McEWAN, Ian (Russell)

(1948-)

   UK writer who came to instant fame through the stories assembled in First Love, Last Rites (coll 1975), followed by In Between the Sheets (coll 1978), some of which are fantasy or sf - like "Reflections of a KeptApe" from the second volume (APES AND CAVEMEN) - but most of which turn an intensely fabulistic eye (FABULATION) on young persons caught in the hyperboles of a UK depicted as psychically incontinent and in terminal decline. His first novel, The Cement Garden (1978), is a tale of horror. Of the plays assembled in The Imitation Game (coll 1981), "Solid Geometry"(1978) is sf. Or Shall We Die?: Words for an Oratorio Set to Music by Michael Berkeley (1983 chap) deals with the threat and imagined aftermath of nuclear WAR. The Child in Time (1987) is an sf novel set in the same dystopian NEAR FUTURE UK adumbrated in "Two Fragments: March 199 - ""(in In Between the Sheets); in this desolate, privatized, factory-farmedvenue, the protagonist agonizingly loses his child outside a shop, and his search for her becomes a search for meaning and grace in the desert landscape the UK has become. The Daydreamer (1994 chap) recounts the story-like perceptions of its young protagonist in a style of hallucinated clarity.

   JC"