JAMES, Laurence

(1942-)

   UK paperbacks editor and then writer active under his own name and under at least 9 pseudonyms and house names, including Jonathan May, in various genres including Westerns, thrillers, historical romances and soft-core pornography. Over one four-year period he averaged about a book a month. As LJ he began publishing sf with "And Dug the Dog a Tomb" for New Worlds Quarterly 3 (anth 1972), an sf development of Samuel Beckett'sWaiting for Godot (trans 1954), though under his own name he is best known for a series of paperback SPACE OPERAS featuring Simon Rack and his Galactic Security Service Comrades: Earth Lies Sleeping (1974), Starcross(1974; vt War on Aleph 1974 US), Backflash (1975), Planet of the Blind (1975) and New Life for Old (1975). These are swiftly told but otherwise unremarkable. The Dark Future series of post- HOLOCAUST adventures for a young-adult audience includes The Revengers (1992),Beyond the Grave (1992),The Horned God (1992) and The Plague (1992). For adults and asJames Axler he wrote the SURVIVALIST-FICTION Death Lands post-holocaust military-sf series: Death Lands \#1: Red Holocaust (1986 Canada), \#2: Pilgrimage to Hell (1987 Canada), \#3: Neutron Solstice (1987 Canada), \#4:Crater Lake (1987 Canada), \#5: Northstar Rising (1988 Canada), \#6: Pony Soldiers (1988 Canada), \#7: Dectra Chain (1988 Canada), \#8: Ice and Fire (1988 Canada), \#9: Red Equinox (1989 Canada), \#10: Time Nomads (1989 Canada), \#11: Latitude Zero (1991 Canada), \#12: Seedling (1991 Canada) and \#13: Dark Carnival (1992 Canada). As James McPhee he wrote the similar Survival 2000 sequence, dealing with events after an ASTEROID strikes Earth: Survival 2000 \#1: Blood Quest (1991), \#2: Renegade War (1991) and \#3: Frozen Fire (1991).

   JC

   Other works: Electric Underground - A City Lights Reader (anth 1973); the Witches sequence, all as by James Darke, comprising The Prisoner (1983), The Trial (1983), The Torture (1983), The Escape (1984), The Feud (1986) and The Plague (1986).