FRANK, Pat (Harry Hart)

(1907-1964)

   US journalist and author; a government official during WWII, he later served with the UN. Though his three sf novels are well known within the field, PF was not generally identified as an sf author. His first novel, Mr Adam (1946), exploits the fears of contamination felt in the USA after Hiroshima. All men but one are sterilized by a nuclear DISASTER; the experiences of the sole fertile male are rather feeblyrendered as comical, providing grounds for a SATIRE on government procedures. Forbidden Area (1956; vt Seven Days to Never 1957 UK) also deals - more grimly - with the atomic question, in a thriller plot involving sabotage and near- HOLOCAUST. In his most famous novel, Alas, Babylon (1959), the disaster is again nuclear, but this time it is notaverted. In a part of Florida that has survived the holocaust, the inhabitants of a small town manage, perhaps rather implausibly, to cope (PASTORAL; ROBINSONADE) and modestly to flourish; domestic verisimilitudeand apocalypse mingle here attractively, and the book was both made into a play and televised. PF's work draws its clear emotional force from the deep fears of nuclear devastation many Americans suffered, with some cause, during the 1950s.

   JC