation.With The Dragon Lord (1979), an exercise in Arthurian SWORD AND SORCERY, DAD began to publish singletons set in various venues and times, and of varying quality. Time Safari (coll of linked stories 1982); exp vt Tyrannosaur 1994 makes one of the hoary CLICHES of TIME-TRAVEL tales -the dinosaur hunt - vividly present to the mind's eye through the well researched verisimilitude of the telling. Birds of Prey (1984) brings Ancient Rome, again through time travel, vividly to life, as does Killer (1974 Midnight Sun #1; 1985) with Karl Edward Wagner (1945- ). Bridgehead (1986) combines time travel with interstellar military action and intrigue. Dagger * (1988) is a tied contribution to the Thieves' World enterprise, and Explorers in Hell * (1989) with Janet E. MORRIS is part of the Heroes in Hell enterprise. Old Nathan (coll of linked stories 1991), set in a traditional USA, nostalgically tells tales of a crabby but lovable ghost-hunter. Today there seems very little to stop DAD from writing exactly what he wishes to write. [JC]Other works: Skyripper (1983); The Forlorn Hope (1984); Active Measures (1985), Kill Ratio (1987) and Target (1989), all three with Janet E. Morris; Fortress (1986); Lacey and his Friends (coll of linked stories 1986); the World of Crystal Walls fantasy sequence, beginning with The Sea Hag (1988), further volumes projected; Ranks of Bronze (1986); Vettius and his Friends (coll of linked stories 1989); Surface Action (1990); The Hunter Returns (1991), adapted from Fire-Hunter (1951) by Jim Kjelgaard (1910-1959); The Military Dimension (coll 1991); The Jungle * (1991), based on (and printed with) "Clash by Night" (1943) as by Lawrence O'Donnell, a joint pseudonym of Henry KUTTNER and C.L. MOORE, and here ascribed, some think erroneously, to Kuttner alone; Starliner (1992); Car Warriors TM: The Square Deal * (1992); High Strangeness (1992); Igniting the Reaches (1994).As Editor: The Starhunters sequence of reprint stories, comprising Men Hunting Things (anth 1988), Things Hunting Men (anth 1988) and Bluebloods (anth 1990); the Space sequence, all with Martin H. GREENBERG and Charles G. WAUGH, comprising Space Gladiators (anth 1989), Space Infantry (anth 1989) and Space Dreadnoughts (anth 1990); A Separate Star (anth 1989) and Heads to the Storm (anth 1989), both with Sandra MIESEL and both constituting a tribute to Rudyard KIPLING; The Eternal City (anth 1990) with Greenberg and Waugh.See also: ALIENS; GAMES AND SPORTS; VENUS; WAR; WEAPONS. DRAYTON, HENRY S(HIPMAN) (1840-1923) US writer whose lost-race ( LOST WORLDS) novel, In Oudemon: Reminiscences of an Unknown People (1900), features a 100-year-old English colony in South America which is technologically advanced, telepathic, socialist and Christian. [JC] DREAMSCAPE Film (1984). Bella Productions/Zupnik-Curtis Enterprises. Dir Joseph Ruben, starring Dennis Quaid, Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Eddie Albert, Kate Capshaw, David Patrick Kelly. Screenplay David Loughery, Chuck Russell, Ruben, based on a story by Loughery. 99 mins. Colour.A gambler with psychic powers (Quaid) is persuaded to take part in experiments in "dreamlinking" at a research centre. He learns how to enter other people's dreams and interact with them. There is a plot to murder the President, who has been having dreams of nuclear holocaust, by using an evil psychic to assassinate him during a nightmare, but the Quaid character intervenes in the dream. The theme can be traced back at least to "Dreams are Sacred" (1948 ASF) by Peter Phillips, and a similar notion would later be the focus of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. In D the penny-dreadful thriller plot is so ludicrous that it is only the dreams themselves that have much entertainment value. The effects are lively, especially in the climactic vision of Washington in flames after the Bomb. [PN]See also: VIRTUAL REALITY. DREAM WORLD US DIGEST-size magazine. 3 quarterly issues, Feb-Aug 1957; published by ZIFF-DAVIS; ed Paul W. FAIRMAN. Subtitled "Stories of Incredible Powers", DW was initiated as a response to the success of similar issues of FANTASTIC, with stories of wish-fulfilment sometimes featuring PSI POWERS. #1 reprinted stories by Thorne Smith and P.G. WODEHOUSE, but the magazine included little fiction of note, although Harlan ELLISON and Robert SILVERBERG contributed amusing stories. [FHP/MJE] DREW, WAYLAND (1932- ) Canadian teacher and writer who began publishing sf with The Wabeno Feast (1973), a complex tale about HOLOCAUST and its roots, in which three narrative strands all tangibly cohere-the 18th-century journal of an early entrepreneur who confronts the heart of darkness in the pale wabeno (an Indian shaman), the canoe trip of a Canadian couple through the wilderness upon which the earlier visitor has already stamped the seal of the civilized world, and a NEAR-FUTURE flight into the same but now savaged wilderness on the part of escapees from a DISASTER directly tied to the spoliation of the planet. After Dragonslayer * (1981 US), a film tie, WD composed in The Erthring Cycle another post-holocaust narrative - The Memoirs of Alcheringia (1984 US), The Gaian Experiment (1985 US) and The Master of Norriya (1986 US) - which describes the founding of a secret underground society, the Yggdrasil Project, via which it is hoped to surmount inevitable planetary catastrophe. But, as the final volume moves to a quiet, sombre close, the reader will perhaps be reminded of the dying fall which concludes George R. STEWART's EARTH ABIDES (1949). [JC]Other works: * batteries not included * (1987 US), novelizing * BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED (1987); Willow * (1988 US), another film tie; Halfway Man * (1989). DREXEL, JAY B. [s] Jerome BIXBY. DRUERY, CHARLES THOMAS (1843-1917) UK writer, often on UK flora, whose didactic novel, The New Gulliver, or Travels in Athomia (1897), presents its shrunken narrator with strange new perspectives on the natural world. [JC] DRUGS The use of drugs, both real and imaginary, is a common theme in sf, notably in CYBERPUNK. The topic is discussed in detail under PERCEPTION, and a little under NEW WAVE and PSYCHOLOGY. Film and tv treatments of the theme include ALTERED STATES, DOOMWATCH, LIQUID SKY and THX 1138. A small selection of the many sf authors who have used drug themes is: Brian W. ALDISS, Ralph BLUM, Karin BOYE, William S. BURROUGHS, Don DELILLO, Philip K. DICK, Charles DUFF, Mick FARREN, William GIBSON, Evan HUNTER, Aldous HUXLEY, K.W. JETER, Richard KADREY, Irwin LEWIS, Talbot MUNDY, Geoff RYMAN, Lucius SHEPARD, Norman SPINRAD, Bruce STERLING, Robert Louis STEVENSON and Ian WATSON. [PN] DRUILLET, PHILIPPE (1944- ) Innovative French artist with an epic imagination and an astringent pen-line style who cofounded with Moebius (Jean GIRAUD) and others the publishing company Les Humanoides Associes and the imaginative graphic-fiction magazine METAL HURLANT in 1975; much of the content of the latter has been published in English in the US magazine HEAVY METAL. Brought up in Spain, PD was a photographer until the publication of his first strip Lone Sloane (graph coll 1967; intro by Maxim JAKUBOWSKI), a bawdy SPACE OPERA influenced by US CINEMA and HEROIC FANTASY. A unique illustrator, often clumsy in his portrayal of the human face, PD has enlarged the graphic structures of the sf COMIC strip and created a wild, flamboyant, morally ambiguous universe of crazed architectures and monstrous ALIENS. The increasingly obsessive Lone Sloane adventures were continued in Les 6 voyages de Lone Sloane ["The Six Journeys of Lone Sloane"] (graph coll 1972) and, with script by Jacques Lob, Delirius (graph coll 1973) - together collected in English as Lone Sloane - Delirius (graph omni trans 1975 UK) - followed by Yragael (graph coll 1974 with script by Michel Demuth) and Urm le fou (graph coll 1975) - together collected in English as Yragael - Urm (graph omni trans Pauline Tennant 1976 UK). PD tackled SWORD AND SORCERY in his adaptation of Michael MOORCOCK's Elric of Melnibone with script by Jakubowski and Demuth as Elrick (graph 1973; with script by Moorcock as Elric 1973 UK). La nuit ["The Night"] (graph 1977), a sombre panorama of urban warfare, was completed after the traumatic experience of his wife's dying from cancer in 1975. His other works include Vuzz (graph 1974), Retour a Bakaam ["Return to Bakaam"] (graph 1975) with script by Francois Truchaud, Mirages (graph 1976), Salammbo (graph 1983) and Nosferatu (graph coll 1982; trans 1991 US), the last being a collection of black-and-white strips first published in the magazine Pilote. During the mid-1980s PD was commissioned to create the internal decor for the Paris Metro station at Porte de la Villette; he has also produced sculpture and created a children's sf animated tv series, Bleu (52 26min episodes, 1989-current). [MJ/RT]See also: FANTASY; ILLUSTRATION. DRUMM, CHRIS (1949- ) US bookseller, publisher and bibliographer who has published under the imprint Chris Drumm Booklets a large number of chapbooks containing stories and other work by R.A. L AFFERTY and others. Beginning in 1983, his BIBLIOGRAPHIES, all arranged with an economic practicality sometimes missing from this field, include works on Algis BUDRYS, Hal CLEMENT, Thomas M. DISCH, James E. GUNN, Lafferty, Larry NIVEN, Mack REYNOLDS, John T. SLADEK and Richard WILSON; in this encyclopedia they are listed under the authors treated (whom see). [JC] DRUMM, D.B. House pseudonym used on Dell Books' post- HOLOCAUST Traveler series of SURVIVALIST FICTION, initiated by Ed Naha, with most of the novels thought to be the work of John SHIRLEY. ( Ed NAHA for details.) [PN] DRURY, ALLEN (STUART) (1918- ) US writer of a sequence of novels depicting US political ( POLITICS) life from a point roughly similar to real-life 1960 and growing into a full-fledged history of the NEAR FUTURE. The bent is conservatively anti-communist, and the satirical effects are often telling, though sometimes tendentious. The series comprises Advise and Consent (1959), which won a Pulitzer, A Shade of Difference (1962), Capable of Honor (1966), Preserve and Protect (1968), Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason (1973), in which world communism topples an unready USA into chaos, and The Promise of Joy (The Presidency of Orrin Knox) (1975), in which a war between the USSR and China further challenges the pacifist- and liberal-ridden republic. The Throne of Saturn (1971), in which the Russians attempt to sabotage the USA's first manned expedition to MARS, is similar in tone but otherwise unconnected to the series. Two later books, The Hill of Summer: A Novel of the Soviet Conquest (1981) and its sequel, The Roads of Earth (1984), break no new ground. [JC] DRYASDUST M.Y. HALIDOM. DUANE, DIANE E(LIZABETH) (1952- ) US writer, most respected for her work in fantasy. She is married to fantasy author Peter Morwood (1956- ), with whom she has collaborated on three books. She began writing fantasies with the Epic Tale of the Five sequence - The Door into Fire (1979) and The Door into Shadow (1984), later extended with The Door into Sunset (1992) - and continued with the Wizard sequence: So You Want to Be a Wizard? (1983), Deep Wizardry (1985) and High Wizardry (1990), all three being assembled as Support Your Local Wizard (omni 1990), plus A Wizard Abroad (1993). Of more direct sf interest are several successful STAR TREK ties: The Wounded Sky * (1983), My Enemy, My Ally * (1984), The Romulan Way * (1987) with Morwood, Spock's World * (1988), Doctor's Orders * (1990)and Star Trek, the Next Generation: Dark Mirror * (1993). Though the smooth power of her best fantasies does not transmit perfectly to her sf ties, the Star Trek examples are by no means negligible. Other ties include Guardians of the Three #2: Keeper of the City * (anth 1989) and Space Cops: Mindblast * (1991), both with Morwood, and Space Cops: Kill Station * (1992), seaQuest DSV: The Novel * (1993) with Morwood, based on the pilot for the seaQuest tv series, and Spider-Man: The Venom Factor * (1994). [JC] Du BOIS, THEODORA (McCORMICK) (1890-1986) US writer best known for her many detective novels, though The Devil's Spoon (1930), featuring visitors from other worlds, and Sarah Hall's Sea God (1952) are fantasies. In her sf novel, Solution T-25 (1951), the USSR wages successful nuclear war against the USA. An underground resistance, faking collaboration with the occupation forces, develops Solution T-25, which dissolves the Soviet leadership's authoritarian personality structures, turning them into benign humorists incapable of commanding their forces. [JC]Other works: Armed with a New Terror (1936) and Murder Strikes an Atomic Unit (1946), both associational. Du BOIS, WILLIAM PENE (1916-1993) US writer, illustrator and art editor and designer for Paris Review. His own novels, which he illustrates himself (he also illustrates other writers' books), are usually juveniles, though the illustrations are of general interest. He began publishing with stories like Elizabeth, the Cow Ghost (1936), Giant Otto (1936), and The Flying Locomotive (1941), and much of his work employs fantasy elements. The ANTIGRAVITY device featured in Peter Graves (1950) verges on sf, and The Twenty-One Balloons (1947) is a full-fledged sf novel: a retired professor, travelling across the Pacific by BALLOON in 1883, is forced down on Krakatoa, where he finds a UTOPIA in full swing, financed by its inhabitants' secret trips to civilization to sell diamonds, which they have in plenty. The famous eruption of that year finishes the experiment, but everyone escapes by balloon. [JC]See also: CHILDREN'S SF. DUDGEON, ROBERT ELLIS (1820-1904) UK homeopathic doctor, author of the UTOPIAN novel Colymbia (1873, published anon). Written in a spirit of competition with Erewhon (1872; rev 1903) by Samuel BUTLER, who was RED's patient, it is set on an equatorial archipelago in the Pacific and tells of a lost race ( LOST WORLDS) of Englishmen interbred with Oceanic natives; their submarine city is powered by tidal energy. Their remarkably free sexual practices allow RED to satirize those of Victorian England. Colymbia is livelier and more original than most of its kind. [PN]See also: ANONYMOUS SF AUTHORS. DUDINTSEV, VLADIMIR (1918- ) Russian writer whose novel Not by Bread Alone (1956 Novy Mir; trans 1957 US) seemed at first to proclaim the Soviet thaw, but he was publicly reprimanded for it soon after its publication. Novogodniaia skazka (1956 Novy Mir; trans Gabriella Azrael as A New Year's Tale 1960 chap US; vt A New Year's Fable 1960 chap US; first book publication in USSR 1965) is a kind of sf morality tale in which the protagonist, by composing himself for his expected death, discovers a new source of cheap light and heat. [JC] DUDLEY-SMITH, TREVOR [r] Elleston TREVOR. DUFF AWARDS. DUFF, CHARLES (St LAWRENCE) (1894-1966) Irish translator and writer whose sf play, Mind Products Limited: A Melodrama of the Future in Three Acts and an Epilogue (1932 Netherlands), though breezily deprecatory of the 1960 world it depicts, introduces an inventive range of extrapolatory material, including mind control (and X-ray vision) through drugs, carplanes and tv phones, all contributing to a CAPEK-like vision of totalitarianism in a world gone mad. [JC] DUFF, DOUGLAS V(ALDER) (1901- ) UK writer, usually of adventure novels for older boys, though several of his titles are clearly addressed to an adult audience. Not all his sf or fantasy has been traced; those that have include The Horned Crescent (1936), Jack Harding's Quest (1939), Peril on the Amazon (1946), Atomic Valley (1947), The Man from Outer Space (1953) and The Nuclear Castle Story (1958). Of these, perhaps the most interesting in Jack Harding's Quest, a LOST WORLD story set in the Middle East, where a Lost Tribe of Israel has been hoarding the Seven Horns of Joshua; the eponymous young protagonist, with the aid of some scientific boffins, establishes the reality of the Horns, which have the effect of disrupting matter at the molecular level. This effect is acoustically recorded; and the Horns are then unilaterally destroyed by the British, to keep the secret from the German foe. The Lost Tribe knuckles under. [JC] DUFFY, MAUREEN (PATRICIA) (1933- ) UK writer whose novels tend to explore marginalized figures, many of them women viewed from a FEMINIST angle; typical is the protagonist of Gor Saga (1981) - televised as First Born in 1988 - who is the child of a gorilla mother fertilized by human semen ( Hyperlink to: APES AND CAVEMEN), and who grows into articulate adulthood in an alienating NEAR-FUTURE UK. MD's nonfictional The Erotic World of Faery (1972) takes a determinedly Freudian view of that subject. [JC]See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; GENETIC ENGINEERING; WOMEN SF WRITERS. DUKA, IVO Joint pseudonym of emigre Czech writers Ivo Duchac DUKE, MADELAINE (ELIZABETH) (1925- ) UK writer and physician, born in Switzerland of Dutch parents, active under her own name and at least two pseudonyms in a variety of genres including sf novels (which she describes as "cartoons"). Claret, Sandwiches and Sin: A Cartoon (1964 as by Maxim Donne; 1966 as by MED) depicts a world insecurely amalgamated, after a nuclear conflict, into two political divisions: Africa and the Rest of the World. Any politician who risks war is eliminated by an underground organization. The protagonist of the sequel, This Business of Bomfog: A Cartoon (1967), is "Maxim Donne" - author of Claret, Sandwiches and Sin, a successful novel that has inspired the assassination of a number of world leaders. In 1989, Bomfog (Brotherhood-of-Man-Fatherhood-of-God), the organization responsible, now runs the UK in a fashion MED depicts in somewhat hectic language as DYSTOPIAN. Flashpoint (1982) features a scientist who plans to use a new nuclear power system to enforce global sanity. [JC] Du MAURIER, DAPHNE (1907-1989) UK writer, granddaughter of George DU MAURIER, famous for dark-hued romances (like Rebecca [1938]), usually set in Cornwall and often - like her first, The Loving Spirit (1931), a ghost story - tinged with the supernatural; drugs send the protagonist of The House on the Strand (1969) into medieval Cornwall. Her one sf novel, Rule Britannia (1972), subjects a NEAR-FUTURE Cornwall to US INVASION, during which the natives rebel against the tasteless Yankees. Among DDM's short stories are "The Birds", from The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Some Stories (coll 1952; vt Kiss Me Again, Stranger 1953 US; vt The Birds and Other Stories 1963 UK), which was made by Alfred Hitchcock into The BIRDS (1963), and "Don't Look Now", from Not After Midnight (coll 1971; vt Don't Look Now 1971 US), which Nicholas Roeg filmed as Don't Look Now (1973). [JC]Other works include: The Breaking Point: Eight Stories (coll 1959; vt The Blue Lenses, and Other Stories 1970); Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories (coll 1976); Classics of the Macabre (coll 1987; vt Daphne Du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre 1987 US). Du MAURIER, GEORGE (LOUIS PALMELLA BUSSON) (1834-1896) UK illustrator, cartoonist and writer, known almost exclusively today as the author of Trilby (1894), whose famous villain, Svengali, is a preternaturally competent mesmerist. The progatonists of GDM's first novel, Peter Ibbetson (1891), share each other's dreams, in which they return to their idyllic childhood. His last novel, The Martian (1897 US), lackadaisically tells through hindsight the life story of a sensitive but mysterious Spiritualist who turns out to have been a Martian all her life. [JC]Other works: A Legend of Camelot (coll 1898), whose title poem is mildly fantasticated.See also: PSI POWERS. DUNCAN, BRUCE Irving A. GREENFIELD. DUNCAN, DAVE Working name of Scottish-born petroleum geologist and writer David John Duncan (1933- ), in Canada from 1955. His singleton novels have divided fairly evenly between fantasy and sf. The first, A Rose-Red City (1987 US), complicatedly puts its 20th-century protagonist into a walled UTOPIA, where demons (and the Minotaur) oppose his attempts to extract Ariadne from the world. Shadow (1987 US) is a SCIENCE-FANTASY tale of dynasties in trouble on a strange planet "light-years hence". West of January (1989 US) is a crowded PLANETARY ROMANCE set on a world whose day and orbit are of approximately the same duration and in which a not particularly attractive hero - his name is Knobil and, as the book is at times comical in intent, the K can be assumed silent - has adventures all day long, some of which carry subtle stings in their tails. Strings (1990 US), also sf, features a significantly naive protagonist caught up in events the book's readers understand better than he, as a desperately terminal Earth must be escaped, via superstring transport, and a princess must be succoured. DD's work has all the flamboyance of tales written strictly for escape, but (as has been noted by critics) never for long allows his readers to forget what kind of problems he is inviting them to dodge. His most virtuoso passages seem almost brazenly to dance with despair. [JC]Other works: The Seventh Sword fantasy sequence, comprising The Reluctant Swordsman (1988 US), The Coming of Wisdom (1988 US) and The Destiny of the Sword (1988 US); the Man of his Word fantasy sequence, comprising Magic Casement (1990 US), Faery Lands Forlorn (1991 US), Perilous Seas (1991 US) and Emperor and Clown (1992); Hero! (1991 US), an sf juvenile; The Reaver Road (1992), a fantasy. DUNCAN, DAVID (1913- ) US writer of popular fiction in several genres, perhaps as well known for his few sf novels as for any other work, though his first novel with an sf content, The Shade of Time (1946), which deals with "atomic displacement", was (as he records) accepted for publication only after Hiroshima. His books of the 1950s, more widely distributed within the sf markets, have been better remembered, though he also scripted several films, including The TIME MACHINE (1960), and wrote a screenplay for The OUTER LIMITS . Dark Dominion (1954) is a well told melodrama concerning a new element, magellanium, which varies in weight according to the position of the star Sirius, and which is finally used to power a spaceship. Beyond Eden (1955; vt Another Tree in Eden 1956 UK) contrasts different routes towards fulfilment - materially, through a vast water-making project, and spiritually, via crystals that expand humankind's nature in the direction of gestalt empathy. Occam's Razor (1957) explores, within the context of a threatening nuclear war, the impact of the arrival of two humans - though one is horned-from a PARALLEL WORLD. DD has since fallen silent. [JC]Other work: The Madrone Tree (1949), a fantasy.See also: DIMENSIONS; MATHEMATICS. DUNCAN, RONALD (FREDERICK HENRY) (1914-1982) UK novelist, poet and playwright; Benjamin Britten's librettist for the opera The Rape of Lucretia (1946). He was generally best known for works outside the sf field. The Dull Ass's Hoof (coll 1941) contains some fantasy plays. Some of the stories in The Perfect Mistress and Other Stories (coll 1969), A Kettle of Fish (coll 1971), The Tale of Tails (coll 1975) and The Uninvited Guest (coll 1981) are fables with sf components. RD's sf novella, The Last Adam (1952 chap), features a last man who, being something of a misogynist, comes across the last woman and leaves her. [JC]Other works: This Way to the Tomb (1946) and The Death of Satan (1955), fantasy plays; Mr and Mrs Mouse (1977), a fairy tale. DUNE Film (1984). Dino De Laurentiis/Universal. Dir David Lynch, starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Kenneth McMillan, Sting, Sean Young, many others. Screenplay Lynch, based on DUNE (fixup 1965) by Frank HERBERT. 137 mins. Colour.Seldom has a big-budget genre film been so execrated by fans and film critics alike. Certainly its narrative is confused to the point of incoherence, showing signs of last-minute, lunatic cutting. Certainly the many-layered story of Herbert's original, with its complex intellectual structure (occasionally also vague), is here largely reduced to melodrama. Certainly the distilled grotesquerie with which Baron Harkonnen and his nephew Feyd Rautha (McMillan and Sting) are envisaged belongs to a world more disgusting than anything invented by Herbert. Certainly the final three-quarters of a long novel is reduced to a ludicrously fast-moving half-hour or so. Yet the film was, after all, made by David Lynch, master of weirdness, whose previous films had been Eraserhead (1976) and The Elephant Man (1980), and whose subsequent works would include Blue Velvet (1986) and the pilot of Twin Peaks (1989) - remarkable movies all. It may be time to reappraise D, which Lynch clearly conceived in terms of emblematic tableaux, like scenes from some stately, hieratic pageant. Much of the production design - but not the sandworms - was wonderfully original and exotic; the camerawork (by Freddie Francis) made confident, artistic use of light and shade, glowing golds and deep shadows. However bad the film may have been in some respects, the neo-Baroque of the whole thing, not least in the Harkonnen sequences, is one of the most interesting attempts yet to capture a look and a feeling for sf that does not simply depend (as Herbert's original did not) on technological gimmickry. Bits of this bad film are close to masterful. [PN]See also: STEAMPUNK. DUNE DIES Fans were waiting for the movie version of Frank Herbert's novel, Dune, for years. Finally, in 1984, the film opened. It was written and directed by David Lynch. The general consensus of critics and fans - and certainly the studio - was that Dune bombed. Why did it fail? Most people blame the film's producer, Dino De Laurentis, better known for his 1976 remake of King Kong. De Laurentis insisted that the film be cut from about three hours to two hours and seventeen minutes, making its last half almost incoherent.But many science fiction fans had their doubts about Dune's metamorphosis anyway. Big budget films typically thrive on action and adventure. And Frank Herbert's popular novel may have just been too dark and too complex to translate well into film. DUNN, J.R. (? - ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Long Knives" for L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1987) ed A.J. BUDRYS; a later story, "Crux Gammata" (1992) is an interesting HITLER WINS tale. This Side of Judgment (1994), JRD's first novel, posits a CYBERPUNK-colored future America whose pyrrhic military victory over a cabal of South American drug dealers and Leftist dictators has driven the country even further down the road to ENTROPY and social despair. Exploiters and victims of this scenario are the "imps", humans with chip-implants who (while themselves suffering ineradicable information overload) manage (while attempting to take over the government) to scare Federal agencies into a violent showdown. In the end, action dominates; but JRD gives a sense of being prepared to continue speculating. [JC] DUNN, KATHERINE (KAREN) (1945- ) US writer, teacher and radio personality whose third novel, Geek Love (1989), is a densely told tale of a family which breeds its own freaks through a kind of GENETIC ENGINEERING; in the end the book reads, however, not as sf, but as an extremely expert FABULATION on the primordial theme of the family romance. KD's novel is not to be confused with The Geek (1969) by Alice Louise Ramirez, which is narrated by a chicken. [JC] DUNN, PHILIP M. [r] Saul DUNN. DUNN, SAUL Pseudonym used by UK writer and publisher Philip M. Dunn (1946- ) for the original publication of his books in the UK, though he used his own name for their US release; he was also the director of Pierrot Publishing, a packaging-cum-publishing firm which became insolvent in 1981, owing large sums. SD was reported to have moved to India for religious reasons. Releases generated by the company included Brian W. ALDISS's Brothers of the Head (1977), Peter DICKINSON's The Flight of Dragons (1979) and Harry HARRISON's Great Balls of Fire! A History of Sex in Science Fiction Illustration (1977); all were heavily illustrated. SD wrote two SPACE-OPERA sequences, the Steeleye books - The Coming of Steeleye (1976), Steeleye - The Wideways (1976) and Steeleye-Waterspace (1976) - and the Cabal tales - The Cabal (1978; 1981 US under his own name), The Black Moon (1978; 1982 US under his own name) and The Evangelist (1979; 1982 US under his own name). [JC] DUNNE, J(OHN) W(ILLIAM) (1875-1949) UK writer and engineer, responsible for designing the first UK military aeroplane c1907. Though his two fantasies-The Jumping Lions of Borneo (1937 chap) and the more ambitious An Experiment with St George (1939) - are of some mild interest, JWD is now remembered almost exclusively for his theories about the nature of time, which he developed in order to explain his sense that dreams are often precognitive. In An Experiment with Time (1927; rev 1929; rev 1934) he began to articulate his appealing thesis that time was not a linear flow but a sort of geography, accessible to the dreaming mind. In later books, such as The Serial Universe (1934), The New Immortality (1938), Nothing Dies (1940) and the posthumous Intrusions? (1955), he ludicrously sophisticated the theory, postulating various numbered levels of Time leading by an infinite regress to God; but his early work resonated perfectly with the time-hauntedness of interbellum UK writers from E.F. BENSON to the children's author Alison Uttley (1884-1976) to - most famously - John Buchan (1875-1940), whose time-travel novel, The Gap in the Curtain (1932), is clearly argued in JWD's terms; and J.B. PRIESTLEY, whose Time Plays are indebted to JWD, and whose nonfictional Over the Long High Wall: Some Reflections and Speculations on Life, Death and Time (1972) guardedly advocates JWD's more fruitful intuitions. [JC]See also: DIMENSIONS; TIME TRAVEL. DUNSANY, LORD Working name of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878-1957), 18th Baron Dunsany, prolific Irish author of stories, novels, essays and plays. Though primarily a writer of FANTASY, he is of sf interest through the widespread influence of his language and imagery. Late in life he wrote one sf novel, The Last Revolution (1951), about MACHINES in revolt. His influence, especially on writers of HEROIC FANTASY, was strong from almost the beginning of his long career, when he published a series of FANTASY collections whose contents are linked by imagery and reference: The Gods of Pegana (coll of linked stories 1905), Time and the Gods (coll 1906), The Sword of Welleran (coll 1908), which contains the famous The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth (1910 chap), A Dreamer's Tales (coll 1910), The Book of Wonder: A Chronicle of Little Adventures at the Edge of the World (coll 1912), Fifty-One Tales (coll 1915; vt The Food of Death: Fifty-One Tales 1974 US), and Tales of Wonder (coll 1916: vt The Last Book of Wonder 1916 US). The stories in these intermittently brilliant volumes made creative use of influences from Wilde and Yeats through William MORRIS - along with the very specific effect of the play The Darling of the Gods (1902) by David Belasco (1859-1931) and John L. Long (1861-1927), with its misty fake-oriental setting. Through their sustained otherworldliness and their muscular delicacy, these stories in turn exerted a potent influence on later writers.In his second phase as a fantasist - after a rather ostentatious spurning of the genre during WWI - LD turned to novels like The Chronicles of Don Rodriguez (1922; vt Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley 1922 US), The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924) and The Charwoman's Shadow (1926); the second of these did much to give geographical reality to the secondary universe ( J.R.R. TOLKIEN) of high fantasy. His third phase consists of the Jorkens CLUB STORIES: The Travel Tales of Mr Joseph Jorkens (coll 1931), Jorkens Remembers Africa (coll 1934 US; vt Mr Jorkens Remembers Africa 1934 UK), Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey (coll 1940), The Fourth Book of Jorkens (coll 1947) and Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey (coll 1954). Along with works by Robert Louis STEVENSON and G.K. CHESTERTON, these tales focused the attention of sf and fantasy writers upon the late Victorian and Edwardian club story as a suggestive mode for storytelling; Arthur C. CLARKE, Sterling LANIER and Spider ROBINSON are among the many who have written in it. LD's work as a fantasist is of high intrinsic merit, and his influence is pervasive. [JC]Other works: Tales of War (coll 1918); Unhappy Far-Off Things (coll 1919); Tales of Three Hemispheres (coll 1919 US); two macabre novels, The Blessing of Pan (1927) and The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933); My Talks with Dean Spanley (1936 ), in which the Dean recalls a past life; The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders (1950), in which a man's mind is transferred into an animal's body;Rory and Bran (1936), a protagonist of which is a dog; The Man who Ate the Phoenix (coll 1949); The Little Tales of Smethers (coll 1952); The Sword of Welleran and Other Tales of Enchantment (coll 1954; contents differ from the 1908 vol); 3 compilations ed Lin CARTER, At the Edge of the World (coll 1970), Beyond the Fields We Know (coll 1972) and Over the Hills and Far Away (coll 1974); Gods, Men and Ghosts (coll 1972) ed E.F. BLEILER; The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer and Other Fantasms (coll 1980 US); also numerous pamphlets and plays.About the author: Lord Dunsany: A Biography (1972) by Mark Amory; Lord Dunsany: King of Dreams (1959) by Hazel Littlefield; Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976) by L. Sprague DE CAMP; Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany (1989) by Darrell SCHWEITZER; "Lord Dunsany: The Career of a Fantaisiste"by S.T. Joshi in his The Weird Tale (1990);Pathways to Elfland (1989) by Darrell SCHWEITZER; Lord Dunsany: A Bibliograpy (1993) by J.T. Joshi and Schweitzer..See also: SWORD AND SORCERY. DUNSTAN, ANDREW [s] A. Bertram CHANDLER. DURRELL, LAWRENCE (GEORGE) (1912-1990) UK poet and novelist best known for the Alexandria Quartet (1957-60). His sf novel sequence, Tunc (1968) and Nunquam (1970), assembled as The Revolt of Aphrodite (omni 1974), subjects sf material to intensely literary scrutiny. In the first volume, Merlin, a burgeoning multinational corporation, co-opts the protagonist, Felix Charlock, into constructing a super- COMPUTER, which can predict the future and which drives him to madness; in the second volume, Felix is cured in order to create an ANDROID lady - echoing an LD obsession - perfectly duplicating a destroyed lover of the boss of Merlin; but the android is also destroyed in a NEAR-FUTURE world choked with evil and images of corruption. [JC]See also: MYTHOLOGY. DUSTY AYRES AND HIS BATTLE BIRDS US PULP MAGAZINE. 12 issues, July 1934-July 1935; published by Popular Publications; ed Rogers Terrill. Each issue contained a novel by Robert Sidney BOWEN Jr in which Dusty and his sidekicks fought off the menace of the Black Invaders, led by an Asian warlord bent on world domination. The magazine, genuine NEAR-FUTURE sf, was a revival of a more conventional aviation pulp, Battle Birds, in an attempt to pull in the readership of the previous title for what was in fact a brand new magazine with a new hero and a new, futuristic storyline. It continued the numeration of Battle Birds, beginning with vol 5 #4 and ending with vol 8 #3. Five of the stories were reprinted as paperbacks in 1966 (for details BOWEN). [FHP/MJE] DVORKIN, DANIEL [r] David DVORKIN. DVORKIN, DAVID (1943- ) UK-born author, long in the USA, whose first novel of strong interest, after the unremarkable The Children of Shiny Mountain (1977; vt Shiny Mountain 1978 UK) and The Green God (1979), was Time for Sherlock Holmes * (1983). This RECURSIVE tale takes the detective, who has found the secret of eternal youth, through a tortuous plot (much TIME TRAVEL is involved) from the time of H.G. WELLS (concerned at Professor Moriarty's theft of the Time Machine to seesaw through the eons, doing evil) to a Martian future where, after a DYSTOPIAN interlude, he prepares to lead humanity to the stars. Unfortunately, the telling is somewhat flat, an ailment of style which afflicted DD through the next several books. Budspy (1987), set in an ALTERNATE WORLD featuring a victorious Germany ( HITLER WINS), is greyly half-convincing; and The Seekers (1988) and Central Heat (1988), both set in the same universe, again lack a sense of full conviction, though much of the detail-work is, as usual, applied with considerable intelligence. Central Heat is plotted with all DD's love of intricacy: ALIENS have decided that Earth has failed to breed decent citizens and so abduct the Sun, although ensuring that our planet ricochets into an orbit around Jupiter and Saturn, which have been thrown together; properly instructed as to how to go about igniting the joined gas giants into a tiny new sun, the remnants of humanity begin to learn how to cope. With Ursus (1989) and Insatiable (1993), DD shifted into horror. [JC]Other works: Three STAR TREK ties: The Trellisane Confrontation * (1984), Timetrap * (1988) and Star Trek: The Next Generation #8: The Captain's Honor * (1989) with Daniel Dvorkin (1969- ), his son.See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. DWIGGINS, W(ILLIAM) A(DDISON) (1880-1956) US writer on typography and, through his association with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, designer of several well known typefaces, including Electra and Caledonia. He is known within the sf field for designing and illustrating the luxurious 1931 edition of H.G. WELLS's THE TIME MACHINE. His sf play, Millennium 1 (1945) - published in an edition he designed and illustrated - depicts an ambiguous UTOPIA in which machines have revolted and humans must fight to recover their hegemony. [JC] DWYER, DEANNE Dean R. KOONTZ. DWYER, JAMES FRANCIS (1874-1952) US writer, most of whose books - like The White Waterfall (1912), The Spotted Panther (1913) and the stories assembled in "Breath of the Jungle" (coll 1915) - are Oriental fantasies of little interest, though Evelyn: Something More than a Story (1929) translates the prurient primitivism of the earlier books into the future, and Hespamora (1935 UK) combines elements of DYSTOPIAN satire with an incursion of pagan deities. The Spillane series, The Lady with Feet of Gold (1937 UK) and The City of Cobras (1938 UK), returned to JFD's old haunts. [JC]Other works: Cold-Eyes (1934). DWYER, K.R. Dean R. KOONTZ. DYE, CHARLES (1927-1955) US writer who began publishing sf with "The Last Orbit" for AMZ in 1950. He was active for the next half-decade, soon publishing his only sf novel, Prisoner in the Skull (1952), in which ordinary Homo sapiens and a form of SUPERMAN engage in thriller-like confrontations. He was married briefly (1951-3) to Katherine MACLEAN, who wrote "The Man who Staked the Stars" (1952) and "Syndrome Johnny" (1951) under his name. The latter story contains an amazingly early account of a genetic-recombination technique (gene splicing), in which a "piggyback" virus transports genetic material (a silicon-using gene) into human cells. [JC/PN] DYER, ALFRED [r] ROBERT HALE LIMITED. DYING EARTH A not uncommon category of sf story which has now developed its own melancholy mythology. FAR FUTURE. [JC] DYNAMIC SCIENCE FICTION US PULP MAGAZINE published by Columbia Publications; ed R.A.W. LOWNDES. 6 issues, Dec 1952-Jan 1954. Much of the fiction DSF printed was mediocre, but it published 2 2-part critical articles of some note by James E. GUNN: "The Philosophy of SF" (Mar-June 1953) and "The Plot-Forms of SF" (Oct 1953-Jan 1954). 3 numbered issues were reprinted in the UK in 1953. [BS] DYNAMIC SCIENCE STORIES US PULP MAGAZINE, a short-lived companion to MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES. 2 issues, Feb 1939 and Apr/May 1939, published by Western Fiction Publishing Corp.; ed Robert O. Erisman. #1 featured the novel Lord of Tranerica (1966) by Stanton A. COBLENTZ; #2 included stories by L. Sprague DE CAMP and Manly Wade WELLMAN. DSS was an average pulp magazine with no distinctive qualities. #1 appeared as a UK reprint in 1939. [MJE] DYSON, FREEMAN J(OHN) (1923- ) UK-born theoretical physicist and FRS; professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, since 1953, and now a US citizen. FJD's main work has been in quantum field theory, but he is well known in sf for the concept of the DYSON SPHERE, which he introduced in a short paper for Science in 1960 (vol 131 p1667). In this paper, which was concerned with locating and communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations, Dyson argued that any such civilization would probably be millions of years old and that Malthusian pressure would have led to its energy requirements being equal to the total output of radiation from its star. It would therefore reconstruct its solar system so as to form an artificial biosphere completely enclosing its sun. This and related schemes, like the basic notion behind his RINGWORLD (1970), are discussed by Larry NIVEN in his article "Bigger than Worlds" (1974; reprinted in A Hole in Space coll 1974). An sf novel which makes use of an actual Dyson Sphere is Bob SHAW's Orbitsville (1975). The "Cuckoo "inFarthest Star (1975) by Frederik POHL and Jack WILLIAMSON is revealed in the sequel, Wall Around a Star (1983), to be a Dyson Sphere.FJD's theorizing has many times gone beyond his own speciality to cover topics as diverse as the Greenhouse Effect, galactic COLONIZATION, GENETIC ENGINEERING and the use of the SOLAR WIND for space-sailing. His many essays are a treasure trove for sf writers, some being collected in Infinite in All Directions (coll 1988 US). His set of autobiographical sketches, Disturbing the Universe (1979 US), tells entertaining tales of intellectual adventure. It was a student of Dyson's who made headlines in 1976 by designing a workable nuclear weapon using only published sources. [TSu/PN]See also: ENTROPY; XENOBIOLOGY. DYSON SPHERE Item of sf TERMINOLOGY; named for a concept put forward by the physicist Freeman J. DYSON. DYSTOPIAS The word "dystopia" is the commonly used antonym of "eutopia" ( UTOPIAS) and denotes that class of hypothetical societies containing images of worlds worse than our own. An early user of the term was John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), in a parliamentary speech in 1868, but its recent fashionableness probably stems from its use in Quest for Utopia (1952) by Glenn Negley (1907-1988) and J. Max Patrick (1908- ). Anthony BURGESS argued in 1985 (1978) that "cacotopia" would be a more apt term.Dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction. As hope for a better future grows, the fear of disappointment inevitably grows with it, and when any vision of a future utopia incorporates a manifesto for political action or belief, opponents of that action or belief will inevitably attempt to show that its consequences are not utopian but horrible. The very first work listed in I.F. CLARKE's bibliography of The Tale of the Future (3rd edn 1978) is a tract of 1644 warning of the terrible disaster which would follow were the monarchy to be restored.Dystopian images began to proliferate in the last decades of the 19th century. Utopian and dystopian images are contrasted in the rival cities of Frankville and Stahlstadt in The Begum's Fortune (1879; trans 1880) by Jules VERNE. The greedy materialism which has created Stahlstadt is also the underlying ideology of H.C. MARRIOTT-WATSON's Erchomenon (1879). Walter BESANT produced two significant early dystopias in The Revolt of Man (1882), in which women ( WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION) rule with disastrous consequences, and The Inner House (1888), in which IMMORTALITY has led to social stagnation. The great utopian H.G. WELLS produced his images of dystopia, too - forecasts of what the world must be like if the forces of socialism did not triumph - in "A Story of the Days to Come" (1897) and When the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev vt The Sleeper Awakes, 1910). He also produced the first ALIEN dystopia in his description of Selenite society in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1901). Robert Hugh BENSON's Lord of the World (1907) is a hysterical protest against secularism, humanism and socialism which ends with the apocalypse.The single most prolific stimulus to the production of dystopian visions has been the political polarization of capitalism and socialism. Anti-capitalist dystopias include The Iron Heel (1907) by Jack LONDON, The Air Trust (1915) by George Allan ENGLAND, and Useless Hands (1920; trans 1926) by Claude FARRERE. Anti-socialist dystopias, which are more numerous, include The Unknown Tomorrow (1910) by William LE QUEUX, Crucible Island (1919) by Conde B. PALLEN, Unborn Tomorrow (1933) by John KENDALL, Anthem (1938) by Ayn RAND and The Great Idea (1951; vt Time Will Run Back) by Henry HAZLITT. Anti-fascist dystopias include Land under England (1935) by Joseph O'NEILL, The Wild Goose Chase (1937) by Rex WARNER and The Lost Traveller (1943) by Ruthven TODD. Anti-German dystopias from before and after the rise of the Nazi Party include Owen GREGORY's Meccania (1918), Milo HASTINGS's City of Endless Night (1920) and Swastika Night (1937) by Murray Constantine ( Katharine BURDEKIN) (see also HITLER WINS).Although these works are emotional reactions against ideas which seem various, the basic fears which they express are very similar. The emphasis may differ, but the central features of dystopia are ever present: the oppression of the majority by a ruling elite (which varies only in the manner of its characterization, not in its actions), and the regimentation of society as a whole (which varies only in its declared ends, not in its actual processes). In his attempt to imagine the "rationalized" state of the Selenites, Wells took as his dystopian model the ant-nest ( HIVE-MINDS) and this has seemed the epitome of dystopian organization to many other writers. J.D. BERESFORD's and Esme Wynne-Tyson's The Riddle of the Tower (1944) suggests that the fundamental danger facing society is "Automatism" - the trend toward the victory of organic society over the individual - whatever political philosophy is invoked to justify it. The most detailed analysis of this anxiety, and perhaps the most impressively ruthless of all dystopias, is My (trans as We 1924) by Yevgeny ZAMIATIN, and the most luridly horrible development of it is to be found in George ORWELL's NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (1949), which in part expressed Orwell's despair of the UK working class and its capacity to revolt (or even be revolted).Because animosity against specific political programmes was the most important force provoking early dystopian visions, the tradition did not immediately engage in contradictory argument the main basis for utopian optimism, which is a more generalized faith in the idea of progress, both social and technological. It was not long, though, before there appeared dystopian images reflecting an emotional reaction against technological advance. The world of E.M. FORSTER's "The Machine Stops" (1909) is perhaps the first dystopia created by technological sophistication; the story's argument is halfhearted, concentrating on the question of what would happen when the MACHINES broke down rather than on the horrors of living with them while they were still functioning. A confident assertion that scientific progress would make the world a worse place to live in because it would allow society's power groups more effectively to oppress others was made by Bertrand RUSSELL in Icarus, or The Future of Science (1924), his reply to J.B.S. HALDANE's optimistic Daedalus (1924). Aldous HUXLEY's satirical dystopia BRAVE NEW WORLD (1932) is also an ideological reply to Daedalus, raising awkward questions about the quality of life in a LEISURE society. S. Fowler WRIGHT's The New Gods Lead (coll 1932) is a scathing indictment of the values of technocracy and "the utopia of comforts". The general pessimism of the UK SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE in this period was countered mainly by hopes of transcendence (via the evolution of a new and better species of mankind) rather than by faith in political reform.This suspicion of technology, though running directly counter to Hugo GERNSBACK's optimism for an "Age of Power Freedom", is surprisingly widespread in early GENRE SF. In "Paradise and Iron" (1930) by Miles J. BREUER a mechanical brain established to coordinate a mechanistic utopia becomes a tyrant. In "City of the Living Dead" (1930) by Laurence MANNING and Fletcher PRATT, machines that simulate real experience allow people to live in dream worlds, sustained by mechanical "wombs", and thereby bring about the total stagnation of society. Scepticism in regard to technological miracles is a hallmark of the work of David H. KELLER, whose dystopian fantasies include "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" (1928), in which automobilists who have lost the power of self-locomotion rule oppressively over mere pedestrians. Most stories of this kind feature some kind of rebellion against the adverse circumstances described. The reversion to a simpler way of life is celebrated by Keller in "The Metal Doom" (1932) as enthusiastically as it is in the hysterically technophobic Gay Hunter (1934) by J. Leslie MITCHELL.Revolution against a dystopian regime was to become a staple plot of GENRE SF, partly because such a formula offered far more melodramatic potential than utopian planning. The standard scenario involves an oppressive totalitarian state which maintains its dominance and stability by means of futuristic technology, but which is in the end toppled by newer technologies exploited by revolutionaries. The standard genre-sf answer to the problem posed by Russell in Icarus is, therefore, that elites empowered by technology will lose their interest in further technological progress, and will probably try to suppress it - with the result that its clandestinely developed fruits will become the instruments of their overthrow. Examples from the 1940s of this formula are "If This Goes On ..." (1940) and Sixth Column (1941; 1949) by Robert A. HEINLEIN, GATHER, DARKNESS! (1943; 1950) by Fritz LEIBER, Tarnished Utopia (1943; 1956) by Malcolm JAMESON and Renaissance (1944; 1951; vt Man of Two Worlds) by Raymond F. JONES. In the SF MAGAZINES of the 1950s this formula became more refined and increasingly stylized. There appeared a whole generation of sf novels in which individual power groups come to dominate society, shaping it to their special interests. Advertising executives run the world in the archetype of this subspecies, THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953) by Frederik POHL and C.M. KORNBLUTH; insurance companies are in charge in Preferred Risk (1955) by Edson McCann (Pohl and Lester DEL REY); supermarkets in HELL'S PAVEMENT (1955; vt Analogue Men) by Damon KNIGHT; racketeers in The Syndic (1953) by Kornbluth; doctors in Caduceus Wild (1959; rev 1978) by Ward MOORE and Robert Bradford; and a cult of hedonists in The Joy Makers (fixup 1961) by James E. GUNN. All these novels are, in a sense, gaudy fakes that use dystopian images for melodramatic convenience; they select their villains with a vigorous disregard for plausibility and a cheerful animus against some personal bete noire. They tend to be ABSURDIST exaggerations rather than serious political statements. In this period genre sf produced only one genuine dystopian novel, the classic FAHRENHEIT 451 (1953) by Ray BRADBURY, which leaves its ruling elite anonymous in order to concentrate on the means by which oppression and regimentation are facilitated, with the powerful key image of the firemen whose job is to burn books. In many of the lesser genre-sf novels of the 1950s, revolution against an oppressive and stagnant society is seen as a difficult irrelevance, escape by SPACESHIP becoming a key image.Outside the sf magazines the post-WWII period produced a remarkable series of very varied dystopian novels - remarkable not only for their diversity and characteristic intensity but also for a tendency to black comedy. Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence (1948) is an anti-scientific polemic; Evelyn WAUGH's Love among the Ruins (1953) is a vitriolic political satire; Bernard WOLFE's LIMBO (1952) plays in macabre fashion with the idea of (literal) "disarmament". Even the more earnest works, like Gerald HEARD's enigmatic Doppelgangers (1947), SARBAN's THE SOUND OF HIS HORN (1952), David KARP's One (1953), L.P. HARTLEY's Facial Justice (1960) and Anthony Burgess's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962), possess a curious surreal quality. Many of these novels are neither accusations directed at particular social forces nor attempts to analyse the nature of the dystopian state, but seem to be products of a new kind of incipient despair; only a few-notably Doppelgangers - offer a significant note of hope in their account of rebellion against evil circumstance. This, it appears, was a period of history in which US-UK society lost its faith in the probability of a better future, and the dystopian image was established as an actual pattern of expectation rather than as a literary warning device.Genre sf soon followed this lead - and so prominent was the dystopian image in magazine sf that the transition from fakery to "realism" was very easily achieved. During the 1960s a whole series of reasons for believing in a dystopian future were discovered-to justify rather than to cause the pessimistic outlook typical of the time. OVERPOPULATION - a theme ignored since the days of Malthus - began to inspire dystopian horror stories, most impressively in MAKE ROOM! MAKE ROOM! (1966) by Harry HARRISON, STAND ON ZANZIBAR (1968) by John BRUNNER and The World Inside (1971) by Robert SILVERBERG. The awful prospects of POLLUTION and the destruction of the environment were extravagantly detailed in Brunner's The Sheep Look Up (1972) and Philip WYLIE's The End of the Dream (1972). When Alvin TOFFLER proposed in Future Shock (1970) that the sheer pace of change threatened to make everyday life unendurable, Brunner was able to complete a kind of "dystopian tetralogy", following the two books cited above and The Jagged Orbit (1969) with THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER (1975). Thomas M. DISCH's 334 (fixup 1972) is a dark vision of the NEAR FUTURE in which human resilience is tested to the limit by the stresses and strains of everyday life.Perhaps strangely, MAINSTREAM dystopias of the late 1960s and 1970s seem rather weak-kneed compared to those of the preceding decades. Michael FRAYN's A Very Private Life (1968), Adrian MITCHELL's The Bodyguard (1970), Ira LEVIN's This Perfect Day (1970) and Lawrence SANDERS's The Tomorrow File (1975) all seem stereotyped. Perhaps there was little scope left for originality once the most all-inclusive and ruthless image of a horrible and degenerate future had been provided by William S. BURROUGHS in Nova Express (1964), or perhaps it was simply that dystopian imagery came to be taken for granted to such an extent that it could be deployed only in an almost flippant manner - as by the CYBERPUNK writers of the 1980s. It is arguable that the only new ground broken by literary dystopias of the 1970s and 1980s, whether in the mainstream or in genre sf, related to FEMINIST images of oppressive masculinity; notable examples include WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (1974) by Suzy McKee CHARNAS, Woman at the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge PIERCY, THE HANDMAID'S TALE (1985) by Margaret ATWOOD, and Bulldozer Rising (1988) by ANNA LIVIA.The significance of the firm establishment of a dystopian image of the future in literature should not be underestimated. Literary images of the future are among the most significant expressions of the beliefs and expectations we apply in real life to the organization of our attitudes and actions. Notable studies of dystopian fiction include From Utopia to Nightmare (1962) by Chad Walsh, The Future as Nightmare (1967) by Mark R. HILLEGAS, and Science Fiction and the New Dark Age by Harold L. Berger (1976). In New Maps of Hell (1960) Kingsley AMIS argues that the dystopian tradition is the most important strand in the tapestry of modern sf. A relevant theme anthology is Bad Moon Rising (anth 1973) ed Thomas M. Disch. [BS]See also: DISASTER; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; SOCIOLOGY. |