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Shunn, William

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1967-    ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Cut Without Hands" (in LDSF-2: Latter-Day Science Fiction, anth 1985, edited by Benjamin Urrutia). The longer stories in his first collection, An Alternate History of the 21st Century (coll 2007 chap), tellingly and concisely ironize the Clichés and tropes of Genre SF, but without destroying their use as toolkit. "Not of this Fold" applies to the conventions of the First Contact tale – in this case with an acutely observed "elite" (they are very rich) living in an orbital Space Habitat; a Mormon missionary deals surreally with the visitors. Cast a Cold Eye (coll 2009 chap) with Derryl Murphy, which is not sf, creates a fantasticated interplay between the growth throes of a young man in 1922 Nebraska and L Frank Baum's Dorothy – most intensely the Dorothy of the film version, The Wizard of Oz (1939) – but with the title, a famous line by William Butler Yeats, very much in mind (much of the tale is set in a cemetery; Yeats's line is meant to be inscribed on his tomb). [JC]

Donald William Shunn II

born Los Angeles, California: 14 August 1967

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