Blum, Ralph
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1932-2016) US screenwriter and author involved in early Drug research, which is reflected in his sf novel The Simultaneous Man (1970). A Black convict undergoes, through advanced brainwashing, a Memory Edit that progressively erases his personality, rather as in Alfred Bester's earlier The Demolished Man (January-March 1952 Galaxy; 1953) or Robert Silverberg's later The Second Trip (1972). The process enables Identity Transfer from a research scientist, but eventually transforms the convict into a Doppelganger who haunts his original, a relationship that ends tragically in the Cold War USSR. Of borderline interest is Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks (1972). The Book of Runes: A Handbook for the Use of an Ancient Oracle (1982) (and its various sequels) is nonfiction: a study of Norse runic stones as a useful weapon of divination for the distressed of the twentieth century. [JC/DRL]
see also: Identity.
Ralph Henriques Blum II
born Los Angeles, California: 17 May 1932
died Kahalui, Maui, Hawaii: March 2016
works
- The Simultaneous Man (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1970) [hb/Wendell Minor/Paul Bacon Studio, Inc]
- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972) [hb/]
- The Book of Runes: A Handbook for the Use of an Ancient Oracle (New York: St Martin's Press, 1982) [nonfiction: hb/]
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