NORWOOD, Warren C(arl)

(1945-)

   US bookseller and writer who has normally published as Warren Norwood, sometimes as Warren C. Norwood; due to a publisher's error, some titles were published as by Warren G. Norwood. After a number of years in bookselling, during which period he published some not particularly distinguished poetry, WCN began his sf career with the Windhover Tapes sequence - The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices (1982), \#2: Flexing the Warp (1983), \#3: Fize of the Gabriel Ratchets (1983) and \#4: Planet ofFlowers (1984) - attempting with some success to compose SPACE OPERAS whose baroque inturnings are themselves of some narrative interest; but calling the human protagonist of the series Gerard Hopkins Manley and referring to Hopkins (1844-1889) with some frequency - while implying that Manley himself is ignorant of any connection with the poet - does suggesta disconnectedness deep within the structure of the sequence. The Tapes themselves constitute a record kept by the sentient starship Windhover; they detail Manley's quite various adventures on several planets as troubleshooter and anthropologist. A second series, the Double Spiral War sequence - Midway Between (1984), Polar Fleet (1985) and Final Command (1986) - is less chaotic but also less interesting. The Seren Cenacles(1983) with Ralph Mylius (1945-) likewise suffers from inattentive bursts of energy; though Shudderchild (1987), set in a genuinely complicated multistate post- HOLOCAUST USA, is engagingly compact and full of action, and True Jaguar (1988), a fantasy, delves intriguingly into Mayan lore.In 1988 WCN publicly announced that he had been diagnosed as having terminalpancreatic cancer; in 1991 he said that he had entered remission, and also indicated his wish to acknowledge assistance in completing the Time Police sequence, a Byron PREISS package comprising Time Police: Vanished! (1988), \#2: Trapped! (1989) and \#3: Stranded! (1989), with Mel Odom (1950-) givenco-author credit on the final volume; WCN's wife had extensively outlined the second and third volumes and Odom had done the writing work on both. The sequence itself is a fairly unremarkable reworking of the Time Patrolrecipe created by Poul ANDERSON and others. Given the enforced hiatus at the end of nearly a decade of intense productivity, it is difficult to know whether or not WCN will eventually harness his knowledge and drive to stories that move beyond the slightly unfocused exuberance of his first work.

   JC