HARRIS, MacDonald

   Pseudonym used by US writer and academic Donald William Heiney (1921-1993) for all his fiction which, though composed in a smooth and accessible style, tends significantly to foreground any elements of fantasy (FABULATION) with which it may deal. Bull Fever (1973) treats a modern family romance in terms of the myth of the Minotaur. The Balloonist (1976) recounts a failed 1897 BALLOON expedition to the North Pole interms reminiscent of Jules VERNE's Voyages extraordinaires; indeed, the book is dedicated to Verne. The Little People (1986) takes its title from the myth of faerie, though in a delusional frame. Glowstone (1987) posits a kind of ALTERNATE WORLD in which a woman strongly reminiscent of Marie Curie (1867-1934) makes identical scientific discoveries. Screenplay(1982), a TIME-TRAVEL tale, deposits its hero in a film-noir dream of 1920s Hollywood. Several of the stories assembled in The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions (coll 1988) carry a contemporary Marco Polo backwards in time to the increasingly fabulous world of the original (1254-1324).

   JC/GF