(1917- ) UK writer, poet, critic and editor, in the US from 1981; he was a member of the Diplomatic Corps 1946-1956, and was later literary editor of the Spectator. He was made a CMG (Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George) in 1996, and as an esteemed Conservative controversialist was awarded the American Presidential Medal of Honor in 2005. As an sf figure he was most active as an editor, producing with Kingsley Amis (whom see for details) the Spectrum Anthologies, beginning with Spectrum (anth 1961) and concluding with Spectrum V: A Fifth Science Fiction Anthology (anth 1966). Several essays and reviews of sf interest appear in The Abomination of Moab (coll 1979), a nonfiction collection which also includes Conquest's verse epigraphs for Spectrum. In addition to much poetry, political history and a non-sf comic novel, The Egyptologists (1965) with Amis, Conquest also published A World of Difference (1955). This sf tale, set in the early twenty-first century, has a complicated and discursive plot combining political (> Politics) speculation with a remotely told scientific adventure centred on a new "photon drive" which is destined to give humanity a chance to reach beyond the solar system. There is some incidental comic speculation about a poetry-writing Computer whose effusions are quoted with relish; other in-jokes include Spaceships named for poet friends, e.g. the Amis, Gunn and Larkin, plus a cameo appearance of the Interplanetary Society's very aged president "Sir Arthur" – Arthur C Clarke, anticipating his eventual knighthood. [JC/DRL]
George Robert Acworth Conquest
born Great Malvern, Worcestershire: 15 July 1917
died
works
fiction
nonfiction
works as editor
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