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Gregory, Daryl

Entry updated 4 March 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1965-    ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "In the Wheels" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1990; most of his work is fantasy, though Raising Stony Mayhall (2011), a Zombie novel set in a cartoonishly but closely realized Near Future America, ambitiously and successfully treats the protagonist's life story in sf terms. Perhaps even more ambitious, and certainly more pyrotechnical than its calmly-told predecessor, Afterparty (2014) is at least externally shaped as a Near Future noir thriller whose protagonist is searching for the sellers – in the end revealed as Big Pharma – of a Drug called Numinous which gives direct access to God; overdosers, however, cannot escape the deity. The world depicted, with Avatars swarming through Virtual Reality, and Perceptions of reality levels deeply insecure, is perhaps reminiscent of Philip K Dick, though the cool immersed intimacy of the depiction of the world also evokes William Gibson.

We Are All Completely Fine (2014) less complexly conveys a similar sense of the world (see also Horror in SF) through the quasi-gestaltish coming together of a series of psychiatric patients in a kind of coven, from the protection of which they attempt to distinguish real terrors from imaginary; in the end, none seem to be imaginary. Harrison Squared (2015), again evokes Horror in Fantasy, with specific references to H P Lovecraft, though within a Young Adult frame. Spoonbenders (2017), which traces through, the twentieth century a family with supernatural powers (but a tendency to flim-flam), provides a modestly Equipoisal take on the various Psi Powers on display, which include Telekinesis, Precognition, and other more supernatural gifts. The Album of Dr Moreau (2021) spoofishly describes an Alternate World where a rock band composed of Genetically Engineered animals gains success; analogies with H G Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) structure the tale.

Gregory is an author whose powerful imagination does sometimes overtax the vehicles of story he has so far chosen. [JC]

Daryl Gregory

born Chicago, Illinois: 26 June 1965

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