WARD, Henry

(1913?-)

   Perhaps a pseudonym of a French writer - possibly Henri Louis Luc Viard (1921-) as Donald H. TUCK claims. HW's sf novels are L'enfer est dans le ciel (trans Alan Neame as Hell's Above Us 1960) and Les soleils verts (1956; trans Neame as The Green Suns 1961). The latter book contains a detailed biography of HW in the introduction, claiming that he is a scientist educated at Cambridge in the UK and then Columbia in the USA, that at the request of the State Department he liaised between atomicresearch units in France and the USA in 1939-40 (which Viard at age 18 could not have done), and that he was later connected with the destruction of the V-Bomb centre at Peenemunde. However, this information may be a hoax to lend verisimilitude to the two books, both documentary-style thrillers involving conspiracy at high political levels involved with the investigation of implausible sf events vis a vis the space programme, aliens, the Suez conflict and PARALLEL WORLDS. HW appears as a character in both.

   PN