CONNER, Mike

   Working name of US writer Michael Conner (1951-), who used his full name for the first half decade or so of his career, beginning to publish work of genre interest with "Extinction of Confidence, the Exercise of Honesty" in New Constellations (anth 1976) ed Thomas M. DISCH and Charles Naylor. His first novel, I am Not the Other Houdini (1978; vt The Houdini Directive 1989), is a burlesque flirtation with apocalypse set in California in the 21st century. Groupmind (1984) is less eccentric; but Eye of the Sun (1988), told with the genre-mixing abundance of many PLANETARY ROMANCES, follows the careening adolescence of three royal children as their FAR-FUTURE world totters into a religious crisis which threatens a long-sustained matriarchy. He won a 1992 NEBULA for "Guide Dog" (1991).

   JC