FOSTER, M(ichael) A(nthony)

(1939-)

   US writer, former data-systems analyst and sequentially a Russian linguist and ICBM launch-crew commander to the US Air Force; he is also a semiprofessional photographer. After some poetry, published privately as Shards from Byzantium (coll 1969 chap) and The Vaseline Dreams of Hundifer Jones (coll 1970 chap), he began to publish sf with theambitious Ler trilogy about a race of genetically created SUPERMEN. The Gameplayers of Zan (1977), a very long novel formally constructed on themodel of an Elizabethan tragedy, describes a period of climactic tension between the ler and the rest of humanity, and is set on Earth. The Warriors of Dawn (1975), published first but set later, is a moreconventional SPACE OPERA in which a human male and a ler female are forced to team up to try to solve a complexly ramifying problem of interstellar piracy. The Day of the Klesh (1979) brings the ler and the eponymous race of humans together on a planet where they must solve their differences. The books are slow in the telling, but impressively detailed in theirconstruction of ler culture and language. The Morphodite sequence which followed comprises The Morphodite (1981), Transformer (1983) and Preserver (1985), and similarly uses devices of genetic manipulation to buttresscomplex plots, though in this case the shape-changing, revolution-fomenting protagonist dominates the tale as trickster and superman. Waves (1980) rather sluggishly recalls Stanislaw LEM's SOLARIS (1961) in a tale of political intrigue on a planet whose ocean isintelligent. The four novellas collected in Owl Time (coll 1985) are told in challengingly various modes, and derive strength from their mutual contrast. MAF's career to date could be seen as a prelude to the major book which should bring him the acclaim he merits.

   JC

   See also: GENETIC ENGINEERING; LIVING WORLDS; PLANETARY ROMANCE.