TURK, H(arold) C.

(1958-)

   US writer who began publishing sf with the comic adventure Ether Or (1987), an ALTERNATE WORLD tale in which a female"Hitler"is a force for peace, and which has been transformed by the eponymous fuel, which makes space travel cheap. The exceedingly ambitious Black Body (1989) presents, in terms readable as both sf and fantasy, the autobiography of an 18th-century witch, during which she makes it clear that witches are infact a kind of ALIEN species. The style in which the tale is told is both estranged (because she is not human) and strained (because HCT seems himself uneasy with some aspects of 18th-century diction); but the end result is, at points, very impressive.

   JC