GUNN, James E(dwin)

(1923-)

   US writer, critic and teacher, born in Kansas City and educated at the University of Kansas, where he is now a professor of English and journalism and Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. He began publishing sf with "Communications" for Startling Stories in 1949 as Edwin James, a disguise he dropped for good in 1952 after 10 stories.Throughout his career, JEG's favoured form has been the short story or novelette; his best book-length fictions have been either collaborations or assemblages of shorter material. He has also published considerable sf criticism, beginning with excerpts from his MA thesis in Dynamic Science Fiction (1953-4) and continuing with the brief The Discovery of theFuture: The Ways Science Fiction Developed (1975). More notable is a competent illustrated survey of sf, Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction (1975), although it inevitably suffers fromsuperficiality in its attempt at comprehensive coverage of later years, with many writers appearing only as names in paragraph-long lists. For this critical work JEG won the 1976 PILGRIM AWARD. More recently, he edited The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1988), a shortish and film-dominated text which is in no way a sequel to or otherwise connected with the first edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979) ed Peter NICHOLLS.JEG's first two books were SPACE OPERAS. This FortressWorld (1955) pits its protagonist against a repressive future religion. Star Bridge (1955), with Jack WILLIAMSON, shows through a sometimes pixilated intricacy of plotting the mark of its senior collaborator's grasp of the nature of good space opera. Everyone, it turns out, is being manipulated, for the salvation of mankind, by an immortal Chinese with a parrot. Station in Space (coll of linked stories 1958) assembles several uninteresting early tales about how Man is tricked into space exploration for his own good. The Joy Makers (fixup 1961) describes, in JEG's dark, ponderous, cumulatively impressive manner, a society whose members are controlled by synthetic forms of release that corrode their sense of reality. In The Immortals (fixup 1962), JEG's best known work, a mutation confers IMMORTALITY upon a group of people who become collectively known as Cartwrights; as their condition is transmissible to others by blood transfusion, they are forced underground by the understandable desire of mortal men to attain immortality. The hospital setting of the book adds verisimilitude. As The IMMORTAL (1969), it became a made-for-tv series, which JEG novelized as The Immortal * (1970).JEG's second novel to gain general esteem, The Listeners (fixup 1972), makes productive use of its episodic structure in depicting the installation of an electronic listening post to scan for radio messages from the stars, and the 100-year wait that ensues. JEG's somewhat morose style (in his better moments he evokes a kind of sense of the melancholy of wonder) nicely underlines the complex institutional frustrations and rewards of this long search. Indeed, his forte seems to lie in the narrative analysis of stress-riddenadministrations and their administrators; and his best work is usually set in organizations or among groups of people forced to cooperate. Women (WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION), however, tend to be excluded fromthe higher purposes of such organizations, and are sometimes depicted balking at the sacrifices men must make to reach the stars. Nevertheless, JEG has made a considerable success of his chosen length and venue, andhis later works - particularly Crisis! (fixup 1986) - can ruminate absorbingly on the administration of humanity's problems to come.

   JC

   Other works: Future Imperfect (coll 1964); The Witching Hour (coll 1970); The Burning (fixup 1972); Breaking Point (coll 1972); Some Dreams are Nightmares (coll 1974), containing short stories from Station in Space, The Joy Makers and The Immortals; The End of the Dreams: ThreeShort Novels About Space, Happiness and Immortality (coll 1975), containing long stories from Station in Space, The Joy Makers and The Immortals; The Magicians (1954 Beyond as "Sine of the Magus"; exp 1976);Kampus (1977); The Dreamers (1977 in Triax ed Robert SILVERBERG as "If I Forget Thee"; exp 1980; vt The Mind Master 1982); Tiger! Tiger! (written 1952; 1984 chap); The Unpublished Gunn (coll 1992 chap).Nonfiction: Teacher's Manual: The Road to Science Fiction (1980 chap) with Stephen H. Goldman (1943-1991), who also served as Associate Editor for JEG's New Encyclopedia and was its major contributor; Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (1982), for which he received a 1983 HUGO; Inside Science Fiction: Essays on Fantastic Literature (coll 1992).As Editor: The4 vols of The Road to Science Fiction sequence, comprising From Gilgamesh to Wells (anth 1977), From Wells to Heinlein (anth 1979), From Heinlein to Here (anth 1979) and From Here to Forever (anth 1982).

   About the author: AJames Gunn Checklist (1984 chap) by Chris DRUMM.

   See also: ALIENS; ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; ASTRONOMY; BIBLIOGRAPHIES; COMMUNICATIONS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; DYSTOPIAS; GALACTIC EMPIRES; GAMES AND SPORTS; GENRE SF; GOLDEN AGE OF SF; HUGO; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD; LEISURE; MAGIC; MEDICINE; NEBULA; PSYCHOLOGY; RELIGION; SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA; SOCIOLOGY; UTOPIAS.