McCollum, Michael A
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1946- ) US control-systems engineer (specializing in aerospace propulsion) and author, who began publishing sf with "Duty, Honor, Planet" for Analog, April 1979. His first novel, A Greater Infinity (fixup 1982), established the pattern he would follow through the 1980s: a complex Space-Opera adventure plot – assembling the variously published Greater Infinity stories beginning with "Beer Run" (July 1979 Analog) – involves humans from Parallel Worlds, one of them ours, with one or more Alien races as Wars, quests and challenges galore generate a sense of movement. The Makers series – Life PROBE (1983) and Procyon's Promise (1985) – and the Antares series – Antares Dawn (1986), Antares Passage (1987) and Antares Victory (2002) – are in this mould, but Thunderstrike! (1989) deals more mundanely with what happens when a Comet strikes Earth, and The Clouds of Saturn (1991) concerns human and internecine strife in the cloud-cities colonizing Saturn (see Outer Planets). McCollum's touch is usually light, and accusations of racism – occasioned by the sorry fate Africa suffers in the Makers books – seem almost certainly misdirected. A late series, the Gibraltar Stars sequence beginning with Gibraltar Earth (1999) and built around First Contact tropes, continues in the same vein. [JC]
Michael Allen McCollum
born Phoenix, Arizona: 25 August 1946
works
series
Makers
- Life PROBE (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1983) [Makers: pb/David Mattingly]
- Procyon's Promise (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1985) [Makers: pb/Don Dixon]
Antares
- Antares Dawn (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1986) [Antares: pb/Don Dixon]
- Antares Passage (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1987) [Antares: pb/Don Dixon]
- Antares Victory (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 2002) [Antares: pb/]
Gibraltar Stars
- Gibraltar Earth (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 1999) [Gibraltar Stars: pb/Don Dixon]
- Gibraltar Sun (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 2006) [Gibraltar Stars: pb/]
- Gibraltar Stars (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 2009) [Gibraltar Stars: pb/]
individual titles
- A Greater Infinity (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1982) [fixup: assembling the Greater Infinity stories: pb/David Mattingly]
- Thunderstrike! (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1989) [pb/Barclay Shaw]
- The Clouds of Saturn (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1991) [pb/Don Dixon]
- The Sails of Tau Ceti (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1992) [pb/Don Dixon]
- Gridlock and Other Stories (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 1998) [coll: pb/Ricardo Rodriguez]
- Euclid's Wall (Tempe, Arizona: Sci Fi – Arizona, 2012) [pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry