McConnell, James V
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1925-1990) US biologist and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Life Sentence" for Galaxy Science Fiction in January 1953, and who in 1959 founded a science magazine-cum-Fanzine, The Worm Runner's Digest, in which alongside scientific papers (in particular on planarian worms, his speciality) he published spoofs and Satires. Many of these are assembled as The Worm Re-Turns: The Best from The Worm Runner's Digest (anth 1965) and Science, Sex and Sacred Cows: Spoofs of Science from The Worm Runner's Digest (anth 1971). One of the spoofs, "A Brief Introduction to Logogenetics" by Damon Knight – an Oulipo-like jape about textual miscegenation (see also Wordmills), with a sideswipe at Dianetics/Scientology – was reprinted with revisions from the fanzine Hyphen (November 1953).
McConnell was a victim of the Unabomber (Theodore Kaczynski), being partially deafened in 1985 by an explosive device concealed in an envelope. [JC/DRL]
James V McConnell
born Okmulgee, Oklahoma: 26 October 1925
died Ann Arbor, Michigan: 9 April 1990
works as editor
- The Worm Re-Turns: The Best from The Worm Runner's Digest (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965) [nonfiction: anth: hb/Roy I Mumme]
- Science, Sex and Sacred Cows: Spoofs of Science from The Worm Runner's Digest (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]
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