COATES, Robert M(yron)

(1897-1973)

   US writer, primarily associated throughout his career with the New Yorker, on which he worked, and to which he contributed many stories. He is primarily of interest to the sf field for his first novel, The Eater of Darkness (1926 France), which, written before he had fully assimilated the sometimes restrictive urbanity of New Yorker style, quite brilliantly applies a wide arsenal of literary devices, some of them surrealistic, to the exaggeratedly spoof-like tale of a master criminal and his absurd super- WEAPON, which sees through solids and applies remote-control heat to kill people invisibly; beneath the spoofing and the cosmopolitan style lies a sense of horror. The Hour after Westerly and Other Stories (coll 1957) contains some fantasy of interest, though in general his later work lacks some of the fire of his first book.

   JC

   Other works: The Farther Shore (1955).See also: MATHEMATICS.