COGSWELL, Theodore R(ose)

(1918-1987)

   US writer and academic, an ambulance driver on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He began publishing sf in 1952 with what proved to be one of his most successful stories, "The Specter General" for ASF. In this long, amusing tale - much in the vein Keith LAUMER was later to make his own - a long-forgotten maintenance division of the Galactic Protectorate reinvigorates a decadent Space Navy. In 1959, he founded and edited a FANZINE for professional writers called Publications of the Institute of Twenty-First Century Studies but universally pronounced PITFCS; it ran through 1962, with a final number in 1979; became quickly famed for the informative frankness of its contents; and was assembled as PITFCS: Proceedings of the Institute for Twenty-First Century Studies (anth 1992). TRC's two volumes of stories, The Wall around the World (coll 1962) and The Third Eye (coll 1968), contain most of his fiction; his work is polished, enjoyable and, though it sticks closely to fantasy and sf genre formats, gives off a sense that it was written for pleasure. "The Wall around the World" (1953) was one of TRC's most popular stories; the tale of a boy who lives in a place where MAGIC seems to work, and discovers the true, POCKET-UNIVERSE nature of his world, is an archetypal rendering of the experience of CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH.

   JC/PN

   Other works: Spock, Messiah! * (1976) with Charles A. Spano, a STAR TREK novel.

   See also: SHARED WORLDS.