CONRAD, Joseph

(1857-1924)

   Naturalized UK writer, born in Poland. His full name was Josef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski. For most of his life he laboured under the misprision of his early reputation as a teller of"mere" sea tales; but posthumously he has received due attention for more complex later works like Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907). Though it is not sf, "Heart of Darkness" (1902), a dense and potently shaped allegory of guilt, colonialism, alienation and false epiphany in the abyss of Africa, has more than once served as a model for modern sf writers, like Michael BISHOP and Lucius SHEPARD, obsessed by similar concerns: whenever an sf explorer comes across a ravaged cod-godling "white man" in the tropical heart of an alien planet, JC's memory has shaped the tale. Another story, "The Secret Sharer" (1912), has similarly been embraced by Robert SILVERBERG in The Secret Sharer (1988). With Ford Madox FORD JC wrote The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (1901); the people of the title represent a future race, the "Dimensionists", who will come to supersede ordinary mankind. Though the novel is primarily political SATIRE in its projection of the cold, practical, manipulative future humans, it is genuine sf in its use of themes of other DIMENSIONS and EVOLUTION.

   JC/PN

   About the author: "Joseph Conrad's Forgotten Role in the Emergence of Science Fiction" by Elaine L. Kleiner, in EXTRAPOLATION, Dec 1973.

   See also: CLUB STORY.