Edmondson, G C
Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US translator and author Garry Cotton Edmondson (1922-1995) for all his writing except his Westerns, which are as by Kelly P Gast, J B Masterson and Jake Logan, and also excepting a collaborations with Andrew J Offutt writing together as John Cleve. His first published sf was Blessed Are the Meek (September 1955 Astounding; 2007 ebook); he was active in the magazines for the next decade, particularly in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, where his Mad Friend stories appeared. Assembled as Stranger than You Think (coll of linked stories 1965 chap dos), they describe the effects their narrator's mad friend manages to elicit from the world about him, and his explanations thereof. Edmondson's first novel, The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream (1965 dos; rev 1978) and its sequel, To Sail the Century Sea (1981), are amusingly and graphically told Fantastic-Voyage tales involving a US ship and its inadvertent Time Travels. They remain his most successful books.
Chapayeca (1971; vt Blue Face 1972), set in Mexico, and T.H.E.M. (1974) – the acronym refers to Alien invaders known as the Theriomorphic Hellbent Enemy Mission, who subject Earth civilization to tough-love Uplift – are both fluently written but less exhilarating to read. More impressively, The Aluminum Man (1975) confronts some Native Americans – depicted with great sympathy, as always in Edmondson's work – with a crash-landed Alien looking for fuel. The Man Who Corrupted Earth (1980) fails to carry over the complex cynicism of Mark Twain's "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" (December 1899 Harper's Monthly) but is in its own right an amusing presentation of the notion that free enterprise can conquer space when governments falter at the task (see Economics; Libertarianism). After a paranoid singleton, The Takeover (1984) with C M Kotlan, in which Russians briefly conquer the USA through nuclear blackmail, Edmondson and Kotlan produced a complex sf sequence – The Cunningham Equations (1986), The Black Magician (1986) and Maximum Effort (1987), all with C M Kotlan. The entangled thriller conventions dominant in this trilogy feverishly pit genetic transformations of the human species against the dubious intercession of AIs in the long process of growth, amid constant references to Yaqui Indian culture. The mix is perhaps too rich for coherence. In the end, it is his constant engagement with the region and the people of his early years that lifts Edmondson's work above routine entertainment.
Edmondson's full name is often given as José Mario Garry Ordoñez Edmondson y Cotton with a birthplace in Mexico or in one case Guatemala, but this appears to have been a hoax promulgated by himself; research by Robert Reginald established the less exotic details shown below [see also ISFDb under links below]. [JC]
see also: Politics; Space Flight.
Garry Cotton Edmondson
born Washington, USA: 11 October 1922 [other birth places have been given: see final paragraph of text above]
died Chula Vista, California: 14 December 1995
works
series
Ship That Sailed the Time Stream
- The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream (New York: Ace Books, 1965) [dos: with Stranger than You Think below: Ship That Sailed the Time Stream: pb/Jack Gaughan]
- The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream (New York: Ace Books, 1978) [exp of the above: Ship That Sailed the Time Stream: pb/Steve Hickman]
- To Sail the Century Sea (New York: Ace Books, 1981) [Ship That Sailed the Time Stream: pb/Paul Alexander]
Cunningham
- The Cunningham Equations (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1986) with C M Kotlan [Cunningham: pb/Barclay Shaw]
- The Black Magician (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1986) with C M Kotlan [Cunningham: pb/Barclay Shaw]
- Maximum Effort (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1987) with C M Kotlan [Cunningham: pb/Barclay Shaw]
individual titles
- Chapayeca (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1971) [hb/Robert Dennis]
- T.H.E.M. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1974) [hb/]
- The Aluminum Man (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1975) [pb/Richard Powers]
- The Man Who Corrupted Earth (New York: Ace Books, 1980) [pb/Attila Hejja]
- Star Slaver (New York: Berkley Books, 1982) with Andrew J Offutt, writing together as John Cleve [tie: Spaceways: pb/Ken Barr]
- The Takeover (New York: Ace Books, 1984) with C M Kotlan [pb/Greg Theakson]
collections and stories
- Stranger than You Think (New York: Ace Books, 1965) [coll of linked stories: chap: dos: with The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream above: pb/Jack Gaughan]
- Blessed Are the Meek (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2007) [story: ebook: first appeared September 1955 Astounding: na/]
- A Pound of Prevention (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2023) [story: ebook: first appeared April 1958 Infinity Science Fiction: na/]
links
previous versions of this entry