BLAIR, John (M.)

(1961-)

   US writer and poet who began publishing sf with A Landscape of Darkness (1990), an sf adventure in which a mercenary on a colony planet must pit himself against an ALIEN who wears the guise of a Japanese warrior. Though a plot of this sort offers many opportunities for action routines, JB generally avoids the temptation. His second novel, Bright Angel (1992), similarly concentrates upon the complex psychology of a central figure invested with human responses and a planet-shaking burden; in this case the protagonist must attempt to uncover a possible correlation between his unwilled, sudden awakening in a DYSTOPIAN Earth after surviving the onset of a fierce Ice Age on a colony planet and the beginning of similar conditions in the Antarctic. At times, JB has demonstrated a virtuoso control over complicated plot-lines and their implications.

   JC