DRURY, Allen (Stuart)

(1918-)

   US writer of a sequence of novels depicting US political (POLITICS) life from a point roughly similar to real-life 1960 and growing into a full-fledged history of the NEAR FUTURE. The bent is conservatively anti-communist, and the satirical effects are often telling, though sometimes tendentious. The series comprises Advise and Consent (1959), which won a Pulitzer, A Shade of Difference (1962), Capable of Honor (1966), Preserve and Protect (1968), Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason (1973), in which world communism topples an unready USA into chaos, and The Promise of Joy (The Presidency of Orrin Knox) (1975), in which a war between the USSR and China further challenges the pacifist- and liberal-ridden republic. The Throne of Saturn (1971), in which the Russians attempt to sabotage the USA's first manned expedition to MARS, is similar in tone but otherwise unconnected to the series. Two later books, The Hill of Summer: A Novel of the Soviet Conquest (1981) and its sequel, The Roads of Earth (1984), break no new ground.

   JC