O'BRIEN, Robert C(arroll)

   Pseudonym of US writer Robert Lesly Carroll Conly (1922-1973); his books were marketed as juveniles, though the last two are essentially adult. His first, The Silver Crown (1968), is a sometimes frightening, complex fantasy about the kidnapping of a young girl by a king who is ruled in turn by a malignant MACHINE. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971; vt The Secret of NIMH 1982), which won the Newbery Medal, tells of a group offugitive rats from a laboratory where their INTELLIGENCE has been enhanced; with the help of Mrs Frisby, a field mouse, they found an independent colony, determined not to batten on humans. The treatment is realistic and without a trace of whimsy. After his death his daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, wrote two sequels, Rasco and the Rats of NIMH (1986)and R.T., Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH (1991). RCO's A Report from Group 17 (1972) is about biological warfare between the USA and Russia; it iscompetent, but less successful than his other work. In Z for Zachariah (1975), a post- HOLOCAUST novel of considerable sensitivity, a solitarysurviving adolescent girl comes to realize that she cannot make a life with the male survivor who has entered her quiet valley; she eludes his attempt at rape and travels across the desolated landscape in search of other survivors. It is a fine book, morally complex, and not simply a story of good versus evil; the girl's victory is ambiguous. RCO died before the novel was quite finished; it was completed by his family.

   PN/JC

   See also: CHILDREN'S SF.