TRIMBLE, Louis (Preston)

(1917-1988)

   US writer and academic, prolific in several genres including mysteries and Westerns - he wrote 66 novels by 1977 - but relatively little sf; his only sf short story was "Probability" for If in 1954. His sf novels came later, in a spurt, beginning with the Anthropol Bureau tales - Anthropol (1968 dos) and The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy (1970 dos) - and climaxing with The City Machine (1972), set on a colonyplanet, where the device that constructs CITIES has been lost, forcing everyone into one overcrowded construct. LT clearly found sf venues of interest for the telling of tales - some of them surprisingly placid and landscape-oriented - and showed little concern for the exploration of the extrapolative implications that inspired the original invention of those venues. But he was extremely competent, and his entertainments mused profitably within the worlds of sf.

   JC

   Other works: Guardians of the Gate (1972) with his first wife, Jacquelyn Trimble (1927-); The Wandering Variables (1972); The Bodelan Way (1974).