Cook, Rick
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author James Richard Cook (1944-2022), who began publishing work of genre interest with "Mortality" in Analog for January 1987; he subsequently published several sf stories in this journal, and a very large number of nonfiction pieces on computer technology. As an author of fiction he is most noted for his fantasy, primarily for the Wizard sequence of Technofantasy-tinged tales – beginning with Wizard's Bane (1989) – which are set in a secondary world ideally arranged for its protagonist, Computer nerd Clyde Zumwalt, who has been transported into the venue, to use his skills to transform society and defeat foes; the echoes of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) must be deliberate, though there is no underlying sf argument to sustain them.
Limbo System (1989), about the inadvertent release of inimical Aliens from what may have been a Prison star, is sf; though Mall Purchase Night (1993), whose eponymous shopping centre is set on a divide between our world and Faerie, is a Walpurgis Night fantasy (as per title). [JC]
James Richard Cook
born 1944
died 13 January 2022
works
series
Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard
- Wizard's Bane (New York: Baen Books, 1989) [Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Alan Gutierrez]
- The Wizardry Compiled (New York: Baen Books, 1989) [Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Larry Schwinger]
- The Wiz Biz (New York: Baen Books, 1997) [omni of the above two: Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Tom Kidd]
- The Wizardry Cursed (New York: Baen Books, 1991) [Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Gary Ruddell]
- The Wizardry Consulted (New York: Baen Books, 1995) [Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Cortney Skinner and Newell Convers]
- The Wiz Biz II: Cursed and Consulted (New York: Baen Books, 2001) [omni of the two: Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: hb/Clyde Caldwell]
- The Wizard Quested (New York: Baen Books, 1996) [Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard: pb/Newell Convers and John Pierrard]
individual titles
- Limbo System (New York: Baen Books, 1989) [pb/David Mattingly]
- Mall Purchase Night (New York: Baen Books, 1993) [pb/Gary Ruddell]
links
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