ARMSTRONG, Michael (Allan)

(1956-)

   US writer who began publishing sf with Going after Arviq in Afterwar (anth 1985) ed Janet MORRIS; this story was expanded (with the name respelled) into his second novel, Agviq: The Whale (1990), a post-HOLOCAUST tale set in Alaska and featuring a woman anthropologist whose book-knowledge of the ancient ways of the Eskimo usefully sophisticates the vitality of the tribal survivors. MA's first novel, After the Zap (1987), is likewise set in Alaska, in this case in a People's Republic which has survived the phenomenon of the title, a pulse that, down south, has scrambled brains and computers alike. The young protagonist of his third novel, The Hidden War (1994), attempts to defend his asteroid-belt home (whose culture is nostalgically based on the Beat literature of the 1950s), is captured and imprisoned, but then finds Earth to differ vastly from his preconceptions.