KILIAN, Crawford

(1941-)

   US-born writer, in Canada from 1967, who began publishing sf with The Empire of Time (1978 US), the first volume of the Chronoplane Wars sequence. This sequence - which continued with The Fall of theRepublic (1987 US) and Rogue Emperor: A Novel of the Chronoplane Wars (1988 US) - is dominated by the discovery in a savagely declining NEAR FUTURE USA of the I-Screens, through which travel to a series of ALTERNATE WORLDS is possible. Each Earth is located uptime or downtime of our base reality but, ominously, uptime is uninhabitable, seemingly because of the effects of an alien INVASION; the protagonist gradually uncovers a seamy truth. Perhaps more interestingly, Icequake (1979) and its sequel Tsunami (1983) - the latter set in Vancouver - depict an Earth very much closer to home, with the ozone layer gone and the Antarctic icecap beginning to melt disastrously. Eyas (1982) moves into the very FAR FUTURE, where the eponymous primitive gingers his tribe into readiness forthe dawn of a new age. Brother Jonathan (1985 US) describes the effect of experiments which permit human-animal interfaces, these soon being invaded by AIs in typical CYBERPUNK fashion. Lifter (1986 US) is a fairly unserious tale about ANTIGRAVITY and Gryphon (1989 US) somewhat unadventurously deals with an alien invasion. CK's work can be analysed in terms of its Canadianness, its emphasis on themes of survival (CANADA); but he slips too often into generic dogpaddling for this kind of analysis to be entirely fruitful.

   JC

   Other works: Wonders, Inc. (1968), a juvenile; Greenmagic (1992), a fantasy.