Thomas M. Disch

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Thomas Michael Disch (2006)

Thomas Michael Disch (born February 2, 1940 in Des Moines , Iowa , † July 4, 2008 in New York ) was an American science fiction author and poet . He was nominated several times for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award and won the Hugo Award in 1999 for his non-fiction book "The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of", an ironic look at the subject of science fiction.

Live and act

Disch's first texts appeared in science fiction magazines in the 1960s, and his first novel "The Genocides" was published in 1965. Disch was soon considered part of New Wave science fiction by writing for New Worlds and other avant-garde magazines. His ambitious, socially critical novels from this period include "Camp Concentration" (1968) and "334" (1972). "On Wings of Song" (1979) won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His novella "The Brave Little Toaster" (1980) was filmed by Disney. Disch later switched from science fiction to horror with a series of books set in Minneapolis: "The Businessman: A Tale of Terror" (1984), "The MD: A Horror Story" (1991), "The Priest : A Gothic Romance "(1994) and" The Sub: A Study in Witchcraft "(1999). He has written theater and opera reviews for the New York Times , The Nation, and other weekly magazines, along with other non-fictional work . He has also published several volumes of poetry.

biography

Thomas Michael Disch was born on February 2, 1940 in Des Moines, the son of a traveling salesman. Due to a polio epidemic in 1946, his mother Helen taught him at home for a year. As a result, he skipped first grade and went straight to second grade after kindergarten. Disch's first official school lessons took place in Catholic schools; this experience is reflected in some of his works, which contain stinging criticism of the Catholic Church. The family moved to the twin city of Minneapolis / St. Paul ( Minnesota ) in 1953 and now lived close to their four grandparents. Disch discovered his great love for science fiction, drama, and poetry at the Minneapolis Public Schools . He describes poetry as his key to the door of the literary world.

After graduating from high school in 1957, Disch took a vacation job as a draftsman. After saving enough money to move to New York City, he found an apartment in Manhattan and began to orientate himself professionally. He worked as an extra for the Metropolitan Opera , then for a bookstore and a newspaper. At the age of 18 he was drafted into the army , but was released after spending almost three months in a hospital for the mentally ill. Then he returned to New York. This was followed by a job in the cloakroom of a theater, one at an insurance company and also attending an evening course (originally architecture) at New York University, where lessons in writing novels and utopian fiction gave his taste for the common forms and subjects of science -Fiction shaped.

In May 1962, Disch decided to write a short story instead of studying for the semester. He sold the story "The Double Timer" for $ 112.50. Now he did not return to university, but instead took other odd jobs as a cashier in a bank, assistant in a funeral home, and editor, giving him the opportunity to write at night. During the next few years he increasingly wrote science fiction stories, but also poetry; his first published poem, Echo and Narcissus, appeared in the 1964 summer issue of the literary magazine Minnesota Review . He wrote some early books with John Sladek and they were published under a common pseudonym .

Writing was now the focus of his working life. Several books followed, including science fiction novels and stories, reviews, plays, children's books such as "A Child's Garden of Grammar" and ten collections of poetry. On the one hand, his poems contain experiments within traditional forms such as the collaborative cycle of sonnets “Highway Sandwiches” and “Haikus of an AmPart”, while others such as “ABCDEFG HIJKLM NPQRST UVWXYZ” and “The Dark Old House” mix a strict and a free form . For the composer Gregory Sandow Disch wrote the libretto for a " Frankenstein " opera as well as for an opera based on The Downfall of the House of Usher by EA Poe .

His two greatest poetry reviews, "The Castle of Indolence: On Poetry, Poets, and Poetasters" and "The Castle of Perseverance: Job Opportunities in Contemporary Poetry," focus on how poems work, what makes them popular, and how poetry works can re-establish itself in modern culture.

His work as a freelance journalist has included regular book reviews and theater reviews for The Nation, Harpers, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Entertainment Weekly. Known for his award-winning books, he was invited to spend a year as an artist-in-residence at William and Mary College .

Disch's private life remained private. Disch's homosexuality had been officially known since 1968 . But Disch did not write for a specific audience: "Although I am gay, I do not write any" gay "literature."

Disch's poems remained unknown in America for a long time until a retrospective entitled “Yes, let's. A book of new poetry, dark verses & light ”. Disch published two editions of poetry reviews in 1995 and 2002 and continued to write for magazines such as Poetry, Light, The Paris Review , Partisan Review and Theology Today. His first poems were printed in 1964 and first published as a collection in 1972. Although he presented his poems to a different audience than the one for science fiction and changed his name to Tom Disch for it, the work of both genres is similar. Disch's later science fiction works became more serious, adult, and often darker in style. This movement was called " New Wave " and wanted to show that the subjects of science fiction had evolved. Many of his works from the more sophisticated science fiction were first published by the English author Michael Moorcock in the magazine "New Worlds".

Disch has tried many forms and genres and has always returned to his roots in science fiction. “I have a class theory on literature. I just come from the wrong area to sell my work to The New Yorker . No matter how good I am as an artist, you can always sense where I'm from. ”He was a member of PEN America .

Disch died of suicide in July 2008 at the age of 68 .

Cultural background

Thomas Michael Disch grew up in the American Midwest, lived in New York City as a young adult and traveled extensively. He has lived in England , Spain , Italy and Mexico . He spent the last 20 years in New York.

computer game

In 1986 Disch worked with the software company Cognetics Corporation in New Jersey and the game manufacturer Electronic Arts to develop the computer game Amnesia . The title is based on a technology developed by Charles Kreitzberg of Cognetics; produced by Don Daglow and programmed by Kevin Bentley. It differs from other texts by the passionate language and unmistakable love for the energy of the city of New York. Although the text format was already out of date at the time of publication and the game had little success, it was a pioneer for the idea, popular years later, to visualize the streets of the entire area of Manhattan south of 110th Street and give the user a virtual visit to enable every street corner and thus to advance the action. Although the limited recording capacity of the data carriers forced several cuts to Disch's original text about the city in the 1980s, many places and people in Manhattan were described with the peculiar, affectionate word acrobatics that Disch was familiar with.

Awards (selection)

Works

Novels
  • The Genocides (1965)
  • The House That Fear Builtt: A Gothic Novel (1966, as Cassandra Knye with John Sladek )
  • Black Alice (1968, as Thom Demijohn with John Sladek, detective novel)
  • The Puppies of Terra (1966, also as Mankind Under the Leash )
    • German: The rule of strangers. Knaur Science Fiction & Fantasy # 5719, 1979, ISBN 3-426-05719-0 .
  • Echo Round His Bones (1967)
    • German: The duplicates. Heyne SF&F # 3294, 1972.
  • Camp Concentration (1968)
    • German: Camp Concentration. Translated by Gertrud Baruch. Lichtenberg (Science Fiction for Connoisseurs # 14), 1971, ISBN 3-7852-2014-6 . Paperback: Heyne SF&F # 3405, 1974, ISBN 3-453-30300-X . Additional edition: Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 9), 1983, ISBN 3-453-30800-X .
  • Alfred the Great (1969, as Victor Hastings)
  • The Prisoner (1969, also as I Am Not a Number! )
  • 334 (1972)
  • Clara Reeve. (1975, as Leonie Hargrave)
  • On Wings of Song (1979)
    • German: On wings of song. Translated by Irene Holicki. Edition SF in Hohenheim Verlag, 1982, ISBN 3-8147-0025-2 . Paperback: Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 40), 1986, ISBN 3-453-31218-X .
  • Neighboring Lives (1981, with Charles Naylor )
  • Ringtime (1983)
  • Torturing Mr. Amberwell (1985)
  • The Silver Pillow: A Tale of Witchcraft (1987)
  • The Tale of Dan de Lion (1987)
  • A Troll of Surewould Forest (1992)
  • The Word of God: Or, Holy Writ Rewritten (2008)
  • The Voyage of the Proteus: An Eyewitness Account of the End of the World (2008)
  • The Proteus Sails Again: Further Adventures at the End of the World (2008)
  • The Demi-Urge (2010)
Supernatural Minnesota series
  • 1 The Businessman: A Tale of Terror (1984)
  • 2 The MD: A Horror Story (1991)
    • German: Der Merkurstab. Horror novel. Translated by Joachim Honnef. Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1993, ISBN 3-404-13459-1 .
  • 3 The Priest: A Gothic Romance (1994)
  • 4 The Sub: A Study in Witchcraft (1999)
Short story collections
  • Under Compulsion (1968)
    • English: Now is eternity. Stories. Translated by Fritz Steinberg. Heyne SF&F # 3300, 1972.
  • One Hundred and Two H-Bombs (1967)
  • Under Compulsion (1968)
  • White Fang Goes Dingo and Other Funny SF Stories (1971)
  • The Right Way to Figure Plumbing (1972)
  • Getting Into Death (1974)
  • Getting Into Death and Other Stories (1976)
  • The Early Science Fiction Stories of Thomas M. Disch (1977)
  • Fundamental Disch (1980)
  • Burn This (1982)
  • Orders of the Retina (1982)
  • The Man Who Had No Idea (1982)
    • German: The man without any idea. Translated by Michael Windgassen. Heyne SF&F # 4828, 1991, ISBN 3-453-05015-0 .
  • Here I Am, There You Are, Where Were We (1984)
  • Yes, Let's: New and Selected Poems (1989)
  • Dark Verses and Light (1991)
  • A Child's Garden of Grammar (1997)
  • About the Size of It (2007)
  • The Wall of America (2008)
Children's books
  • The Brave Little Toaster (1986)
  • The Tale of Dan de Lion (1986)
  • The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1988)
  • A Child's Garden of Grammar (1997)
Poems
Non-fiction
  • The Castle of Indolence: Poetry and Its Pretenders (1995)
  • The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of (1998)
  • On SF (2005)
Audio
  • Can you hear me, think tank two? , 2001 (as Tom Disch), CD with English texts read by the author (“thought crimes in prose and poetry”), recorded and produced by David Garland.

literature

Lexicons

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 5, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-453-30860-3 , p. 287.
  2. ↑ a b StrangeHorizon.com: Interview: Thomas M. Disch. Retrieved July 1, 2018 .
  3. ↑ PEN American Center Annual Report , Vol. 2008-2009 , p. 23.
  4. ^ Douglas Martin: Thomas Disch, Novelist, Dies at 68 . In: The New York Times . July 8, 2008, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed November 29, 2019]).
personal data
SURNAME Disch, Thomas M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Demijohn, Thom (pseudonym); Disch, Tom (alternative spelling); Disch, Thomas (alternative spelling); Disch, Thomas Michael (full name); Dish, Thomas (alternative spelling); Dish, Thomas M. (alternative spelling); Hargrave, Leonie (pseudonym); Hastings, Victor (pseudonym); Knye, Cassandra (pen name); Tharp, Beebe (pseudonym); Thorpe, Dobbin (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Des Moines
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 2008
Place of death New York City