RESNICK, Michael D(iamond)

(1942-)

   US author and dog-breeder who began his genre career with an Edgar Rice BURROUGHS pastiche, The Forgotten Sea of Mars (1965 chap), and who soon began producing many novels in various genres, most often soft pornography and Gothics, and almost always under unrevealed pseudonyms; his later books are usually signed Mike Resnick. His interest in Burroughs had also generated material which he published in ERB-dom Magazine; his first novels, the Ganymede series - The Goddess of Ganymede (1967) and Pursuit on Ganymede (1968) - showed Burroughs's influence. After Redbeard(1969), a post- HOLOCAUST tale set generations hence in the New York subway system, he left sf and fantasy, restricting his activity to the pseudonymous novels, writing (it has been estimated) well over 200 before returning, around 1980, to work under his own name. The first relevant title - Battlestar Galactica 5: Galactica Discovers Earth * (1980) with Glen A. LARSON, a tv tie - was the least. MDR's large 1980s productionshowed an increasing - and increasingly sophisticated - interest in the use of sf venues and instruments to tell what he has more than once described as "morality tales", sometimes with a simplistic ease, but in later work with mounting vigour and a winningly complex sense of the nature of the world; this was most evident in those stories and novels - like Ivory: A Legend of Past and Future (1988), Paradise: A Chronicle of a Distant World (1989) and Bwana \& Bully! (coll 1981) - set in either aliteral Africa or an sf analogue of it. Ivory has a Masai descendant searching through many worlds for the tusks of a particular elephant and the Chronicles of a Distant World sequence recasts the post-independence history of various African countries as the history of various worlds: Paradise treats Kenya; Purgatory (1993) treats Zimbabwe; and Inferno(1994) treats Uganda. Two of the short works belonging to the thematically linked Kenya series; both set in an African-styled SPACE HABITAT, Kirinyaga (1988 FSF; 1992 chap) and its sequel, "The Manamouki" (1990),though well received and both winning HUGOS, caused some controversy through their display (and perhaps espousal) of cultural values alien to our own. Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge (1994chap), which is about the origins of homo sapiens, is actually set in Africa, and won a 1995 NEBULA Award for Best Novella.Two further series of the 1980s are the Tales ofthe Galactic Midway sequence - Sideshow (1982), The Three-Legged Hootch Dancer (1983), The Wild Alien Tamer (1983) and The Best Rootin' Tootin'Shootin' Gunslinger in the Whole Damned Galaxy (1983) - and the Tales of the Velvet Comet sequence - Eros Ascending (1984), Eros at Zenith (1984), Eros Descending (1985) and Eros at Nadir (1986). Both series - the firstset in a carnival, the second in a whorehouse visited at 50-year intervals - are smooth, swift, cynical and without much in the way of argument aboutanything that might be described as the moral Universe. But many of his remaining novels of this decade shared the general background outlined in Birthright: The Book of Man (coll of linked stories 1982), a text whichsketches in the next 15,000 years or so as our race expands through the Galaxy, peaks, then dwindles to extinction. The individual stories withinthis extremely loose frame convey in general a sense that humans are incapable of answering the demands of history, that we are too short-lived and too caught in our mortality to answer the challenges of a greater world. Novels like Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future (1986) and The Dark Lady: A Romance of the Far Future (1987) tend to portray adventurouscharacters engaging in SPACE-OPERA exploits against a black, barely felt background of closure; for the feats of MDR's protagonists are little more than selfish spasms in the great night. His better novels are, all the same, at least superficially cheerful, bustling with competently framed action, and clear-headed.Tales that stand outside the future history include The Soul Eater (1981), a retelling of Herman MELVILLE's Moby-Dick (1851), and Stalking the Unicorn: A Fable of Tonight (1987), a fantasy.After publishing some earlier short collections, MR signalled his increasing involvement in short forms with Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut off the Sun? (coll 1992), which contains several award-winning tales. In the 1970s, MDR published The Official Guide to Fantastic Literature (1976), Official Guide to Comic Books and Big LittleBooks (1977) and Official Price Guide to Comic and Science Fiction Books (1979).

   JC

   Other works: Walpurgis III (1982); The Branch (1984); Unauthorized Autobiographies and Other Curiosities (coll 1984 chap); The Inn of the Hairy Toad (1985 chap); Adventures (1985); Through Darkest Resnick with Gun and Camera (coll 1990); Second Contact (1990); Stalking the Wild Resnick (coll 1991); Pink Elephants and Hairy Toads (coll 1991 chap); The Alien Heart (coll 1991); The Red Tape War (1991) with Jack L. CHALKER and George Alec EFFINGER; the Oracle Trilogy, comprisingSoothsayer (1991), Oracle (1992) and Prophet (1993); A Miracle of Rare Design: a Tragedy of Transcendence (1994).Anthologies: Shaggy B.E.M. Stories (anth 1988); Inside the Funhouse (anth 1992), assembling examples of RECURSIVE SF; the Alternate series, exploring at perhaps too considerable a length a variety of ALTERNATE WORLD scenarios, and including Alternate Kennedys (and 1992), Alternate Warriors(anth 1993), Alternate Worldcons (anth 1994), By Any Other Fame (anth 1994) andAlternate Outlaws (anth 1994), all with Martin H. GREENBERG, not necessarily (as usual with his more recent anthology project) credited; Aladdin: Master of the Lamp (anth 1992) with Greenberg; Whatdunits(anth1992) and More Whatdunits(anth 1993), both with Greenberg; Future Earths: Under South American Skies(anth 1993) and Future Earths: Under African Skies(anth 1993), both with Gardner DOZOIS;Dinosaur Fantastic (anth 1993) with Greenberg; Christmas Ghosts(anth 1993) with Greenberg; Deals with the Devil (anth 1994) with Greenberg and Loren D. Estleman (1952-).

   See also: ALTERNATE WORLDS; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; HEROES; ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE; The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION; SOCIOLOGY.