Nickle, David
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1964- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Killing Way" (Spring 1992 On Spec); his Near Future first novel, The Claus Effect (fixup 1997) with Karl Schroeder, was published with a connected novelette, "The Toy Mill" (in Tesseracts4, anth 1992, ed Michael Skeet and Lorna Toolis); a diseased entity called Santa Claus [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] discovers that the way to generate apocalypse is to give human children (and the military) what they ask for. Underlying the gonzo narrative (see Equipoise) is a sense of evil reminiscent of Thomas M Disch's The M.D.: A Horror Story (1991), whose "Devil" figure also manifests as Santa (see Karl Schroeder for further comments). Similarly mixing sf and other genres (see especially Horror in SF), Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism (2011) describes another kind of fatal compact, in which an early twentieth-century conspiracy to save America through Eugenics engages too closely with the malice of the world, as embodied in subterranean creatures closely resembling those found in H P Lovecraft; part of the action takes place in a doomed wilderness Utopia. Rasputin's Bastards (2012) ambitiously traces the complex supernatural careers of members of a Soviet cadre whose function in the Cold War was to possess and destroy the minds of enemies of the USSR, and who a decade or so later threaten – if they can properly reassemble – to become Secret Masters of the disorganized planet.
Monstrous Affections (coll 2009) assembles about half of Nickle's early short fiction; Knife Fight and Other Struggles (coll 2014) presents mostly later work. [JC]
David Nickle
born Newmarket, Ontario: 1964
works
series
Eutopia
- Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2011) [pb/Erik Mohr]
- Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2017) [pb/Erik Mohr]
individual titles
- The Claus Effect (Edmonton, Alberta: Tesseract Books, 1997) with Karl Schroeder [fixup: hb/Verne Busby]
- Rasputin's Bastards (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2012) [pb/Erik Mohr]
- The 'Geisters (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2013) [pb/Erik Mohr]
collections
- Monstrous Affections (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2009) [coll: pb/Erik Mohr]
- Knife Fight and Other Struggles (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2014) [coll: introduction by Peter Watts: pb/Erik Mohr]
works as editor
- The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir (Holstein, Ontario: Exile Editions, 2015) with Claude Lalumière [anth: in the publisher's Exile Book of Anthology Series: pb/MC Fisher]
- Licence Expired: The Unauthorized Bond (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2015) with Madeline Ashby [anth: Ian Fleming: pb/Erik Mohr]
links
- David Nickle
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Santa Claus
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry