LUPOFF, Richard A(llen)

(1935-)

   US writer who worked in computers until he became a full-time writer in 1970. He was first active in sf fandom; the fanzine XERO, which he co-edited with his wife Pat, won a HUGO in 1963. A series of articles therein about COMICS later formed the core of All in Color for a Dime (1970), which RAL co-edited with Don Thompson. He contributed along-running book-review column to the fanzine ALGOL. RAL is also an expert on Edgar Rice BURROUGHS, and as fiction editor of Canaveral Press in the early 1960s he supervised the republication of many of Burroughs's works. His Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965; rev 1968; rev 1975) is probably the best short introduction; Barsoom: Edgar RiceBurroughs and the Martian Vision (1976) is also useful.After The Case of the Doctor who Had No Business, or The Adventure of the Second Anonymous Narrator (1966 chap), a RECURSIVE tale involving Burroughs and ArthurConan DOYLE's Dr Watson, RAL's first published fiction was the novel One Million Centuries (1967; rev 1981), a colourful adventure of the FAR FUTURE in a pastiche style (the object being in this case Burroughs) which would mark most of his career. Pastiche and recursiveness feed naturally into one another, and it is at times difficult, despite his clear and abundant intelligence, to identify a unique RAL voice. His short stories include a series of parodies of other sf writers published in FANTASTIC under the pseudonym Ova Hamlet and assembled as The Ova Hamlet Papers (coll 1979 chap); several were earlier incorporated into Sacred LocomotiveFlies (fixup 1971). He has also used the pseudonym Addison Steele. One of RAL's most notable stories is the satirical "With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama" (in Again, Dangerous Visions 1972 ed Harlan ELLISON), which eventually became the fine Space War Blues (fixup 1978), anearly surrealist tale of race wars fought in space between human colonies; it and Sword of the Demon (1977), a novel based and styled on Japanese mythology, came very close to giving him a recognizable profilein the field, but his chameleon facility won out, and each new story bore a new facet usually borrowed with a grin. His other 1970s novels are various but insufficiently memorable. The Triune Man (1976) deals with the split personality of a comic-strip artist. OVERPOPULATION, ecocatastrophe and sf in-jokes are coped with in The Crack in the Sky (1976; vt Fool's Hill 1978 UK), shipwreck on a dehydrated planet in Sandworld (1976), and afemale werewolf in Lisa Kane (1976).Two series dominated the 1980s. The Twin Planet books - Circumpolar! (1984) and Countersolar! (1986)-carrypastiche to the point of MAGIC REALISM. The first, in its depiction of an ALTERNATE-WORLD Earth - with a Symmesian hole ingeniously implanted in thecentre of its doughnut shape (HOLLOW EARTH) - has evoked comparisons with the work of James P. BLAYLOCK; historical figures star in a race across the gap. The second less interestingly moves into the 20th century and features a large cast of undifferentiated real people. The Sun's End sequence - Sun's End (1984) and Galaxy's End (1988) with a 3rd vol projected - is of greater interest, exploiting the fascination with Japanese culture that RAL first showed in Sword of the Demon in a complexSPACE-OPERA venue - although this does not prevent a certain amount of nostalgic pastiche of early-20th-century cultural modes and icons. But there still remains in RAL's work a sense of focus frustrated, of ambition deferred.

   MJE/JC

   Other works: Into the Aether (1974; rev as graph vt The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer 1991 with Steve Stiles); The Return of Skull-Face (1977), "collaboration" with Robert E. HOWARD; Nebogipfel at the End of Time (1979 chap); StrokaProspekt (1982 chap); The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick (dated 1985 but 1986 chap); Lovecraft's Book (1985); The Forever City (1988); The Comic Book Killer (1988), associational; Philip Jose Farmer's The Dungeon\#1: The Black Tower * (1988) and \#6: The Final Battle * (1990); Daniel M Pinkwater's Melvinge of the Metaverse Book 3: Night of the Living 'Gator (1992); The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick/Hyperprism (1994 dos).As Addison E. Steele: Two Buck Rogers tv ties, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century * (1978) and That Man on Beta * (1979).As Editor: The Reader's Guide to Barsoom and Amtor (anth 1963 chap); The Comic-Book Book (anth 1973) with Don Thompson; What If? \#1: Stories that Should Have Won the Hugo (anth 1980) and its sequel, What If? \#2 (anth 1981).

   See also: CITIES; CYBORGS; SUSPENDED ANIMATION.