[bksvol-discuss] Re: OT: Jack Chalker, science fiction author, dies
- From: Carrie Karnos <ckarnos@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 17:47:17 -0800 (PST)
I usually prefer science fiction to fantasy, but I REALLY liked Chalker's
tetralogy The Four Lords of the Diamond. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes
either sci fi or fantasy.
Very sad to hear that Chalker's dead now. Sigh...
Carrie
Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The following obit was sent to me by someone who
thought those of you who are science-fiction fans
might find it interesting. Three of his books are in
our collection: Downtiming the Night Side, Four Lords
of the Diamond, and A War of Shadows. From reading
this obit, it sounds as if some of the others, if
obrtainable, might be good additions to the
collection.
Cindy
>
>
> "In person, in his prime, Chalker was a burly,
> gemütlich individual easily mistaken for a redneck
by those insufficiently familiar with the complicated
richness of mid-American life a few decades ago."
>
> From The Independent ~
>
> Prolific author of sci-fi 'escape' fiction [died]
> 18 February 2005
> Until he became too ill to travel, Jack Chalker
> remained a
> figure of high visibility in the American
> science-fiction
> world. Manoeuvring his powered wheelchair into
> elevators
> with a grimace and a grin, he endured with
> good-humour and
> in public the exact slings and arrows of our mortal
> coil
> that his many heroes and heroines managed to escape,
> though
> never quite scot-free.
>
> They always paid to get free, but the ordeals to
> which
> Chalker submitted them had their own romantic
> allure. In the
> end, it was almost always fun to imagine being a
> Chalker
> protagonist; he was perhaps the most successful (and
> sophisticated) author of escape fiction the
> science-fiction
> field had ever seen.
>
> Jack Laurence Chalker was born and grew up in
> Baltimore,
> Maryland, and was educated there, taking a BS from
> Towson
> State College and a graduate degree from Johns
> Hopkins
> University. He spent the rest of his life in touch
> with
> these roots, working at first as a lecturer in
> history at
> high school and college level, with stints at the
> Smithsonian Institution in nearby Washington, DC.
>
> He was early active as a science-fiction fan, and
> founded
> the Mirage Press (which still exists) in order to
> publish
> various non-fiction works on the genre, including
> The
> Necronomicon (1967) on H.P. Lovecraft; An Informal
> Biography
> of Scrooge McDuck (1974), for which he enlisted the
> help of
> the then unknown Carl Barks, who had anonymously
> created,
> and subsequently both scripted and drew, the
> Disney-owned
> McDuck; and most importantly the various editions of
> The
> Science-Fantasy Publishers: a bibliographical and
> critical
> history (1991 onwards).
>
> This massive enterprise in hands-on scholarship
> gives an
> indispensable insight into the depth and complexity
> of the
> fan subculture which, only half-secretly, shaped the
> genre
> of science fiction between 1945 and 1960.
>
> From 1976 on, however, Chalker worked primarily as
> a
> novelist, publishing some 65 books before illness
> stopped
> him in 2003. Many of these volumes were in fact
> parts of
> extremely long single novels broken into marketable
> portions
> by his publishers, and it is hard to say how many
> individual
> tales he told. In all, he published nine
> multi-volume
> series, of which the first and longest-lasting, the
> Well of
> Souls sequence published between 1977 and 2000, was
> the
> finest, and probably the most successful with his
> readers,
> with whom he maintained close ties through fanzines,
> convention appearances and websites; the sequence
> was
> published in mass paperback format. From the first,
> as Well
> of Souls demonstrates, Chalker focused his energies
> on the
> large non-"literary" readership base, which
> reciprocated his
> loyalty, for many of his books remain in print,
> despite
> quarrels with various publishers.
>
> The heart of Well of Souls, and of his other
> sequences, is
> transformation. Typically a human being - possibly
> on the
> run, possibly quite badly overweight or socially
> inept -
> will find himself or herself cast into an
> otherworld,
> transformed into a new body, frequently naked. This
> world
> will be governed according to seemingly arbitrary
> rules by
> godlike figures, not necessarily seen. After many
> tribulations, some of them sexually arousing, the
> protagonist will work out the rules of the game, and
> escape - into the next volume, or some happy vale.
>
> Later sequences may have repeated this pattern until
> it
> became formulaic; but Chalker series from the 1970s
> and
> 1980s convey their messages of release with an
> elated
> intensity.
>
> Chalker's best novels are probably two or three
> singletons
> from his early years. The most sustained of these is
> Dancers
> in the Afterglow (1978), set on a colony planet
> where the
> enabling transformations are forms of torture, and
> death
> comes as the end. Sadly, this novel and two other
> fine
> singletons, A Jungle of Stars (1976) and The Web of
> the
> Chozen (1978), have been long out of print.
>
> In person, in his prime, Chalker was a burly,
> gemütlich
> individual easily mistaken for a redneck by those
> insufficiently familiar with the complicated
> richness of
> mid-American life a few decades ago. He was a
> Kentucky
> Colonel, an Honorary Mayor of Baton Rouge, a life
> member of
> the Sierra Club, and a Democrat. Like the 1960s fan
> culture
> he served so well, he was deeply American.
>
> John Clute
>
>
>
>
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