FAUST, Joe Clifford

(1957-)

   US copywriter and author who began publishing sf with "The Jackalope's Tale" for Wyoming Rural Electric News in 1983. His first novel, A Death of Honor (1987), is an sf mystery set in a 21st century moderately displaced in the direction of CYBERPUNK, where a Constitutional Amendment has entitled victims of crime to pursue the perpetrators; themystery itself is worked out with extremely satisfying care. His second novel, The Company Man (1988), enters even more familiar cyberpunk territory by featuring a protagonist who steals data for a large corporation which partially runs the decaying world, and who soon faces a moral crisis. In the Angel's Luck trilogy - Desperate Measures (1989), Precious Cargo (1990) and The Essence of Evil (1990) - JCF created aromping SPACE OPERA whose spiralling intricacies of plot, as the freelance protagonists who run the starship Angel's Luck get into deeper and deeper waters, are recounted with the rigorous plot-control for which he has become known and with a sly sustaining humour. As a professing Christian, JCF has an avowed allegiance to what he has called "old-fashionedvirtues"; so far, however, his tales show no signs of doctrinal purpose.

   JC

   See also: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.