Электронная книга: Reynolds Mack «Off Course»

   Working name of US writer Dallas McCord Reynolds (1917-1983); his first sf story was "Isolationist" for Fantastic Adventures in 1950. He occasionally used the pseudonyms Clark Collins, Guy McCord, Mark Mallory and Dallas Ross; he wrote 2 Gothics as Maxine Reynolds and 1 other non-sf book as Todd Harding. Some of his early work was with Fredric BROWN, and he also wrote stories with Theodore R. COGSWELL and August W. DERLETH. He was for 25 years an active member of the American Socialist Labor Party, for which his father, Verne L. Reynolds, had twice been presidential candidate; his "militant radicalism" is mutedly reflected, sometimes ironically, in his sf, making him a maverick in the mostly right-wing stable of writers associated with John W. CAMPBELL Jr's ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION (MR was one of several writers who wrote up Campbell'splot ideas). Many of his later works are unashamedly didactic, although not doctrinaire.MR's first novel, The Case of the Little Green Men (1951), was a murder mystery set at an sf CONVENTION. It was to be 10 years before he would publish another novel. Although his 1950s work is minor, he served 1953-63 as foreign correspondent of Rogue magazine, travelling extensively, and began to plough back this experience into more substantial works on socioeconomic themes. Many of the books which appeared prolifically through the 1960s-70s were expansions and fixups of earlier magazine stories; the tauter magazine texts are usually preferable to the padded-out versions. Planetary Agent X (fixup 1965 dos), the first of several books featuring Section G, shows subversive secret agents of a United Planets Organization working in the cause of socioeconomic progressin the often-eccentric Ultima Thule colony worlds of a Galactic Empire, masking their activities under the nom de guerre Tommy Paine. It was followed by Dawnman Planet (1966 dos), The Rival Rigelians (1960 ASF as "Adaptation"; exp 1967 dos), which ironically describes an experimentcomparing the methods of US capitalism and Soviet communism in developing a primitive world, Code Duello (1968 dos) and Section G: United Planets (1967 ASF as "Fiesta Brava" and "Psi Assassin"; fixup 1976).Tomorrow Mightbe Different (1960 ASF as "Russkies Go Home!"; exp 1975) is a SATIRE in which the USSR has overtaken the USA as the world's leading economy. "Farmer" (1961) is the first of 3 notable stories which MR set in NorthAfrica, each similarly dealing with the problem of fostering economic and technological development in the teeth of cultural inertia. It was followed by the Homer Crawford sequence, the first 2 volumes of which are Black Man's Burden (1961-2 ASF; 1972 dos) and Border, Breed nor Birth(1962 ASF; 1972 dos), offering entirely serious and constructive versions of Section G-type plots; although they have dated even more quickly than MR's stories about the USSR, the issues raised in them (otherwisevirtually untouched in sf) remain politically pertinent. The Best Ye Breed (fixup 1978), which incorporates "Black Sheep Astray" (1973) and a revisedversion of "The Cold War . . . Continued" (1973), extends the series. Day After Tomorrow (1961 ASF as "Status Quo"; exp 1976) introduced astatus-conscious future USA further elaborated in Mercenary from Tomorrow (1962 ASF as "Mercenary"; exp 1968 dos), which became the first of the JoeMauser series set in a future world in which corporate disputes are settled by pseudo-gladiatorial contests, packaged by the media as entertainment, and involving small professional armies fighting with pre-1900 WEAPONS (GAMES AND SPORTS). Several lines of speculative thought carried forward in the later didactic novels originated in this novella, but the later novels in the series - The Earth War (1963 ASF as "Frigid Fracas"; 1963), Time Gladiator (1964 ASF as "Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes";exp 1966 UK; rev by Michael A. BANKS, vt Sweet Dreams, Sweet Princes 1986 US) and The Fracas Factor (1978) - are routine action-adventure novels.Joe Mauser, Mercenary from Tomorrow (coll 1986) with Banks contains revisions of the earlier items. The Cosmic Eye (1963 FSF as "Speakeasy"; exp 1969) is a less convincing story set in a future USA where free speech is prohibited.During 1965-72 MR's work was more determinedly commercial. He continued to write stories around Campbell plot ideas. All involve agood deal of rather slapstick HUMOUR; examples include Amazon Planet (1966 ASF; Italian trans 1967; 1975) and Brain World (1978). Of Godlike Power(1966; vt Earth Unaware 1968) is a comedy about a preacher whose curses really work. "Romp" (1966) was the first of a group of crime stories reprinted as Police Patrol: 2000 A.D. (fixup 1977). Space Pioneer (1966 UK) and After Some Tomorrow (1967) are undistinguished, but 2 novels aboutCOMPUTERS, Computer War (1967 dos) and The Computer Conspiracy (1968), gained strength from the timeliness of their themes. The final 2 stories making up The Space Barbarians (fixup 1969 dos) and The Five Way Secret Agent (1969 ASF; 1975 dos) were the last items MR did for Campbell, andafter Rolltown (1969 If as "The Towns Must Roll"; exp 1976) he published virtually no new sf for three years (although he did publish books in other genres).When his sf career resumed it was with the strikingly different Looking Backward, from the Year 2000 (1973), a reprise of Edward BELLAMY's classic UTOPIAN novel, displaying MR's ideas about the POLITICSand ECONOMICS of an energy-affluent society. He was later to add a sequel - Equality: in the Year 2000 (1977) - which borrowed an idea from hisearlier Ability Quotient (1975) to subvert the ending of the first book. MR further extrapolated this line of speculation into the increasinglydoubt-ridden After Utopia (1977), which incorporates "Utopian" (in The Year 2000 (anth 1970) ed Harry HARRISON) and Perchance to Dream (1977), although he salvaged a curiously ironic optimism by re-using a deus ex machina first deployed in the earlier Space Visitor (1977). He developed parallel lines of thought in sequels to Rolltown - these were Commune 2000 A.D. (1974) and The Towers of Utopia (1975) - and re-used the centralcharacters of The Five Way Secret Agent in more lightweight stories with similar underlying concerns: Satellite City (1975) and "Of Future Fears" (1977 ASF). This series was further expanded in novels about thetribulations of a quasi-utopian space colony: Lagrange Five (1979), The Lagrangists (1983) and Chaos in Lagrangia (1984), The last 2 were ed DeanING, who went on to prepare for publication several other manuscripts which MR had left behind on his death: Eternity (1984), Home Sweet Home: 2010 A.D. (1984), The Other Time (1984), Trojan Orbit (1985) and DeathwishWorld (1986). Space Search (1984) is a posthumous work credited to MR alone.The Best of Mack Reynolds (coll 1976) has an introduction explaining MR's decision to concentrate on sf which speculated on social and economicissues, and reflecting on his travels and the lessons he learned therefrom. Although he was once voted most popular author in a poll run by the GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION group of magazines, MR never received the recognition he deserved for the fertility of his distinctive speculative imagination. His ideas were always far more interesting than his plots, and his writing was sometimes unpolished, but at his best he was a skilled craftsman whose attempts to foresee the NEAR FUTURE were unusually bold, well informed and challenging. It is a great pity that he had such difficulty in finding publishers willing to put his work into respectable formats.

   BS

   Other works: Mission to Horatius * (1968), a STAR TREK novel; Once Departed (1970), a thriller with sf elements; Computer World (1970); Depression or Bust (fixup 1974); Galactic Medal of Honor (1960 AMZ as "Medal of Honor"; exp 1976); Trample an Empire Down (1978); Compounded Interests (coll 1983).

   As Editor: The Science Fiction Carnival (anth 1953) with Fredric Brown.

   About the author: "The Utopian Dream Revisited: Socioeconomic Speculation in the Work of Mack Reynolds" by Brian M.STABLEFORD in Foundation 16 (May 1979); A Mack Reynolds Checklist: Notes Toward a Bibliography (1983 chap) by Chris DRUMM and George Flynn.

   See also: AUTOMATION; CITIES; CRYONICS; IMMORTALITY; LEISURE; RELIGION; SLEEPER AWAKES; SOCIAL DARWINISM; SPACE HABITATS; TECHNOLOGY; TIME PARADOXES; WAR.