BUDRYS, Algis

   Working name of writer and editor Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931-). He was born in East Prussia, but has been in the USA since 1936. He early worked as an assistant to his father, who was Consul General of Lithuania in New York until his death in 1964; this experience has arguably shaped some of AB's fiction. He began publishing sf in 1952 with "The High Purpose" for ASF, and very rapidly gained a reputation as a leader of the 1950s sf generation, along with Philip K. DICK, Robert SHECKLEY and others, all of whom brought new literacy, mordancy and grace to the field; since 1965 he has written regular, incisive book reviews for Gal and latterly for FSF, but relatively little fiction.During his first decade as a writer AB used a number of pseudonyms on magazine stories: David C. Hodgkins, Ivan Janvier, Paul Janvier, Robert Marner, William Scarff, John A. Sentry, Albert Stroud and (in collaboration with Jerome BIXBY) Alger ROME. He wrote few series, though "The High Purpose" had two sequels: "A.I.D." (1954) and "The War is Over" (1957), both in ASF. The Gus stories, as by Paul Janvier, include "Nobody Bothers Gus" (1955) and "And Then She Found Him" (1957).AB's first novel has a complex history. As False Night (1954) it was published in a form abridged from the manuscript version; this manuscript served as the basis for a reinstated text which, with additional new material, was published as Some Will Not Die (1961; rev 1978). In both versions a post- HOLOCAUST story is set in a plague-decimated USA and, through the lives of a series of protagonists, a half century or so of upheaval and recovery is described. Some Will Not Die is a much more coherent (and rather grimmer) novel than its predecessor.His second novel, WHO? (1958), filmed as WHO? (1974), not quite successfully grafts an abstract vision of the existential extremity of mankind's condition onto an ostensibly orthodox sf plot, in which it must be determined whether or not a prosthetically rebuilt and impenetrably masked man (CYBORGS) is in fact the scientist, vital to the US defence effort, whom he claims to be. As AB is in part trying to write an existential thriller about identity (rather similar to the later work of Kobo ABE), not an sf novel about the perils of prosthesis, some of the subsequent detective work seems a little misplaced; however, the seriousness of purpose is never in doubt. Similarly, The Falling Torch (1957-9 various mags; fixup 1959; text restored vt Falling Torch 1991) presents a story which on the surface is straight sf, describing an Earth, several centuries hence, dominated by an ALIEN oppressor; the son of an exiled president returns to his own planet to liaise with the underground. But the novel can also be read as an allegory of the Cold War in its effects upon Eastern Europe (less awkward but more discursive in the restored text), and therefore, like WHO?, asks of its generic structure rather more significance than generic structures of this kind have perhaps been designed to bear.Much more thoroughly successful is AB's next novel, ROGUE MOON (1960), now something of an sf classic. A good deal has been written about the highly integrated symbolic structure of this story, whose perfectly competent surface narration deals with a HARD-SF solution to the problem of an alien labyrinth, discovered on the MOON, which kills anyone who tries to pass through it. At one level, the novel's description of attempts to thread the labyrinth from Earth via MATTER TRANSMISSION makes for excellent traditional sf; at another, it is a sustained rite de passage, a doppelg-nger conundrum about the mind-body split, a death-paean. There is no doubt that AB intends that both levels of reading register, however any interpretation might run; in this novel the two levels interact fruitfully. After some years away from fiction, AB returned in the late 1970s with his most humanly complex and fully realized novel to date. Michaelmas (1977) describes in considerable detail a NEAR FUTURE world whose information media have become even more sophisticated and creative of news than at present - as depicted in Sidney Lumet's film Network (1976) and as represented by such figures as CBS broadcaster Walter Cronkite. Like Cronkite, though to a much greater extent, the Michaelmas of the title is a moulder of news. Unusually, however, the book does not attack this condition. Michaelmas is a highly adult, responsible, complex individual, who with some cause feels himself to be the world's Chief Executive; beyond his own talents, he is aided in this task by an immensely sophisticated COMPUTER program named Domino, with which he is in constant contact, and which itself (as in books like Alfred BESTER's The Computer Connection [1975; vt Extro UK]) accesses all the computers in the world-net. Although the plot - Michaelmas must confront and defeat mysterious aliens who are manipulating mankind from behind the scenes - is straight out of PULP-MAGAZINE fiction, Michaelmas is a sustained, involving and peculiarly realistic novel.AB is that rarity, an intellectual genre writer, as is also demonstrated by his three collections of short stories, The Unexpected Dimension (coll 1960), Budrys's Inferno (coll 1963; vt The Furious Future 1964 UK) and Blood and Burning (coll 1978). From his genre origins stem both his strengths - incisiveness, exemplary concision of effect - and his weaknesses - mainly the habit, which he may have mastered, of overloading genre material with mainstream resonances. His sf criticism, especially that from before the mid-1980s, is almost unfailingly perceptive, and promulgates with a convert's grim elan a view of the essential nature of the genre that ferociously privileged the US magazine tradition. Non-Literary Influences on Science Fiction (An Essay) (1983 chap) eloquently represents this view, as do, more relaxedly, the reviews collected in Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf (coll 1985).In the 1980s, AB controversially associated himself with a programme for new writers initiated (or at least inspired) by L. Ron HUBBARD, arousing fears that Hubbard's Church of SCIENTOLOGY might itself be the source for the apparent affluence of L. RON HUBBARD'S WRITERS OF THE FUTURE. It was, nevertheless, evident by their participation that many sf writers felt these worries to be trivial, and the programme can claim to have introduced several authors of note (like Karen Joy FOWLER and David ZINDELL) to the field. In pieces like Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990 chap), composed originally for the enterprise, AB projected a detailedsense of what it meant to be a professional. The Hubbard school absorbed most of his energies for the remainder of the decade, although in 1991 he announced his semi-retirement from Writers of the Future, and soon published, in Hard Landing (1993) - his first novel since Michaelmas- a condensed, intricative, virtuoso narrative following the lives - as resident aliens - of four crashed extraterrestrials in America from the 1940s through the 1970s.

   JC

   Other works: Man of Earth (1955 Satellite; rev 1958); The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn (1967; vt The Iron Thorn 1968 UK); Cerberus (1967 FSF; 1989 chap).As Editor: The L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future series: L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future (anth 1985; vt without title reference to Hubbard 1986 UK); Vol II (anth 1986); Vol III (anth 1987); Vol IV (anth 1988); Vol V (anth 1989); Vol VI (anth 1990); Vol VII (anth 1991); Vol VIII (anth 1992) with Dave WOLVERTON.

   About the author: More Issues at Hand (coll 1970) by William Atheling Jr (James BLISH), Chapter V; "Rite de Passage: A Reading of ROGUE MOON" by David KETTERER in FOUNDATION 5, 1974; Visions of Tomorrow: Six Journeys from Outer to Inner Space (1975) by David N. SAMUELSON; An Algis Budrys Checklist (1983 chap) by Chris DRUMM; Conspiracy Theories (anth 1987 chap) ed Christopher EVANS, providing a range of views on the Writers of the Future/Scientology dispute and on AJB's role.

   See also: CHILDREN IN SF; COMMUNICATIONS; CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DISASTER; GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION; GOTHIC SF; INVASION; INVISIBILITY; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ; MARS; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; METAPHYSICS; NEW WAVE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; OUTER PLANETS; PANTROPY; PARANOIA; PHILIP K. DICK AWARD; PSYCHOLOGY; REINCARNATION; ROBOTS; SCIENTISTS; WRITERS OF THE FUTURE CONTEST.