McLOUGHLIN, John C.

(1949-)

   US writer whose first novel, The Helix and the Sword (1983), is an sf adventure of some competence, and whose second, Toolmaster Koan (1987), more interestingly sets up a Soviet-US tussle - to be the first tomeet an ALIEN seemingly arriving from outer space in a GENERATION STARSHIP - as a dramatic representation of the ongoing thematic argument that givesshape to the tale. This argument, extrapolated from evolutionary BIOLOGY, suggests that any species, once it acquires tools, enters an almost certainly fatal period of disequilibrium between that manipulative capacity and its powers of self-control. In the end, the "aliens" turn out to be dinosaurs, relics of Earth's last self-destructive evolutionary surge, and augurs of the failure to come.

   JC