Search - List of Books by Norman Spinrad
"I was a precocious reader." -- Norman Spinrad
Norman Richard Spinrad (born September 15, 1940) is an American science fiction author.
Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.
In an interview with Locus magazine in 1999, Spinrad described himself as an "anarchist" and a "syndicalist".
"As a child, I read science fiction, but from the very beginnings of my reading for pleasure, I read a lot of non-fictional history, particularly historical biography.""English is taking over the world. I just wrote a piece about it. And it's not by design. The United States dominates because it's the biggest market.""I believe that interest in heroes is universal and eternal.""I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.""I must admit to being greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces.""I never learned to read music.""I write in American slang.""I'm not gifted, but I'm not hopeless.""I've always been interested in the relationship between total external surround, culture, the political matrix, technology, etc., and the internal human consciousness.""If I had parallel lives to pursue, I would also want one as a painter.""If it's not American, the French won't go see it.""In America, if you don't do a 100 million dollars, you've done nothing.""Is anything accidental?""It's trite to say that the world has gotten smaller in the age of globalization, but my travels have told me that it's wrong to think this means there is some kind of uniform world culture.""Mexico was conquered more by manipulation of myth and archetype.""The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel.""The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.""There are certain things that ordinary people have that celebrities don't have.""When you're in the States and you're a writer and you've got money and you walk into a bank, you're a bum with money.""You can really do more than you think you can do."
The Iron Dream
The Iron Dream is an alternate history novel, the bulk of which consists of a fictional fantasy classic entitled Lord of the Swastika, written by one Adolf Hitler, who in the novel is a writer rather than a demagogue. The remainder of the book is critical commentary on the text. According to an article attributed to Spinrad, the book was banned for eight years in Germany, but was finally exonerated after appeals. More accurately, the sale of the book was permitted but the public display of the book or its covers was prohibited although there was no swastika symbol on the cover of the indexed first German edition.
Child of Fortune
Child of Fortune deals with the adventures of a young woman, Moussa, in her search for her true calling. In Moussa's culture, young people of her age and class undertake a wanderjahr during which they wander from planet to planet, free to go wherever and do whatever they wish. While on their travels they are known as Children of Fortune, and are treated with indulgence and kindness by most in memory of their own wanderjahr. The Children of Fortune blend elements of gypsies, hippies of 1960s America, and other groups and legends, including Peter Pan. While some parents give their children a great deal of money for the trip, Moussa's parents believe that she will learn more with a true wanderjahr rather than a subsidized tour, so they give her nothing but a voucher for a one-way ticket home. Moussa becomes a "ruespieler" or storyteller, and takes the name "Wendy" in honor of Pater Pan, the man she meets, loves, and loses during her wanderjahr.
The wanderjahr bears a superficial resemblance to the Grand Tour which many upper-class young men undertook after finishing school, the difference being that Children of Fortune are expected to have explored themselves as well as the world during their travels, and to come home knowing who they are and what place they want for themselves.
Bug Jack Barron
Bug Jack Barron (1969), a pre-cyberpunk tale of a cynical, exploitative talk-show host who gradually uncovers a conspiracy concerning an immortality treatment and the methods used in that treatment, was serialised in the British magazine New Worlds during Michael Moorcock's editorship. With its explicit language and cynical attitude to politicians, it roused one British Member of Parliament's ire at the magazine's partial funding by the British Arts Council. A memorable quote from this novel is, "The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy."
A World Between
A World Between (1979) tells of a mildly turbulent period on the planet of Pacifica, a eutopic, democratic electronically-mediated society, on which lands a ship from each of the two factions in the "Pink and Blue War": the patronisingly paternalistic Institute of Transcendental Science on the one side, and the rabidly man-hating lesbian Femocrats on the other. Nobody suffers a worse fate than political embarrassment, and status quo is restored by the simple fact of Pacifican society being better than that of either of the off-world factions.
Star Trek
Spinrad wrote the script for an episode of the original Star Trek entitled "The Doomsday Machine".
The Druid King
The Druid King is a historical novel about the conflict between Vercingetorix and the Roman Empire.
Novels
- The Solarians (1966)
- Agent of Chaos (1967)
- The Men in the Jungle (1967)
- Bug Jack Barron (1969)
- The Iron Dream (1972)
- Passing through the Flame (1975)
- Riding the Torch (1978)
- A World Between (1979)
- Songs from the Stars (1980)
- The Mind Game (1980)
- The Void Captain's Tale (1983)
- Child of Fortune (1985)
- Little Heroes (1987)
- Children of Hamelin (1991)
- Russian Spring (1991)
- Deus X (1993)
- Pictures at 11 (1994)
- Journals of the Plague Years (1995)
- Greenhouse Summer (1999)
- He Walked Among Us (2003)
- The Druid King (2003)
- Mexica (2005)
- Osama the Gun (2007)
Short stories
His short story "Down the Rabbit Hole" (1966) was published in the anthology
The War Book (edited by James Sallis, 1969).
Collections
- The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde (1970)
- No Direction Home (May 1975)
- The Star-Spangled Future (1979)
- Other Americas (1988)
- Vampire Junkies (1994)
Teleplays
- "The Doomsday Machine" (The Original Series)
- "Tag Team" (Land of the Lost)
- "Grey Wolf" (Werewolf)
Non-fiction
- Science Fiction in the Real World. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.
2010 - Oussama [French Edition] (Paperback)ISBN-13: 9782213636917ISBN-10: 2213636915 ? |
