GARDNER, John

   1. (1926-) UK writer who was a minister for several years before becoming an agnostic, a drama critic, and the creator of the Boysie Oakes sequence of spy thrillers spoofing Ian FLEMING's James Bond books, most famously in The Liquidator (1964); one Boysie Oakes tale, Founder Member (1969), involves its hero in a SEX experiment in space. More recently, JGhas written a number of novels continuing the James Bond saga itself. Among his many other novels, mostly thrillers, Golgotha (1980; vt The LastTrump 1980 US), is a NEAR FUTURE thriller whose apocalyptic imagery may owe something to JG's early theological training.

   JC

   2. Full name John Champlin Gardner (1933-1982), US writer and academic who achieved popularity with his large contemporary novel, The Sunlight Dialogues (1972). His third work of fiction, Grendel (1971), is a mordant retellingof the Beowulf legend from the MONSTER's point of view, and renders - more pointedly than Thomas Burnett SWANN's similar elegies - Anglo-Saxon Man's triumphs as allegorical of the rise of the cruel, modern, industrial world. Further works that contain fantastic elements include Jason and Medeia (1973), a fantasy novel in verse, several tales assembled in TheKing's Indian: Stories and Tales (coll 1974), In the Suicide Mountains (1977), a juvenile based on Russian folk themes, and Freddy's Book (1980). Mickelsson's Ghosts (1982) attempts to subsume the ghost story and other narrative conventions into a mundane frame. Though clearly attracted to various supernatural and classical traditions, JG had little apparent interest in the sf or fantasy genres, which are scantly treated in On Moral Fiction (1978), in which he argued for a traditional viewpoint,abjuring what he saw as POSTMODERNIST nihilism. He died in a motorcycle accident.

   GF/JC

   About 2: World of Order and Light: The Fiction of John Gardner (1984) by G.L. Morris.

   See also: MYTHOLOGY.