Fearing, Kenneth
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1902-1961) US poet and author, who supported himself in early years in part by writing softcore pornography as by Kirk Wolff, and whose early renown as a poet faded perceptibly even before his death; he is now known mainly for mysteries like The Big Clock (1946), a tale whose atmosphere adumbrates the film-noir tonality of later US fantasy. Fearing's only sf novel proper is Clark Gifford's Body (1942), which gravely and literately portrays a Near-Future US civil war, its thirty point-of-view narrators giving a Fixup multiplexity to the unfolding tragedy. Within its mystery frame, The Loneliest Girl in the World (1951), deploys some borderline sf elements. [JC]
Kenneth Flexner Fearing
born Oak Park, Illinois: 28 July 1902
died New York: 26 June 1961
works
- Clark Gifford's Body (New York: Random House, 1942) [hb/]
- The Loneliest Girl in the World (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1951) [hb/]
- The Sound of Murder (New York: Mercury Press, 1951) [probably cut vt of the above: pb/George Salter]
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