PFEIL, Fred

   Working name of US writer and academic John Frederick Pfeil (1949-), whose sf novel, Goodman 2020 (1986), portrays in a superbly suffocating present tense the corporate USA of AD2020, where all power has fallen into the hands of priest-like businessmen. The most powerful of these hires the "professional friend" Goodman to give him moments of human society, butGoodman eventually kills him, escapes into the barrios (and the narrative dynamism of the more normal past tense) and settles down to prepare for a wholesome change. The politics of the book may seem naive, but the execution is compelling. Some of the essays assembled in Another Tale to Tell: Politics and Narration in Postmodern Culture (coll 1990) offer aformal context for FP's sf work.

   JC