BLAYLOCK, James P.

(1950-)

   US writer, based in California, whose first published sf was "The Red Planet" (1977) in UNEARTH \#3. JPB's first books were two fantasies in his Elfin series, The Elfin Ship (1982) and The Disappearing Dwarf (1983). The series, which includes the later and more assured The Stone Giant (1989), is remarkable for its geniality and quirkiness, and the general likeability of most of the characters, even the unreliable ones. Though dwarfs and elves are featured, it is difficult to imagine a fantasy series less like J.R.R. TOLKIEN's in tone.A similar tone continued in JPB's next two books, which more closely resemble sf: The Digging Leviathan (1984) and HOMUNCULUS (1986), the latter being the winner of the PHILIP K. DICK AWARD for best paperback original (coincidentally appropriate, since JPB was a friend of Philip K. DICK during Dick's last years). It was by now clear that JPB's talent was strong, but sufficiently weird and literary as to be unlikely to attract a mass-market readership. Among his obvious and acknowledged influences are Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (9 vols 1759-67), Robert Louis STEVENSON and Charles DICKENS. His books feature grotesques and eccentrics viewed with whimsical affection. These people often have crotchets and obsessions, and live in mutable worlds subject to curiosities and wonders whose explications - while sometimes earnestly scientific - are seen as hopelessly inadequate in the face of their absolute strangeness. The events of JPB's books fall into odd patterns rather than linear plots, though the later works have a stronger narrative drive. The Digging Leviathan is set in a modern Los Angeles, beneath which is a giant underground sea, and some of whose inhabitants hope to penetrate the centre of the HOLLOW EARTH. HOMUNCULUS, a kind of prequel to the previous work, is set in a Dickensian 19th-century London, and likewise features the spirit of scientific or alchemical inquiry, along with space vehicles, zombies and the possibility of IMMORTALITY through essence of carp; Lord Kelvin's Machine(1985 IASFM; exp 1992), a sequel, carries on in the same vein. These spirited concoctions are reminiscent of the work of JPB's good friend Tim POWERS, though even more lunatic; they both write at times (as do others) a sort of sf set in the 19th century, featuring knowing pastiche - or at least reconstruction - of all sorts of early pulp-sf stereotypes. This has been a sufficiently marked phenomenon that the neologism STEAMPUNK has been coined for it. (JPB's books, in fact, could be regarded as belonging to the same metaseries as Powers's; they feature certain characters in common, including the 19th-century poet William Ashbless, who apparently originated as a pseudonym used by JPB and Powers for poetry they published while at college.) Like many of his POSTMODERNIST generation of writers, including Powers and another of his friends, K.W. JETER, JPB has no interest at all in generic purity, mixing tropes from FANTASY, HORROR, sf, magic realism, adventure fiction and MAINSTREAM literature with great aplomb, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. One could call his stories FABULATIONS.JPB's next novel, Land of Dreams (1987), again mingles fantasy and sf tropes (mostly fantasy) with something of a dying fall, as does the more cheerful The Last Coin (1988), which features an ex-travelling salesman who turns out to be the Wandering Jew, and is anxious that the 30 pieces of silver used to betray Christ should be kept from the hands of a Mr Pennyman, who will use them for apocalyptic purposes. Land of Dreams is set in the same fantastic northern-Californian coastal setting as JPB's excellent short story Paper Dragons (1985 in anth Imaginary Lands ed Robin McKinley; 1992 chap), which won a World Fantasy AWARD. The Paper Grail (1991) is a quest novel, also set in northern California, mingling Arthurian Legend, Hokusai paintings, pre-Raphaelites and goodness knows what else. A children's book, The Magic Spectacles (1991 UK), containing a magic window, an ALTERNATE WORLD and goblins, is less successfully childlike than some of his work for adults. It may be that JPB's unquenchable relish for sheer oddity will inhibit his artistic growth, but meanwhile he is among the most enjoyable genre writers to have emerged from the 1980s.

   PN

   Other works: The Shadow on the Doorstep (1986 IASFM; 1987 chap dos with short stories by Edward BRYANT); Night Relics (1994); Doughnuts (1994 chap).

   See also: DEL REY BOOKS; GOTHIC SF; GREAT AND SMALL.