Dillard, R H W
Entry updated 14 October 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1937-2023) US poet, translator, academic, in various roles at Hollins University from 1964 until his death; and author of at least two full-length fictions (see Equipoise; Fabulation) that can be thought of in sf terms, though his only work of strong sf interest was his collaboration with George Garrett and John Rodenbeck on the script for the film Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965; vt Mars Invades Puerto Rico; vt Duel of the Space Monsters) directed by Robert Gaffney (see Frankenstein). The Book of Changes (1974) almost deliriously incorporates sf and horror and fantasy tropes into an exuberant plot only superficially focused on the detective protagonist's attempt to solve a murder; Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu-Manchu figures in the various Time zones of the tale, as do Werewolves, the Marx brothers, Vladimir Nabokov, and a Shapeshifting dwarf. The First Man on the Sun (1983) subjects a vision of the first Irish attempt to land a Spaceship on the Sun to similar distortions. [JC]
Richard Henry Wilde Dillard
born Roanoke, Virginia: 11 October 1937
died Roanoke, Virginia: 4 April 2023
works
- The Book of Changes (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974) [hb/Edward Gorey]
- The First Man on the Sun (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1983) [hb/Wayne Coskrey]
- Omniphobias: Stories (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1995) [coll: hb/]
nonfiction
- Horror Films (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976) [nonfiction: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry