Eckert, Allan W
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1931-2011) US television writer – he is credited with over 200 scripts for the nonfiction animal series, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (1963-1988), for which he won an Emmy Award – and author, mainly of works of natural history, for which he has seven times been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and of fiction in various genres; his first novel, The Great Auk: A Novel (1963), containing no elements of the fantastic. He began writing work of genre interest with "The Voice Box" for Fantastic in December 1961; The HAB Theory (1976), which is sf, is based on the neo-Velikovskian idea of poleshift (see Pseudoscience; Immanuel Velikovsky): a lay theoretician named Herbert Allan Boardman (hence HAB) realizes that the Earth is about to flip over on its axis with the obvious catastrophic consequences, but of course the ivory-tower bastions of Orthodox Science refuse to listen. The Holocaust duly afflicts an underprepared humanity. Song of the Wild (1980) features a young protagonist capable of supernatural empathy with other beings, and Mesmerian Annals – The Dark Green Tunnel (1984) and The Wand (1986) – are also Young Adult fantasies set in a Parallel World. [JC/JGr]
Allan Wesley Eckert
born Buffalo, New York: 30 January 1931
died Anaheim, California: 7 July 2011
works
series
Mesmerian Annals
- The Dark Green Tunnel (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1984) [Mesmerian Annals: hb/]
- The Wand (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1986) [Mesmerian Annals: hb/]
individual titles
- The HAB Theory (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1976) [hb/]
- Song of the Wild (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, 1980) [hb/]
links
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