RYMAN, Geoff(rey Charles)

(1951-)

   Canadian-born writer who moved to the USA at age 11, and has been resident in the UK since 1973. He began publishing sf with "The Diary of the Translator" for NW in 1976, but began to generate significant work only with the magazine version of The Unconquered Country: A Life History (1984 INTERZONE; rev 1986), which won the BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION AWARDand the World Fantasy Award. It is the story of a young woman forced by poverty and the terrible conditions afflicting her native land (clearly a transfigured Cambodia) to rent out her womb for industrial purposes (it is used to grow machinery). In the book GR demonstrated - as have Bruce MCALLISTER, Ursula K. LE GUIN and Lucis SHEPARD in various tales - that sfis capable of a mature response to the ordeal of Southeast Asia. That this response was a decade or more years belated confirms the depth of the trauma, as does the anguished saliency of GR's short text. It is included in Unconquered Countries: Four Novellas (coll 1994 US), which assembles most of his short fiction of interest.GR's first full-length novel, The Warrior who Carried Life (1985), is a quest FANTASYwhich, though pacifist,seems less subversive; but THE CHILD GARDEN: A LOW COMEDY (1987 Interzone as "Love Sickness"; much exp 1988), which won the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD and the JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD, complexly massages an array of themes-drugs, DYSTOPIA, ECOLOGY, FEMINISM, HIVE-MINDS, homosexuality, MEDICINE and MUSIC - into a long rich novel about identity and the makingof great art. Set in a transfigured UK - in effect an ALTERNATE WORLD - the book stands as one of the sturdiest monuments of "Humanist" sf, despite some moments of clogged selfconsciousness. A non-sf novel, ostensibly about the life of the Kansas girl whose tragedy sparks L. Frank BAUM into creating the Oz books, "Was . . ." (1992; vt Was 1992 US),focuses on the 20th century, and the knot of memory and desire generated in the mind of an actor, dying of AIDS, by both the books and the 1939 film.GR has also written some sf plays, none published but most performed, including an adaptation of Philip K. DICK's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982).

   JC

   Other work: Coming of Enkidu (1989 chap).

   See also: GENETIC ENGINEERING; GOTHIC SF; INTELLIGENCE.