Stith, John E
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1947- ) US software engineering manager and author who began to publish sf with "Early Winter" in Fantastic for July 1979. His first novel, Scapescope (1984) – which is Hard SF like all his work – uses his work experience at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex to extrapolate on the nature of a defense complex in that location two centuries hence. Memory Blank (1986) places a classic sf protagonist – a hero with Amnesia – on an L-5 Space Habitat (see Lagrange Point). Death Tolls (1987) is a detective mystery set on a terraformed Mars (see also Terraforming), and Deep Quarry (1989), set on a planet far from the solar system (to which Stith had previously restricted himself), pits a private eye against various mysteries in a hard-boiled style. More impressive than any of these is Redshift Rendezvous (1990), set on a Faster-than-Light starship travelling through a version of Hyperspace in which the speed of light is so low (22mph [35kph]) that Relativity effects are visible in everyday situations. Within this intriguingly presented environment, a murder mystery, a hijack and other events occur; but the appeal of the novel lies in the playing-out of the concept – or Thought Experiment – at its heart. Manhattan Transfer (1993), in which an alien force matter-transmits the island heart of New York elsewhere for reasons unknown, Reunion on Neverend (1994), a crime thriller, and Reckoning Infinity (1997), about the discovery in space of an Alien artefact, continued to demonstrate considerable storytelling energy. But after 2000 he was silent for many years, returning in 2020 with a number of Flash Fiction stories for the "Futures" department of Nature and the Time Gate novel Tiny Time Machine (2021). [JC]
see also: Imaginary Science.
John Edward Stith
born Boulder, Colorado: 30 July 1947
works
- Scapescope (New York: Ace Books, 1984) [pb/Barclay Shaw]
- Memory Blank (New York: Ace Books, 1986) [pb/Don Brautigam]
- Death Tolls (New York: Ace Books, 1987) [pb/Neil Shigley]
- Deep Quarry (New York: Ace Books, 1989) [pb/Richard Hescox]
- Redshift Rendezvous (New York: Ace Books/Science Fiction Book Club, 1990) [hb/Ron Walotsky]
- Manhattan Transfer (New York: Tor, 1993) [hb/Darrell K Sweet]
- Reunion on Neverend (New York: Tor, 1994) [hb/Kelly Freas]
- Reckoning Infinity (New York: Tor, 1997) [hb/Vladimir Nenov]
- Tiny Time Machine (Hillsboro, New Hampshire: Experimenter Publishing Company/Amazing Selects, 2021) [illus/pb/Nikolett Timar]
collections
- All for Naught (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, 2005) [coll: pb/]
links
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