EFFINGER, George Alec

(1947-)

   US writer long resident in New Orleans. He entered sf writing via the 1970 CLARION SCIENCE FICTION WRITER'S WORKSHOP, having 3 stories in the workshop's first anthology, Clarion (anth 1971), ed Robin Scott WILSON. His first published story was "The Eight-Thirty to Nine Slot" for Fantastic in 1971. Some early work was written as by John K. Diomede or Susan Doenim. Within a very short time GAE established himself as a writer of stylish, surrealistic sf stories, becoming a regular contributor to such series anthologies as ORBIT, NEW DIMENSIONS and UNIVERSE as well as the major magazines; and, despite a steady production of novels, he was for at least a decade most admired for this work, much of which was assembled in Mixed Feelings (coll 1974), Irrational Numbers (coll 1976), Dirty Tricks (coll 1978), Idle Pleasures (coll 1983) and The Old Funny Stuff (coll 1989); "Schrodinger's Kitten" (1988), not yet collected, won both HUGO and NEBULA for Best Novelette.At the same time, What Entropy Means to Me (1972), GAE's first novel, did gain praise from Theodore STURGEON and Robert SILVERBERG among others, and was nominated for a Nebula. It is an elaborate, multi-layered work, combining elements of SPACE OPERA, family romance and quest fable within a self-referential discourse about the impulsions and restraints of creation. Relatives (fixup 1973), less well received, fails to unify its disparate parts, which tell of one man in three PARALLEL WORLDS. Nightmare Blue (1975) with Gardner DOZOIS and Those Gentle Voices: A Promethean Romance of the Spaceways (1976) were dithering attempts to disguise a lack of creative impetus through demonstrations of professional skill. For some time, it seemed that he would always remain a better short-story writer than novelist, the knowledgeable, witty master of a sly tone and unlikely subject matter, with a particular interest in various kinds of games (GAMES AND SPORTS), but failing to fulfil his promise. His very considerable capacity to dazzle - and an adroit use of parallel-world conventions, with characters dodging into changed identities with frivolous inevitability - led undoubtedly to a body of work unduly packed with exercises."Many of my stories interlock," he once said, "and some day I will figure out a kind of chronology and key to the business." Perhaps fortunately, he has never published anything of the sort, and the wise absurdities (FABULATION) of his best work have never been tampered with. After two moderately successful novels - Death in Florence (1978; vt Utopia 3 1980) and Heroics (1979) - he began the 1980s with the darkly DYSTOPIAN The Wolves of Memory (1981), whose surreal mise-en-scene effortlessly draws the book's brooding hero into the depths. In the self-referential dance of motif and character of The Nick of Time (1985) and its sequel, The Bird of Time (1986), he at last successfully manifested at novel length his long-felt need to present TIME TRAVEL as a form of play. Appalling ill health and other disasters severely afflicted him during these years, but When Gravity Fails (1987), A Fire in the Sun (1989) and The Exile Kiss (1991), the first three books of the Marid Audran sequence, are perhaps his most successful books to date. In these novels, the technological and electronic complexities of the 21st-century Middle East are fully as dazzling as the dervish of alternating realities so dominant in GAE's previous work. In attempting to flourish in this CYBERPUNK hive, the protagonist of the series becomes an Everyman-survivor, an example for those of GAE's readers who expect someday to live there. A career that seemed underachieving has become one of major interest.

   JC/DP

   Other works: Novelizations of scripts from the tv series PLANET OF THE APES: Man the Fugitive * (1974), Escape to Tomorrow * (1975), Journey into Terror * (1975) and Lord of the Apes * (1976); Felicia (1976) and Shadow Money (1988), both non-genre; Look Away (1990 chap); The Zork Chronicles * (1990), humorous novelization of a fantasy game; The Red Tape War: A Round-Robin Science Fiction Novel (1991) with Jack L. CHALKER and Michael D. RESNICK; Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson: The Complete Stories (coll 1993).

   See also: DISASTER; ECOLOGY; ENTROPY; GAME-WORLDS; OMNI; PHYSICS; THEODORE STURGEON MEMORIAL AWARD.