JABLOKOV, Alexander

(1956-)

   US writer who began publishing sf with "Beneath the Shadow of her Smile" for IASFM in 1985, and who has since been fairly prolific in short forms, several stories being set in a future Boston, comprising a central element of Future Boston (anth 1994) ed David Alexander SMITH, which is in fact a BRAIDED novel; other stories appear in The Breath of Suspension (coll 1994). In its darkly suave competence, his first novel,Carve the Sky (1991), demonstrates the benefits of this work. The story, which opens on a clement, richly complex, low-tech Earth, soon begins to argue that a viable human culture might consciously wish to inhabit a PLANETARY-ROMANCE venue, and indeed so legislate. Later portions of thetale, set on an outward-bound spaceship and introducing an elaborate set of metaphors linking art (ARTS) to the structure of the Universe, are marginally less impressive. His second novel, A Deeper Sea (1989 ASFM; exp 1992), is a very much harsher exploration of a NEAR FUTUREvenue: a savageworld war in which dolphins with implants are extensively (and brutally) used to reconnoitre and to destroy. The denouement once again invokes an outward-bound spaceship, and is rich in images of escape and resolution. His third novel, Nimbus (1993), is a noir tale, involving mind/machineinterfaces, also in a near future Earth venue. AB's work is both rounded and exploratory, and this - in conjunction with his disinclination to write sequels - generates the sense that an important sf career has gotten well underway.

   JC

   See also: SPACE FLIGHT.