CONEY, Michael G(reatrex)

(1932-)

   UK-born writer, resident in Canada since 1973, working for the British Columbia Forest Service until his retirement in 1989. He was the manager of the Jabberwock Hotel in Antigua when he published his first story, "Sixth Sense" for Visions of Tomorrow in 1969; several more followed rapidly. His first novel, Mirror Image (1972 US) features ALIEN "amorphs" who can so perfectly mimic humans that, when they have done so, they believe themselves to be in fact human; the amorphs reappear in Brontomek! (1976 UK), which won the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD. The ecological (ECOLOGY) puzzle story Syzygy (1973 US) is set on the same world. Another novel loosely connected to these is Charisma (1975 UK), a PARALLEL-WORLDS story whose chief locale is a Cornish fishing village; similar seaside towns, often transplanted to other planets, commonly feature in his work. The Hero of Downways (1973 US) is a more stereotyped action-adventure story, but Friends Come in Boxes (fixup 1973 US; rev 1974 UK) is a fascinatingly grim account of an unorthodox solution to the problem of OVERPOPULATION. Perhaps the best of his early books are Winter's Children (1974 UK), a post- HOLOCAUST novel, and Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975 UK; vt Rax 1975 US; vt Pallahaxi Tide 1990 Canada), a wistful story of adolescent love in an alien environment. A series of stories somewhat reminiscent in their setting of J.G. BALLARD's Vermilion Sands includes several which were amalgamated into The Girl with a Symphony in her Fingers (fixup 1975 UK; vt The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch 1975 US).After Brontomek! there was a considerable gap in MGC's writing career, the two books published during the hiatus, the DYSTOPIAN The Ultimate Jungle (1979 UK) and the UNDER-THE-SEA adventure Neptune's Children (1981 US), being books written earlier that had not sold on first submission. His more recent work is bound together by a FAR-FUTURE background developed in the two-decker novel The Song of Earth: The Celestial Steam Locomotive (1983 US) and Gods of the Greataway (1984 US). Here humans co-exist with other humanoid species, living out a kind of languid dream thanks to the manipulation by a COMPUTER, Rainbow, of the Ifalong (a multiverse of ALTERNATE WORLDS) despite the interference of the godlike alien Starquin. Publication of this was preceded by the spinoff novel Cat Karina (1982 US). MGC then employed the highly flexible metaphysical context to frame two eccentric Arthurian fantasies, Fang the Gnome (1988 US) and its sequel King of the Scepter'd Isle (1989 US).

   MJE/BS

   Other works: Monitor Found in Orbit (coll 1974 US); the British Columbiasequence comprising A Tomcat Called Sabrina (1992) and No Place for a Sealion (1992), each containing fantasy elements.

   See also: ARTS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; GAMES AND SPORTS; PLANETARY ROMANCE; REINCARNATION; UNDER THE SEA.