Federbush, Arnold
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1935-1993) American film editor, aspiring screenwriter and author who turned to novels on the understanding that it would increase his chances of making sales to Hollywood producers. The Man Who Lived in Inner Space (1973) features adventures Under the Sea by a marine biologist who is gradually transformed into an amphibious life-form after being crippled in a chemical explosion. Ice! (1978) is a Disaster novel of accelerated Climate Change brought upon by nuclear testing, with the onset of a new ice age unfolding in mere months rather than several centuries. In a prescient touch, it focuses not merely on the freezing of the world, but upon multiple climate-related incidents on the periphery, such as increased rainfall and aberrant weather conditions.
The prospect of movie sales looms large in Federbush's dialogue-heavy writing, as if he is expecting expensive visuals and star names to carry his prose across the finish line. His work arguably performed better overseas when filtered through the extra editorial phase of translation into other languages, most notably in Japanese, where Ice! was released as Tōketsu Toshi ["The Frozen City"] (1979), pseudonymously translated by Hideyuki Kikuchi. [JonC]
see also: Kim Stanley Robinson; The Day After Tomorrow.
Arnold Federbush
born New York: 16 March 1935
died Los Angeles, California: 14 September 1993
works (selected)
- The Man Who Lived in Inner Space (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973) [hb/Charles Sovek]
- Ice! (New York: Random House, 1978) [hb/Lou Feck]
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