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Child, Lincoln

Entry updated 19 December 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1957-    ) US anthologist and author, whose earlier novels of sf interest were written in collaboration with Douglas Preston, either as by Lincoln Preston (for some UK releases) or more usually under both real names. Their venue tends to be a version of New York in which Horror-tinged sf conceits are told in an Urban Fantasy frame [for this term, plus Edifice and Technofantasy below, see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]; there are several continuing characters, most consistently FBI Agent Pendergast, who features in a series of Technofantasy thrillers beginning with Relic (1995), in which the Edificial Museum of Natural History in New York is invaded from beneath by a Monster or monsters ancestral to the city; this was filmed, with the location switched to Chicago, as The Relic (1997) directed by Peter Hyams. The pattern is repeated in Reliquary (1997), where experiments in Genetic Engineering have gone savagely wrong (see Devolution); the Wainscot Societies inhabiting tunnels deep Underground beneath Manhattan are intricately conceived. The Cabinet of Curiosities (2002) with Preston, is an Immortality tale, which again takes place mostly Underground, where a nineteenth century "cabinet of curiosities" had acquired a life of its own. Later volumes vary the mix.

Death Match (2004), a singleton by Child alone, is a Technothriller. Though it is also told in a technothriller idiom, the Jeremy Logan sequence seems more ambitious. The first tale in the series, Deep Storm (2007), tracks the discovery of what first seems to be Atlantis two miles deep under the ocean, but turns out to be an ancient dangerous-waste depository established by Aliens from the stars. The second instalment, Terminal Freeze (2009), is set in the Arctic as global warming (see Climate Change) begins to bite, and a giant prehistoric predator, again possibly of Alien origin, is discovered in the melting ice; it awakens.

Child's anthologies competently traverse a moderately wide range of horror. [JC]

Lincoln B Child

born Westport, Connecticut: 13 October 1957

works (selected)

series

Pendergast

Pendergast: Diogenes Trilogy

  • Brimstone (New York: Warner Books, 2004) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Diogenes Trilogy: hb/Stanislaw Fernandez]
  • Dance of Death (New York: Warner Books, 2005) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Diogenes Trilogy: hb/Stanislaw Fernandez]
  • Book of the Dead (New York: Warner Books, 2006) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Diogenes Trilogy: hb/Stanislaw Fernandez]

Pendergast: Gideon

Pendergast: Helen

  • Fever Dream (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Helen: hb/Flag]
  • Cold Vengeance (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2011) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Helen: hb/]
  • Two Graves (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012) with Douglas Preston [Pendergast: Helen: hb/]

Pendergast: Nora Kelly

Jeremy Logan

individual titles

works as editor

links

previous versions of this entry



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