GREENLAND, Colin

(1954-)

   UK writer and academic who took a PhD in sf at Oxford, publishing his thesis in revised form as The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the UK "New Wave" (1983). This text also includes extensiveexaminations of the works of Brian W. ALDISS and J.G. BALLARD and gives competent readings of these and other authors, though it (understandably) fails to provide anything like a definitive modelling of the notoriously portable field and slippery topic of the NEW WAVE and its prime organ, NEW WORLDS. CG later edited, with Eric S. RABKIN and George E. SLUSSER, StormWarnings: Science Fiction Confronts the Future (anth 1987 US). Beyond some further critical pieces - and Death is no Obstacle (1992), a book-length interview with Michael MOORCOCK, mostly about the latter's work - his interest had by this point shifted towards fiction, though he was to take on the position of Reviews Editor for FOUNDATION: THE REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION in 1990.CG began publishing works of genre interest with "MissOtis Regrets" for Fiction Magazine in 1982. His first novel, Daybreak on a Different Mountain (1984), a fantasy, wrestles mildly with an ENTROPY-laden plot and venue, and with a range of New Wave influences forgivable in a book coming from a scholar's loaded mind. Two further fantasies set in different parts of the same world, The Hour of the Thin Ox (1987) and Other Voices (1988), gradually demonstrated a sharpening,meticulously intelligent, cold, quiet narrative voice, and plots which carefully picked at some of the unthinking assumptions, general to FANTASY, about war and peace, prejudice and love. Of much greater sfinterest was his fourth novel, TAKE BACK PLENTY (1990), a devotedly exuberant SPACE OPERA and the first of the Plenty sequence, which won the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD and the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARD. The storyinvolves much tried-and-true material - from the MARS where the tale begins to the tough female space-tramp who runs her own ship and is in all sorts of trouble, and on to the ALIENS who dominate human space - and indeed there are moments when CG seems all too knowing. But the neatly calipered parodies are accomplished with love, lacking any trace of the disdain that has tended to disfigure much UK space opera; and the high jinks are genuinely earned. In the Garden: The Secret Origin of the Zodiac Twins (1991 chap) is a short prequel, and Seasons of Plenty (1995) is theprojected sequel. Harm's Way (1993) approaches STEAMPUNK in its depiction of an ALTERNATE WORLD solar system bathed in a sea of Aether, so that great sailing ships dominate the spacelanes; but is, in the end, more satisfactorily to be read as fantasy. CG has become, quite suddenly, one of the dominant figures of his generation of sf writers. He contributed the entry on Bruce STERLING to this encyclopedia.

   JC

   Other works: Magnetic Storm (graph 1984) with Martyn Dean and Roger DEAN; Interzone: The First Anthology (anth 1985) ed with John CLUTE and David PRINGLE.

   See also: INTERZONE; MILFORD SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS' CONFERENCE; OUTER PLANETS; SCIENCE FICTION FOUNDATION; SPACE FLIGHT; WOMEN AS PORTRAYED INSCIENCE FICTION.