Boyd, William
Entry updated 19 January 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1952- ) UK author born in Africa, mostly in UK from late childhood; though most of his work is nonfantastic, he is of sf interest for his third novel, Brazzaville Beach (1990), set mostly in The Congo and tracing the ego-bound refusal of a misguided primatologist (see Scientists) to admit that chimpanzees are not essentially peccable. The on-the-ground discovery that rival tribes of chimpanzees go to War, in a manner recognizably akin to the behaviour of Homo sapiens (see Apes as Human), sufficiently melodramatizes observable chimpanzee behaviour for the tale to be treated as speculative. [JC]
William Andrew Murray Boyd
born Accra, Gold Coast [now Ghana]: 7 March 1952
works (highly selected)
- Brazzaville Beach (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990) [hb/]
links
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