Darnay, Arsen
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1936- ) Hungarian-born author, in the USA from 1953 and a US citizen from 1961. His first sf story, "The Splendid Freedom", appeared in Galaxy in 1974; his first novel, A Hostage for Hinterland (April-July 1975 Galaxy as "Helium"; exp 1976), set the pattern for much of his work: in a Post-Holocaust USA, where floating Cities depend upon land-dwelling ecofreak tribesmen for the helium that cools their reactors, crisis erupts into a bleak and somewhat metaphysical confrontation, at the end of which the cities die. A similarly abstract dichotomy, set on a Rimworld, is destabilized in The Siege of Faltara (1978). The Splendid Freedom (coll of linked stories 1980) carries its protagonists, who are linked through Reincarnation, into a variety of Dystopias.
After a long silence, Darnay began to publish actively again with the first two volumes of the Symphony in Ghulf Minor sequence, comprising Ghulf Genes (2009) and In Search of Anna Magna (2009), an extended-family epic and Future History set on Earth and nearby planets and moving through the Near Future through a planetary plague Disaster and into what may be better days throughout the solar system. [JC]
see also: Eschatology.
Arsen Julius Darnay
born Budapest, Hungary: 31 July 1936
works
series
Symphony in Ghulf Minor
- Ghulf Genes (no place given: Dwarf Planet Press, 2009) [Symphony in Ghulf Minor: pb/nonpictorial]
- In Search of Anna Magna (no place given: Dwarf Planet Press, 2009) [Symphony in Ghulf Minor: pb/Justine Carson]
- Anna's Song (no place given: Dwarf Planet Press, 2011) [Symphony in Ghulf Major: pb/]
individual titles
- A Hostage for Hinterland (New York: Ballantine Books, 1976) [short version appeared April-July 1975 Galaxy as "Helium": pb/Boris Vallejo]
- The Siege of Faltara (New York: Ace Books, 1978) [pb/Boris Vallejo]
- Karma: A Novel of Retribution and Transcendence (New York: St Martin's Press, 1978) [hb/Paul Stinson]
- The Karma Affair (New York: Ace Books, 1979) [vt of the above: pb/Don Brautigam]
- The Splendid Freedom (New York: Ace Books, 1980) [coll of linked stories: pb/]
- The Purgatory Zone (New York: Ace Books, 1981) [pb/Don Maitz]
links
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