STEELE, Allen (M.)

(1958-)

   US journalist and writer whose first story was "Live from the Mars Hotel" for IASFM in 1988; his short fiction has been assembled as Rude Astronauts (coll 1993 UK). He made a considerable impact on the field with his first novel, the NEAR FUTURE Orbital Decay (1989), set like almost all his work in the vicinity of Earth orbit, where nuts-and-bolts engineering problems are coped with by a refreshingly variegated cast of employees in space. A sequel, Lunar Descent (1991), set on and above the Moon, replays the grit and clanguor of the first novel in a lighter mood.Though AS, like so many of his HARD-SF colleagues, has a damagingly lazy attitude towards characterization and tends to export unchanged into space, decades hence, the tastes and habits of 1970s humanity, he manages to convey a verisimilitudinous sense of the daily round of those men and women who will be patching together the ferries, ships and SPACE HABITATS necessary for the next steps into space. Clarke County, Space (1990), set in one of those habitats, exposes most of AS's weaknesses - cultural provincialism, jerkily melodramatic plotting - without allowing much room for the strengths.

   JC

   Other work: Labyrinth of Night (1992), about a mission to MARS; Labyrinth of Night (1992 UK); The Jericho Iteration (1994).

   See also: CLICHES; MUSIC.