DANN, Jack (Mayo)

(1945-)

   US writer and anthologist, with a BA in social/political science, who began publishing sf in 1970 with two stories for Worlds of If with George ZEBROWSKI, "Dark, Dark the Dead Star" and "Traps". Among his best and most revealing stories of this period was Junction (1973 Fantasy; exp 1981), a NEBULA-award finalist in its early form; its young protagonist must leave the eponymous village, the last place on Earth to remain physically stable, to explore the "Hell" of mutability outside. The expansion cogently dramatizes what Gregory FEELEY has suggested is JD's central theme: the rousing of a young man from disaffected solipsism into awareness of the marvels of the noosphere. Starhiker (fixup 1977), set in a heightened SPACE-OPERA venue, similarly puts a young human singer-bard escapee from alien-occupied Earth into an alien spaceship, where he undergoes a series of revelatory experiences (including near self-transcendence on a sentient planet) before returning to his depressed home. The stories assembled in Timetipping (coll 1980) reiterate this basic pattern. Only with THE MAN WHO MELTED (1984) did JD expand his canvas by introducing a human subject - his lost wife - for whom the protagonist must search through a baroque world rendered savagely mutable through collective psychoses which have a binding effect on reality.Despite the clear though strait attainments of his fiction, JD soon became - and has remained - best known as an editor of several strong anthologies: Wandering Stars (anth 1974) and More Wandering Stars (anth 1981) feature sf about Jews; Faster than Light (anth 1976), with George Zebrowski; Future Power (anth 1976), with Gardner DOZOIS, the first of many collaborations with Dozois (see listing below), Immortals: Short Novels of the Transhuman Future (anth 1980); the impressive In the Field of Fire (anth 1987) with Jeanne Van Buren Dann, about Vietnam. Much of his effort in the 1980s was devoted to a long non-genre novel, with MAGIC-REALIST elements, Counting Coup, which remained unpublished because of the collapse of BLUEJAY BOOKS. Echoes of Thunder (1991 chap dos) with Jack C. HALDEMAN II - a TOR BOOKS Double originally designed for DOS publication, but ultimately released in the format of a conventional two-item anthology - was much expanded as High Steel (1993), a virtuoso NEAR FUTURE tale which begins with its American Indian protagonist's experiences as a shanghaied worker constructing a space station, but soon expands in various directions, as the hero evolves into a SUPERMAN, apocalyptic hallucinations afflict Earth's normals, and an enigmatic message left by ALIENS promises the secret of FTL travel. But with the exception of this remarkable exercise, it seems that, after climaxing his genre career with the creation of a rich and humanized world in THE MAN WHO MELTED, JD has lost his need to write sf.

   JC

   Other works: JD also collaborated with Gardner Dozois on seven of the stories assembled in the latter's Slow Dancing through Time (coll 1990).Other works as editor: An exclamatory series, all with Dozois: Aliens! (anth 1980), Unicorns! (anth 1982), Magicats! (anth 1984), Bestiary! (anth 1985), Mermaids! (anth 1985), Sorcerers! (anth 1986), Demons! (anth 1987), Dogtales! (anth 1988), Seaserpents! (anth 1989), Magicats II (anth 1991),Little People! (anth 1991), Invaders! (anth 1993) and Horses! (anth 1994).

   About the author: The Work of Jack Dann: An Annotated Bibliography \& Guide (1990) by Jeffrey M. ELLIOT.

   See also: ESP; GENERATION STARSHIPS; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; WAR.