FOWLES, John (Robert)

(1926-)

   UK writer who remains perhaps most famous for his first novel, The Collector (1963), but whose second novel, The Magus (1965 US; rev 1977 UK), especially in the conciser revised version, more powerfully explores the labyrinths of obsession and manipulation underlying, in all of JF's work, the rigmaroles of daylight reality. In this novel a series of seemingly supernatural contrivances separates the unpleasant protagonist from his love and from any security, causing him to learn something about himself before happiness is allowed to reign; rational explanations in the end from the Daedalus-like magus do little to attenuate a sense of magic-realist entrapment. Of JF's other novels, A Maggot (1985) is sf. Set in the 18th century, it superlatively explores the epistemology of First Contact - the study of the possible nature of human PERCEPTIONS ofsomething genuinely ALIEN, genuinely Other - by telling a version of the life-story of the mother of Ann Lee (1736-1784), historical founder of the Shaker religion; the woman's response to the insoluble knot of PERCEPTIONSvisited upon her when she inadvertently stumbles upon some time travellers, possibly from Earth's future, is a literal seed-bed (she is pregnant at the time) for Enthusiasm.

   JC

   Other works: Mantissa (1982).