Bukiet, Melvin Jules
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1953- ) US author much of whose work is irradiated with fantasticated tropes – the circus, the Polder [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] that protects Jewish children from the Final Solution (see Holocaust Fiction) until the world breaks through, the Island – but does not always carry these transfigurations into literal sf or fantasy. Exceptions include his first novel Sandman's Dust (1985), in which Mr Besmith's Wonderful Show literally transforms (on familiar lines) a small town; and most of the stories assembled in While the Messiah Tarries (1995). Bukiet's abiding interest in Religious typology is most clearly expressed in his one sf novel, Signs and Wonders (1999), in which a number of criminals – including a Messiah figure – are evicted by dire weather in the very Near Future from a German prison ship (see Ship of Fools); the tale climaxes in the spiritual cenotaph of Euro-Disney at the beginning of 2000. The "Messiah" is murdered. [JC]
Melvin Jules Bukiet
born New York: 21 August 1953
works
- Sandman's Dust (New York: Arbor House, 1985) [hb/Lynn Dreese Breslin]
- While the Messiah Tarries (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1995) [coll: hb/from R B Kitaj]
- After (New York: St Martin's Press, 1996) [hb/]
- Signs and Wonders (New York: Picador USA, 1999) [hb/Henry Sene Yee]
links
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