DARNAY, Arsen (Julius)

(1936-)

   Hungarian-born writer, in the USA from 1953 and a US citizen from 1961. His first sf story, "Such is Fate", appeared in If in 1974; his first novel, A Hostage for Hinterland (1976), set the pattern for much of his work: in a post- HOLOCAUST USA, where floating CITIES depend upon land-dwelling ecofreak tribesmen for the helium that cools their reactors, crisis erupts into a bleak and somewhat metaphysical confrontation, at the end of which the cities die. A similarly abstract dichotomy, set on a RIMWORLD, is destabilized in The Siege of Faltara (1978). The Splendid Freedom (coll of linked stories 1980) carries its protagonists, who are linked through REINCARNATION, into a variety of DYSTOPIAS. AD has not published fiction since 1981.

   JC

   Other works: Karma: A Novel of Retribution and Transcendence (1978; vt The Karma Affair 1979); The Purgatory Zone (1981).