YATES, Alan G(eoffrey)

(1923-1985)

   UK-born author, in Australia from 1948, who was best known for his long series of detections under the house name Carter Brown; he wrote also as Tom Conway, Dennis Sinclair, Paul Valdez and Peter Yates. He began to write sf - usually to rigid formula - with some short stories around 1950, with G.C. Bleeck, for THRILLS INCORPORATED; and with a series of short novels in the Scientific Thriller sequence, not all of which have been examined, but many of which contain sf (and sometimes supernatural) elements. Not all titles in the following list, therefore, may be of genre interest; all are as by Paul Valdez: Hypnotic Death (1949 chap); The Fatal Focus (1950 chap); The Time Thief (1951 chap); Flight into Horror (1951chap); Killer by Night (1951 chap); Ghosts Don't Kill (1951 chap); Satan's Sabbath (1951 chap); You Can't Keep Murder Out (1951 chap); Kill HimGently (1951 chap); Celluloid Suicide (1951 chap); The Murder I Don't Remember(1952 chap); There's No Future in Murder (1952 chap); The Crook Who Wasn't There (1952 chap); Maniac Murders (1952 chap) and Feline Frame-Up (1952 chap). Under his own name, AGY released only one sf title,Coriolanus, the Chariot! (1978 US), set on a planetoid called Thespos where - in quarantine enforced by a fearful Galactic Federation -actors learn to become shape-changing illusionists. Within Thespos, PARANOIA and VIRTUAL-REALITY-like manipulations flourish, the Tarot andthe world of Shakespeare intermingle, and the protagonist, having gained supremacy in the toxic game, determines to break out. Florid and intense, the book is unlike anything else AGY ever wrote, unless some of the Scientific Thriller titles prove more than routine. Booty for a Babe(1956) as by Peter Carter Brown, though not sf, has RECURSIVE elements, being set at an sf CONVENTION.

   JC