(1957- ) US rock musician, author and illustrator; he did the cover for Interzone #9 and the vigorous though somewhat derivative collage illustrations for Dream Protocols (coll 1992 chap) by sf poet Lee Ballentine (1954- ); he has also contributed articles to Science Fiction Eye and Whole Earth Review. He began to publish sf with "The Fire Catcher" for Interzone, Summer 1985. Not wholly assimilated influences including Cyberpunk as a whole and J G Ballard in particular give an element of pastiche to his early work, including his first novel, Metrophage: (A Romance of the Future) (1988); but the latter transcends it in a vigorous and inventive tale of a mean-streetwise drug pusher's problems in a Near-Future Los Angeles (> California) that is being eaten alive by urban decay, police corruption and corporate cynicism. It reads like a supercharged arcade game that appals even its creator, as does the later Accelerate (graph 2007), a Graphic Novel also set in LA. Covert Culture Sourcebook: A Guide to Fringe Culture (1993) surveys similar territory from a nonfiction point of view.
After Kamikaze L'Amour: A Novel of the Future (1995) – a Climate Change tale in which in runaway global warming has introduced tropical rainforests to North America, drawing into this deadly honeytrap a rather Ballardian rock singer engaged in faking his death – Kadrey concentrated more on horror, usually with a sometimes transparently gonzo use of splatterpunk tropes. Despite the occasional overindulgence, especially in the scenes set in Hell, Butcher Bird (4 April 2005 Infinite Matrix as "Blind Shrike"; rev 2007), which has connections with the Sandman Slim fantasy sequence is all the same an invigorating example of Cosmological horror which argues that the terror of the world is entirely visible but for the fact that we instantly forget what we see (> Perception); Sandman Slim (2009) is set in a Monster-irradiated Los Angeles, further confirming a complexly transgressive and Equipoisal take on the hypnotic nightmare of modern California. The next volumes – Kill the Dead (2010) and Aloha from Hell (2011) – continue at about the same unforgiving level of garish intensity. [PN/JC]
Richard Albert Kadrey
born New York: 27 August 1957
died
works
series
Sandman Slim
- Butcher Bird (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2007) [Butcher Bird: pb/Dan Dos Santos]
- Sandman Slim (New York: Eos, 2009) [Butcher Bird: hb/Ervin Serrano]
- Kill the Dead (New York: Eos, 2010) [Butcher Bird: hb/]
- Aloha from Hell (New York: Harper Voyager, 2011) [Butcher Bird: hb/]
individual titles
nonfiction
links
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