WOLFE, Bernard

(1915-1985)

   US writer best known for his work outside the sf field. He gained a BA in psychology from Yale in 1935, worked for 2 years in the Merchant Marine, and for a time was a bodyguard to Leon Trotsky(1874-1940) in Mexico. He subsequently became a war correspondent, newsreel editor and freelance writer, and contributed stories and articles to many leading magazines. His first contribution to sf was a novelette in Gal, "Self Portrait" (1951), soon followed by his only sf novel, LIMBO(1952; vt Limbo '90 1953 UK; cut 1961 US). This large and extravagant book is perhaps the finest sf novel of ideas to have been published during the 1950s. It portrays a future in which men have deliberately chosen to cutoff their own arms and legs in order to avoid the risk of war. Complex (making use of many ideas from CYBERNETICS), ironic, hectoring and full ofpuns, LIMBO was firmly based on BW's knowledge of psychoanalysis and in particular on his understanding of the masochistic instinct in modern Man. It is perhaps for this last quality that J.G. BALLARD has hailed itseveral times as the greatest US sf novel; Ballard may have sensed, too, that LIMBO also functions as a corrosive assault upon the premises and instruments of sf itself. BW wrote very little subsequent sf, although Harlan ELLISON persuaded him to contribute 2 stories to Again, DangerousVisions (anth 1972): "The Bisquit Position", an impassioned anti-Vietnam-War story, centres on the image of a napalmed dog, and "The Girl with Rapid Eye Movements" is about sleep research and ESP. In his"Afterword" to these stories, BW expressed an extreme hostility to science and also to sf, which he considered its handmaiden. Further details of BW's remarkable career can be found in his Memoirs of a Not Altogether ShyPornographer (1972).

DP

   See also: CYBERPUNK; CYBORGS; DYSTOPIAS; MEDICINE; WEAPONS.