Barclay, Linwood
Entry updated 9 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1955- ) US-born journalist and author, in Canada from the age of four; active from the late 1970s. Most of his work has been nonfantastic, including the Zack Walker thriller sequence beginning with Bad Move (2004) and No Time for Goodbye (2007), the singleton for which he remains best-known [these titles are not listed below]. His first work of sf interest is the Young Adult Chase sequence opening with Chase (2017), whose protagonist, in a Near Future world not radically changed from now, is a Cyborg dog on the run from The Institute, where he is due to be terminated for unruly behaviour. Fleeing with a human chum, he escapes the hunters sent by The Institute, allowing Barclay to introduce several characters, some amiable.
A Noise Downstairs (2018) is a Horror novel about a possessed typewriter (see Technofantasy). Of more direct sf interest, Look Both Ways (2022) is set in the very Near Future on an isolated Island whose inhabitants have agreed to partake in tests to measure how their lives change (see Thought Experiment) when their travel (see Transportation) is restricted to the use of a self-driving car known as the Arrival. Arrivals turn out not to be self-driving in any final sense, as they are fully networked into one centrally controlled system. That humans who once drove their own lives have become harvest seems to become the point of the tale. [JC]
Linwood Barclay
born Darien, Connecticut: 1955
works (selected)
series
Chase
- Chase (Toronto, Ontario: Puffin Canada, 2017) [Chase: hb/]
- Escape (Toronto, Ontario: Puffin Canada, 2018) [Chase: hb/]
individual titles
- A Noise Downstairs (New York: William Morrow, 2018) [hb/]
- Look Both Ways (New York: William Morrow, 2022) [hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry