STABLEFORD, Brian M(ichael)

(1948-)

   UK writer, critic and academic, with a degree in BIOLOGY and a doctorate in SOCIOLOGY, which he taught 1977-88 before turning to writing full-time. He began his writing career early, collaborating with a schoolfriend, Craig A. Mackintosh (together as Brian Craig), on his first published story, "Beyond Time's Aegis" for Science Fantasy in 1965. BMS then dropped the Brian Craig pseudonym, using it again only in the late 1980s when he undertook to SHARECROP some ties for a GAME-WORLD enterprise(GAMES WORKSHOP and listing below). His first novel, Cradle of the Sun (1969 dos US), a quest story set in the FAR FUTURE, is notable for its colourful imagery. The Blind Worm (1970 dos US), hastily written, is in the same vein. In these early works, and in most of his subsequent sf novels, BMS put his knowledge of biology to good use, constructing a long series of outrageous but plausible ECOLOGIES whose intricacy sometimes overwhelmed the SPACE-OPERA formats to which he generally adhered over the first 15 years of his career. The early Dies Irae trilogy - The Days of Glory (1971 US), In the Kingdom of the Beasts (1971 US) and Day of Wrath(1971 US) - mixed these usual space-opera trappings with SWORD AND SORCERY. Based on HOMER's Iliad and Odyssey, the trilogy was dismissed as cynical hackwork (not least by BMS himself); although the narrative has some verve, it clearly does not attempt to pay due homage to its source. To Challenge Chaos (1972 US), the last example of BMS's juvenilia, is anoverextravagant adventure set on the chaotic hemisphere of a planet that intersects another dimension; short stories associated with this novel are "The Sun's Tears" (1974), "An Offer of Oblivion" (1974) and "Captain FaganDied Alone" (1976).It was with the Grainger or Hooded Swan series-The Halcyon Drift (1972 US), Rhapsody in Black (1973 US; rev 1975 UK), Promised Land (1974 US), The Paradise Game (1974 US), The Fenris Device (1974 US) and Swan Song (1975 US) - that BMS began to attract serious notice in the USA, where his early work was all first published, being marketed there as adventure sf. The Grainger novels - first-person narratives in a Chandleresque style - concern the adventures of the pilot of a FASTER-THAN-LIGHT spacecraft, the Hooded Swan, on a variety of planets. In the first tale Grainger, marooned on a remote world, becomes host to a mind parasite, a benign entity which occasionally takes over his body and drives it to feats of endurance. In later books the increasingly disillusioned, sardonic, pacific Grainger penetrates further biological mysteries, but the series itself holds back from fully articulating the subversiveness of his behaviour, and there is little sense of accumulating burden. A second series - the Daedalus Mission books, comprising The Florians (1976 US), Critical Threshold (1977 US), Wildeblood's Empire(1977 US), The City of the Sun (1978 US), Balance of Power (1979 US) and The Paradox of Sets (1979 US) - recounts to similar effect the various experiences of the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which has been sent out to re-contact lost Earth colonies.Most of BMS's fiction has been confined to series, but Man in a Cage (1975 US), an unformulaic singleton, deals with the PSYCHOLOGY of social adaptation as dramatized through a schizophrenic narrator selected to participate in a space-project where "sane" men have already proved inadequate. A powerfully written butdifficult novel, it is slightly reminiscent of the best work of Robert SILVERBERG and Barry N. MALZBERG. The Mind-Riders (1976 US), perhapssomewhat more conventional, is narrated by a cynical boxer who performs via an electronic simulation device while the audience "plugs in" to his emotions. Like Grainger's wonderful spaceship, and like the false personality which "cages" the hero of Man in a Cage, the simulator is an armour surrounding the self, enabling the protagonist to survive in a hostile world. The Face of Heaven (1976) -the first part of a trilogy published in 1 vol as The Realms of Tartarus (1977 US) - is a biological phantasmagoria concerning a UTOPIA built on a huge platform above the Earth's surface, and the conflict with the mutated lifeforms whichproliferate below. This tale, choked with ingenious invention and grotesqueries, and The Walking Shadow (1979) stand as BMS's most clearly STAPLEDON-esque epics, and show a vein of contemplative wonder that he waslater - in the impressive academic study, The Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950 (1985) - to characterize as an essential element tendingto distinguish UK from US sf.Further novels of interest from this period include The Castaways of Tanagar (1981 US) and The Gates of Eden (1983 US). After beginning the Asgard trilogy with Journey to the Center (1982US; rev 1989 UK)-which he completed with Invaders from the Centre (1990) and The Centre Cannot Hold (1990) - BMS stopped producing fiction for some time, concentrating on popular and scholarly studies of sf and FUTUROLOGY like The Science in Science Fiction (1982) with David LANGFORD and Peter NICHOLLS, The Sociology of Science Fiction (1985 US) and, with Langford,The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000 (1985); he also contributed very widely during this period to a number of journals, including FOUNDATION, and to various scholarly anthologies, including many of the essays in E.F. BLEILER's 2 anthologies devoted to extended studies of individual authors: Science Fiction Writers (anth 1982 US) and Supernatural Fiction Writers (2 vols anth 1985 US). He has served ascontributing editor to both editions of this encyclopedia.Whether or not these years away from fiction were in themselves rejuvenating, on returning to sf BMS produced in short order his 3 finest novels to date. The Empire of Fear (1988) is an alternate history (ALTERNATE WORLDS) ofEurope from the Middle Ages to the present in which immortal vampires - whose condition is here scientifically premised - dominate the world; told with the geographic sweep and visionary didacticism typical of the SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, the book successfully assimilates into sf modes someof the vast lore of the vampire. In The Werewolves of London (1990) and its sequels The Angel of Pain (1991) and The Carnival of Destruction, the first two set in a 19th-century UK and the third reflecting the events of WW1, BMS appropriates further material from other genres, creating asequence in which werewolves, bred by primordial godling-like creatures at the dawn of time, participate in an apocalyptic - and thoroughly discussed - testing of the nature of reality. With these novels, and with the sharptales assembled in Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution (coll 1991), BMS suddenly became a writer whose fictionbefitted his intelligence, for in much of his earlier work a certain tone of chill indifference had tended to baulk the reader's identification. The change was most welcome, and Young Blood (1992) - which could be described as a scientific romance about the biochemical roots of human identity within the context of an unconventional vampire tale - fully justifies the sense that BS had entered his years of flourishing.

DP/JC

   Other works: The Last Days of the Edge of the World (1978), fantasy juvenile; Optiman (1980 US; vt War Games 1981 UK); The Cosmic Perspective/Custer's Last Stand (coll 1985 chap dos US); Slumming in Voodooland (1991 chap US); The Innsmouth Heritage (1992 chap), a sequel to H.P. LOVECRAFT's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1942); Firefly: A Novel of the Far Future (1994 US), a novel mostly composed very early in BS's career, but only published now.As Brian Craig: For Games Workshop, the Orfeo sequence of fantasies tied to theWarhammer fantasy game-world - Zaragoz * (1989); Plague Demon * (1990); Storm Warriors * (1991) - plus Ghost Dancers * (1991), tied to the Dark Future sf game-world.As Editor: The Decadence anthology sequence, being The Dedalus Book of Decadence (Moral Ruins) (anth 1990) and The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence: The Black Feast (anth 1992); Tales of the Wandering Jew (anth 1991); The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy: The 19th Century (anth 1991); The Dedalus Book of Femmes Fatales (anth 1992).Nonfiction: The Mysteries of Modern Science (1977); A Clash of Symbols: The Triumph of James Blish (1979 chap US); Masters of Science-Fiction: Essays on Science-Fiction Authors (coll 1981 chap US); Future Man: Brave New World or Genetic Nightmare? (1984).

   See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ARTS; COLLECTIONS; COSMOLOGY; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; CRYONICS; DEFINITIONS OF SF; ESP; EVOLUTION; FANTASY; GAMES AND SPORTS; GENERATION STARSHIPS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GODS AND DEMONS; HARD SF; HISTORY IN SF; HISTORY OF SF; HORROR IN SF; IMMORTALITY; INTERZONE; LIVING WORLDS; MEDIA LANDSCAPE; MESSIAHS; MONSTERS; MYTHOLOGY; PARANOIA; PARASITISM AND SYMBIOSIS; PASTORAL; SEX; STEAMPUNK.