van GREENAWAY, Peter

(1929-1988)

   UK lawyer who began writing full-time in 1960; though he never became known as a genre writer, much of his work was sf, including his 1st novel, The Crucified City (1962), a post- HOLOCAUST story set in a devastated London after a nuclear bomb has been dropped, and his 2nd, The Evening Fool (1964), which carries its protagonist into an unviableUTOPIA. The Man who Held the Queen to Ransom and Sent Parliament Packing (1968) features a NEAR FUTURE coup attempt in the UK, told in the astringent, side-of-the-mouth pessimistic voice which became a trademark. In later novels - like Judas! (1972; vt The Judas Gospel 1972 US), TheMedusa Touch (1973), Take the War to Washington (1974), Suffer! Little Children (1976), The Dissident (1980) and Mutants (1986) - this dubiety about the human animal became visibly more inflamed. Manrissa Man (1982) makes savage play with the ape-as-human (APES AND CAVEMEN) theme; and in graffiti (1983), another post-holocaust tale, survivors of a nuclear war revenge themselves upon its perpetrators. The increasingly solitary, evasively narrated, uncompromisingly dark work of his later years made it unlikely that PVG would ever be read with comfort as a genre writer.

   JC

   Other works: Doppelganger (1975); A Man Called Scavener (1978); Edgar Allan Who - ? (coll 1981); The Immortal Coil (coll 1985); The Killing Cap (1987).