Bowes, Richard
Entry updated 1 January 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1944-2023) US author whose works tended to be set in, and to evoke, a congested, magically altered New York, the city where he lived since his childhood, and which infuses most of his short fiction, little of which is sf. Warchild (1986) and its sequel, Goblin Market (1988), set in an Alternate-History version of the city, follow the growth and adventures of a Telepathic teenager who finds himself involved in time wars with a variety of exorbitant friends and foes. Feral Cell (1987), set at the end of the twentieth century, carries its ageing hero into a millennial conflict between Good and Evil, seen in fantasy terms that evoke the New York of such writers as John Crowley and Mark Helprin. Minions of the Moon (fixup 1999) assembles the successful Kevin Grierson stories – one of them, "Streetcar Dreams" (April 1997 F&SF), won a 1998 World Fantasy Award – into a first-person narrative of a sexually ambivalent male Vampire who must undergo the rite of passage from 1960s Greenwich Village into adulthood, like Prince Harry (the title is from a line spoken by Falstaff), all the while haunted by a double. From the Files of the Time Rangers (fixup 2005) complexly mixes Time Travel, Alternate History and political Satire in its depiction of the twentieth century as a time so extraordinary it must have been shaped by gods at play. Dust Devil on a Quiet Street (fixup 2013) revisits several New York venues, this time through a quasi-autobiographical frame. His sf, which was always focused on city life, increasingly read as highly sophisticated Urban Fantasy. [JC]
Richard Dirrane Bowes
born Boston, Massachusetts: 8 January 1944
died near Boston, Massachusetts: 24 December 2023
works
series
Warchild
- Warchild (New York: Popular Library, 1986) [Warchild: pb/Richard Corben]
- Goblin Market (New York: Popular Library, 1988) [Warchild: pb/Richard Hescox]
individual titles
- Feral Cell (New York: Warner Books, 1987) [pb/Stephen Gervais]
- Minions of the Moon (New York: Tor, 1999) [fixup: hb/]
- From the Files of the Time Rangers (Urbana, Illinois: Golden Gryphon Press, 2005) [fixup: hb/John Picacio]
- From the Files of the Time Rangers (Maple Shade, New Jersey: Lethe Press, 2017) [fixup: exp of the above: pb/David Batista]
- Dust Devil on a Quiet Street (Maple Shade, New Jersey: Lethe Press, 2013) [fixup: pb/Juan Santapau]
collections and stories
- Transfigured Night and Other Stories (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2001) [coll: pb/Chris Standish]
- My Life in Speculative Fiction (no place given: iPublish.com, 2001) [novelette: ebook: na/]
- Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2006) [coll: hb/Ellen Klages]
- The Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others (Seattle, Washington: Aqueduct Press, 2013) [coll: in the Conversation Pieces series: pb/from Arthur Rackham]
- If Angels Fight: Stories (Bonney Lake, Washington: Fairwood Press, 2013) [coll: pb/Kristine Dikeman]
links
previous versions of this entry