WATT-EVANS, Lawrence

   Working name of US writer Lawrence Watt Evans (1954-), who began publishing sf in 1975 with "Paranoid Fantasy \#1" for American Atheist as Evans, creating a hyphenated surname in 1979 to distinguish himself fromanother Lawrence Evans. He has written several scripts for MARVEL COMICS; a GRAPHIC NOVEL is projected, Family Matters. He has not been prolific as a short story writer, though "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers" (1987) won a 1988 HUGO. As a novelist, his work has been varied from thestart, ranging from the somewhat overblown high FANTASY of his first sequence - the Lords of Dus series comprising The Lure of the Basilisk (1980), The Seven Altars of Dusaara (1981), The Sword of Bheleu (1982),The Book of Silence (1984),Taking Flight (1993) and The Spell of the Black Dagger1994 - through the genre-crossing War Surplus series - The Cyborg and the Sorcerers (1982) and The Wizard and the War Machine (1987) - which combines SWORD AND SORCERY, military sf and some speculative content about the CYBORG protagonist, and on to singleton sf novels like The Chromosomal Code (1984) and Denner's Wreck (1988). The latter is perhaps his mostsustained tale: on the planet Denner's Wreck two kinds of humans - primitive descendants of a crashed starship and tourists posing as wilful gods - must come to some sort of mutual comprehension. Nightside City (1989) tends to submerge the HARD-SF challenge at its heart - to elucidatehuman actions on a slow-spin planet whose terminator is advancing fatally on the city of the title - in the palely conceived escapades of a female detective. Though LW-E's novels inhabit traditional venues, and their protagonists undergo traditional trials without much affecting the reader, his ingenuity is manifest.

   JC

   Other works: The Legend of Ethshar fantasy sequence, The Misenchanted Sword (1985), With a Single Spell (1987) and The Unwilling Warlord (1989); Shining Steel (1986); Nightmare People(1990), horror; Newer York: Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy About the World's Greatest City (anth 1991), ed; The Rebirth of Wonder (coll 1992); Crosstime Traffic (1992); Split Heirs (1993) with Esther Friesner(1951-); Out of this World (1994).

   See also: ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE.