Bell, M Shayne
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1957- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Earthlonging" for The Leading Edge in Winter 1981, and who was a 1987 winner of the Writers of the Future Contest for "Jacob's Ladder" (Fall 1985 Leading Edge); he has since published nearly 50 stories. His first novel, Nicoji (1991), effectively parlays a number of clear influences – from Orson Scott Card for narrative impulsion, to H Beam Piper for photogenic Aliens – into an unchallenging but attractively eventful tale, set on a colony planet where the eponymous food is harvested by indentured labour tied to an evil interstellar corporation, but after flight and rebellion the protagonist frees the world in time for Christmas. The Mormon subtexts of this novel overtly shape his anthology, Washed by a Wave of Wind: Science Fiction from the Corridor (anth 1994), the "Corridor" being a term commonly used to describe the land settled by Mormons in Utah and Idaho, the stories being mostly by Mormon writers like Card and Dave Wolverton, and the subject matter focusing on family and the Disasters that properly organized family-centred communities are best designed to survive. [JC]
Michael Shayne Bell
born Idaho: 1957
works
- Nicoji (New York: Baen Books, 1991) [pb/Donald Clavette]
- Inuit (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1992) [story: chap: hb/Alan Giani]
- Washed by a Wave of Wind: Science Fiction from the Corridor (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1994) [anthology: pb/]
links
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