COVER, Arthur Byron

(1950-)

   US writer. He was involved in the CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' WORKSHOP in 1971-2, and began publishing sf with "Gee, Isn't He the Cutest Little Thing?" in Stephen GOLDIN's Alien Condition (anth 1973). His first novel, Autumn Angels (1975), with intro by Harlan ELLISON, depicts in hallucinated language a FAR-FUTURE Earth, with LINGUISTIC and cultural jokes proliferating rather exhaustingly. The sequel, An East Wind Coming (1979), continues to introduce to the end of time cultural icons in pastiche. The stories in Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists (coll of linked stories 1976) similarly - though with a modest induction of calm - features a sequence of somewhat unhinged parodies of popular figures. Of these early books, only The Sound of Winter (1976), a love story set in a mutation-riddled post- DISASTER wonderland, attempts to create a more humanly moving outcome. Parody is technically not far removed from novelization, and ABC's next novel, Flash Gordon * (1980), novelizing the film of that name, was thus perhaps a logical move. Subsequently ABC has written for Byron PREISS some Time Machine sharecrops - The Rings of Saturn * (1985), American Revolutionary * (1985) and Blade of the Guillotine * (1986) - as well as two sharecrops -Planetfall * (1988) and Stationfall * (1989) - derived from computer games. Other sharecrops include Isaac Asimov's Robot City, Book 4: Prodigy * (1987) and Robert Silverberg's Time Tours \#5: The Dinosaur Trackers * (1992).

   JC