Adams, Bill
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author William Adams (? - ), author of the Evan Larkspur sequence comprising The Unwound Way (1991) and The End of Fame (1994) with Cecil Brooks; though they are structurally similar in their use of Sleeper Awakes conventions to describe the psychological and consequential effects of spending extended periods in Suspended Animation in a sub-light spaceship, the two tales can be read separately. In the first, playwright Larkspur returns to Earth to find that his university literary society dominates the strange new world, and that he himself – through his now-famous plays – is a kind of master of the world. Much else happens, in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of the later tales of the similarly recondite Ian Wallace; in the second volume, Larkspur is increasingly seen as a kind of reborn Lord Byron, whose culturally and socially complex Romanticism he shares intensely. The story itself takes him – again mostly asleep and dreaming – to another world, where yet again he finds himself famous, and learns that his nearly psychotic Byronism will radically affect life and politics in his new home in the stars. [JC]
William Adams
born
works
series
Evan Larkspur
- The Unwound Way (New York: Del Rey, 1991) with Cecil Brooks [Evan Larkspur: pb/Richard Hescox]
- The End of Fame (New York: Del Rey, 1994) with Cecil Brooks [Evan Larkspur: pb/Gregory Bridges]
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