VAN LUSTBADER, Eric

(1946-)

   US author who graduated from Columbia University, majoring in sociology, and worked for a time in the rock-music industry. His published sf/fantasy work began with the Sunset Warrior trilogy: The Sunset Warrior (1977), Shallows of Night (1978) and Dai-San (1978), to which Beneath anOpal Moon (1980) is a coda with a different hero. This was remarkably vivid SWORD AND SORCERY with sex and violence, and imaginatively rendered: the first book is true sf, set in an underground post- HOLOCAUST society which has almost forgotten the technology that keeps it alive, and to which the surface is a distant memory, but subsequent volumes make no great attempt to cleave to the sf premise. EVL then turned to the bestseller genre with The Ninja (1979), the first of the Nicholas Linnear trilogy, whose other titles are The Miko (1984) and White Ninja (1990). These blend Oriental mysticism with martial-arts adventure and sex, andcontain (especially the 3rd) many fantastic elements, though more magical than scientific. EVL maintained a string of bestsellers through the 1980s, and is now an important commercial writer. His work is florid and intense, with a sadistic streak, and mostly set in Asia; his more recent books are generally signed Eric Lustbader. Some of his other novels also contain fantastic elements.

   PN

   Other works Sirens (1981); the China Maroc sequence, comprising Jian (1985) and Shan (1987); The Black Heart (1986); Zero (1988); French Kiss (1989); Angel Eyes (1991); Black Blade (1992).