JACOBS, Harvey

(1930-)

   US writer whose work, much of it taking on a MAGIC-REALIST glow, generally depicts the nature and fate of the urban Jew, especially in New York. His more fable-like tales, many of which appear in The Egg of theGlak and Other Stories (coll 1969), are not dissimilar to some of Bernard MALAMUD's. The title story (1968) and "In Seclusion" (1968), with which he began publishing stories in the sf magazines, typically demonstrate HJ's sharply sardonic use of sf elements to make moral points about man's inhumanity to man in a cold world. Beautiful Soup: A Novel for the 21st Century (1993) is an sf SATIRE about NEAR FUTURE life in urban andsuburban America - a mode more frequently found in 1950s and 1960s titles - and follows the life of a man who loses his official identity when he isimprinted with a barcode in a supermarket accident.

   JC