Myers, Edward
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1950- ) US author whose sf/fantasy sequence – the Mountain Made of Light comprising The Mountain Made of Light (1992), Fire and Ice (1992) and The Summit (1994) – interestingly revises long-outmoded Lost Race conventions. Though it is primarily set in the 1920s, and though fantasy elements increasingly dominate in later volumes, the trilogy is of sf as a demonstration of the extent to which seemingly dead forms can, on re-thinking, serve contemporary needs. The sequence is set in the Andes, and the lost race in question is Native American. But the old Lost World novel – which normally articulated late nineteenth-century Western civilization's uneasy claims to racial and political hegemony over the planet – would have necessarily treated the lost race – because it was not of ancient white stock – as inherently superstitious. Myers's version is far more complex, and interestingly picks up on the world-well-lost tone of James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933), in which lost worlds are seen as a repository of wisdom the West has lost or never known. In the first volume, a young anthropologist, psychically damaged by his experiences in World War One, finds his own lost world, named Xirrixir, in the Andes; and before the end of the sequence – after climbing the Mountain Made of Life where a mysterious City awaits him – gains Transcendence. Storyteller (2008) is an eloquent Young Adult fantasy [JC]
Edward Myers
born Denver, Colorado: 1 April 1950
works
series
Mountain Made of Light
- The Mountain Made of Light (New York: Penguin/Roc, 1992) [Mountain Made of Light: pb/]
- Fire and Ice (New York: Penguin/Roc, 1992) [Mountain Made of Light: pb/]
- The Summit (New York: Penguin/Roc, 1994) [Mountain Made of Light: pb/Boris Vallejo]
individual titles
- Storyteller (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008) [hb/Antonio Javie Caparo]
nonfiction
- A Bibliography of the First Printing of the Writings of Jules Verne in the English Language, Together with Information on Numerous Reprints, and a Key to Title Interpretation (New Hartford, Connecticut: Country Lane Books, 1989) with Judith Myers [nonfiction: chap: Jules Verne: pb/]
links
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