SKAL, David J(ohn)

(1952-)

   US writer whose first novel, Scavengers (1980), suggests some sf basis for a plot involving memory transfer in a corrupt world. His second, When We Were Good (1981), evokes a powerful sense of cultural despair inthe tale of a sterile world in which genetically engineered hermaphrodites fail to represent an emblem of hope for the terminal remnants of normal humanity. A sense that DJS is by inclination a horror writer was intensified by the entropic dismay evoked by Antibodies (1989), a short accusatory trawl through Californian subcultures, where sf characters emit pretentious twaddle about transcendence and the military-industrial complex conspires to transform pseudo-hippies into spare computer parts; all this is told with a sense of gnawing revulsion. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of "Dracula" from Novel to Stage to Screen (1990), and TheMonster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (1993), are both extremely competent nonfiction studies.

   JC

   See also: GENETIC ENGINEERING.