GRAY, Alasdair (James)

(1934-)

   Scottish painter, playwright and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Yellow Dream" for Collins Magazine for Girls and Boys in 1950; this tale was gathered, along with a wide varietyof sf fables and FABULATIONS, in Unlikely Stories, Mostly (coll 1983). His first and most substantial novel was Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), a vast tale whose burly narrative voice shoulders aside questions of genre as impertinences; the protagonist is born, lives and dies in Glasgow, whence, transformed into an alter ego named Lanark, he is transported to the regimented subterranean DYSTOPIA of Unthank, which is of course Hell but which also - as he enters the "Epilogue" - becomes the text of Lanark, through which he wages his way. 1982 Janine (1984) is a metaphysical fantasy, with some of the same embedded entwinings of life and book. The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties (1985) and Something Leather(1990) are associational, as are the tales assembled in Lean Tales (coll 1985), which also includes work by James Kelman and Agnes Owens. McGrotty and Ludmilla, or The Harbinger Report (1975 as BBC radio play; 1990) is a mildly poisonous SATIRE of UK life and politics set in a moderately displaced ALTERNATE WORLD, and Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D. Scottish Public Health Offices (1992; rev 1993) fabulates the Frankenstein story (FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER) andFEMINISM. A History Maker (1994) sets an eccentric tale of border warfare with England in the Scotland of the 23rd century. Though published by mainstream houses, most of AG's books have been designed by him in his own unmistakable style, so that his oeuvre is unique inside and out.

   JC

   See also: CITIES.