Colin Greenland

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Colin Greenland (2006)

Colin Greenland (* 17th May 1954 in Dover, Kent ) is a British science fiction - writers . With his very first story, he won second prize in the Faber & Faber competition. His novel Take back Plenty (1990) won the most important British science fiction awards: the British Science Fiction Association Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award .

Greenland's first published book, The Entropy Exhibition: Michael Moorcock and the UK New Wave (1983) was a critical look at what is known as the New Wave in British science fiction, based on his doctoral thesis. He then published some fantasy novels like Daybreak on a Different Mountain before moving to SF. He published his most successful works with the Plenty series, which he began in 1990 with Take Back Plenty and continued with Seasons of Plenty (1995), The Plenty Principle (1997) and Mother of Plenty (1998).

Greenland also wrote non-SF books, such as the mainstream novel Finding Helen, about working on memory. In addition to fiction, the author is also active as a writer in the non-fiction area and is an active member of the Science Fiction Foundation , as well as part of the editorial board of Interzone magazine .

As a critic, he wrote and reviews for New Statesman , The Face, The Guardian , The Independent, and the Sunday Times . He was invited to four Microcons as a guest speaker (1988, 1989, 1993 and 1994).

Colin Greenland has lived with the writer Susanna Clarke ( Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell ) since 1996 . His works have so far been translated into twelve languages.

bibliography

Plenty cycle (German: Tabea Jute )

  • 1997: The Plenty Principle (short story collection)

Other novels

  • 1984: Daybreak on a Different Mountain (German: Return in Dawn , Goldmann 1986)
  • 1988: Other Voices
  • 1987: The Hour of the Thin Ox
  • 1991: In the Garden: The Secret Origin of the Zodiac Twins
  • 1993: Harm's Way (German: Sophies Kurs , Heyne 1996, ISBN 3-453-10948-1 )
  • 2000: Spiritfeather (3rd part of the Dreamtime series )
  • 2002: Finding Helen
  • 2005: Losing David

Non-fiction

As editor

criticism

  • Karsten Kruschel on encounters on the Möbius strip or Sternendieb : "Colin Greenland's novel is very colorful, as funny as it is tragic, full of crazy ideas and not one page is boring. It works like an onion: Whenever the reader thinks he recognizes the scheme or Tabea believes that she is close to the perspective, a turning point comes. Layer by layer, the poor pilot is getting closer to the secret of her odyssey ... Colin Greenland does not cultivate imaginary characters like other authors who exploit carefully structured types such as the mascot Talo to the end: Off For reasons that are initially opaque, protagonists keep disappearing from the book: Talo is more likely to be shot accidentally, Marco is exposed to Venus without reading a pen, the spaceship-self retreats into a kind of pouting corner, and so on ... Only at the end will you know the reader and Tabea Jute that it was a quest, a search for the hero's identity and destiny, and he is not Tabe a. Such surprises are typical of the novel, keep the interest awake and very atmospheric prevent one from taking all of this too seriously. Because that would be disastrous given the enormous frequency of all kinds of acts of violence. If TAKE BACK PLENTY has one message - which I doubt - it is, on the one hand, that nothing is what it appears to be and, on the other, that the fun of a well-spun yarn is still one of those pleasures that can be found purest and best in a good SF book. "

Individual evidence

  1. The title is an allusion to the experimental book of short stories The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard .
  2. See Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 1995 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Munich, ISBN 3-453-07967-1 , pp. 697f.

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