GRIFFIN, Russell M(organ)

(1943-1986)

   US academic and writer who began publishing sf with his first novel, The Makeshift God (1979), an overwritten and overlong but notably intelligent romance of origins, set initially in a drab Arab-dominated marginally pre- CYBERPUNK USA, and then on a planet which houses mysteriously significant data about the deep human past. Century's End (1981) takes another blackly satirical look at the NEAR FUTURE of Earth,generating comparisons between RMG and writers like Kurt VONNEGUT Jr and - more relevantly - John T. SLADEK. In The Blind Man and the Elephant (1982) RMG tackled a theme dear to Sladek, the consequences of thrusting atabula-rasa personality into a meat-grinder world - in Sladek's case it is usually a young ROBOT that loses its innocence; in RMG's it is a fast-maturing and monstrous experiment in cloning. The novel closes, after some very funny passages, in a state of utter despair. RMG's final novel, The Timeservers (1985), returns to the relative extroversion of his firstin the story of a young soldier's confrontation with CLONES, far stars and telepathic ALIENS. RMG's premature death halted a career which could have soared.

   JC

   See also: END OF THE WORLD; MONSTERS.