Webb, Don
Entry updated 10 July 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1960- ) US author and high school English teacher who began to publish sf with "Rhinestone Manifesto" in Interzone #13, Autumn 1985. His first book, Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book (coll 1987), winner of the Fiction Collective Award, declared his capacity for formal inventiveness and his technical affinities for the literary avant garde. A native Texan, Webb was educated at the University of Texas at Austin, and has published three mystery novels (with, unsurprisingly, strong fantastical elements) as well as several books on contemporary occultism. Since 2002 he has also taught Science Fiction Writing for the UCLA Extension program. His sf criticism has appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction and elsewhere.
Webb is at his best at short story length, and has published sf, fantasy, and horror in all the major SF Magazines (save Analog), in many notable Anthologies, and in a variety of smaller magazines and journals (more than 400 stories to date). One of his most celebrated stories is "Jesse Revenged" (December 1986 Asimov's), which entangles two sets of brothers: the outlaws Frank and Jesse James, and the Bostonians William and Henry James. As Henry James stalks Robert Ford, who has been hiding under the pseudonym Aubrey Sorrentino, something more than postmodern play unfolds (see Postmodernism and SF). "The Yellow Flower" and related stories, in When They Came (coll 2006), trace the dire effects of a mysterious self-help book; the invasion of griffins in the title story of the collection asserts, as does much of Webb's work, that the world is not as we might think.
He is not the Don Webb who edits Bewildering Stories, an Online Magazine in which he has however appeared. [HW]
see also: H P Lovecraft; Magic.
Don Webb
born Amarillo, Texas: 30 April 1960
works
- The Double: An Investigation (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998) [hb/Neil Shigley]
- Essential Saltes: An Experiment (New York: St Martin's Press, 1999) [hb/Ron Walotsky]
- Endless Honeymoon (New York: St Martin's/Minotaur, 2001) [hb/Mike Gorman]
collections and stories
- Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book: Fictions (Illinois State University Press, 1987) [coll: hb/Jeffrey Wilson]
- The Bestseller and Other Tales (Polk City, Iowa: Chris Drumm, 1990) [coll: chap: pb/Don Webb]
- New Farmers' Almanac (Polk City, Iowa: Chris Drumm, 1990) [chap: pb/]
- The Seventh Day and After (La Grande, Oregon: Wordcraft of Oregon, 1993) [coll: pb/Roman Scott]
- A Spell for the Fulfillment of Desire (Black Ice Books, 1996) [coll: pb/Todd Bushman after Aubrey Beardsley]
- Stealing My Rules (Denver, Colorado: Cyber-Psychos AOD, 1997) [coll: pb/Christian Patchell]
- The Explanation and Other Good Advice (La Grande, Oregon: Wordcraft of Oregon, 1998) [coll: pb/Brian C Clark]
- When They Came (Upper Montclair, New Jersey: Temporary Culture, 2006) [coll: pb/August Moon]
- Webb's Weird Wild West: Western Tales of Horror (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Borgo Press [Wildside Press], 2010) [coll: dos: pb/]
- Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time: Tales of the Bizarre (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2011) [coll: dos: pb/]
- The War with the Belatrin: Science Fiction Stories / A Velvet of Vampyres: Tales of Horror (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2013) [coll: dos: pb/]
- Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2014) [coll: pb/]
- Deep Dendo and Other Poems (East Brunswick, New Jersey: Dunham's Manor Press, 2018) [poetry: coll: hb/]
about the author
- Henry Wessells. "Book Becoming Power" (March 2000 The New York Review of Science Fiction) [mag/]
links
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