KEY, Alexander (Hill)

(1904-1979)

   US writer who began publishing novels for children with The Red Eagle (1930), and who moved into CHILDREN'S SF with the Sprockets sequence: Sprockets: A Little Robot (1963), Rivets and Sprockets (1964) and Bolts - A Robot Dog (1966). These books were not likely, however, to seize a wide audience, and it was only with the Witch Mountain sequence - Escape to Witch Mountain (1968) and Return from Witch Mountain * (1978) -that AK's easy sentimentality was attached to a narrative strong enough to bear it, as two orphan children on the run gradually come to realize that they are in fact ALIENS with powers (and memories) foreign to their ignorant hosts. Both stories were filmed by Walt Disney, in 1975 and 1978 respectively, both dir John Hough. An earlier alien orphaned on Earth had featured in The Forgotten Door (1965). Other singletons of interest include The Golden Enemy (1969), set thousands of years hence when the descendants of the survivors of nuclear HOLOCAUST must face their human nature, and Flight to the Lonesome Place (1971), where a young mathematical genius flees his oppressors into a space to which only he can understand the route.

   JC

   Other works: The Incredible Tide (1970); The Preposterous Adventures of Swimmer (1973); The Magic Meadow (1975); Jagger, the Dog from Elsewhere (1976); The Sword of Aradel (1977); The Case of the Vanishing Boy (1979).

   See also: SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS; SUPERMAN.