Francis, Richard
Entry updated 26 May 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1945- ) UK academic and author, who added to some books an empty middle-initial "H" to distinguish himself from Dick Francis (1920-2010), the thriller writer. His first novel, Blackpool Vanishes (1979), tells the quirky, extremely English story of what happens when microscopic Aliens kidnap the town of Blackpool. In Whispering Gallery (1984) the Invention of a link between bacteria and viruses becomes complicated when it turns out that the new strain can serve – defectively – as a Weapon, and – all too efficiently – as a fuel. Swansong (1986) is a mildly fantastic Satire on Margaret Thatcher's UK, the Falklands War and the brutally unexpected disasters of both personal and political history.
Some of Francis's later novels are fantasy. They include The Land Where Lost Things Go By Olive Watson (1990), Taking Apart the Poco Poco (1995), narrated in part by a Dog, Fat Hen (1999), which unpacks a possibly delusional Posthumous Fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], and The Old Spring (2010), where old gods inhabit Underground realms beneath the eponymous pub, a focus for Magic Realist titivations of the mundane.
Of his nonfiction, Ann the Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers (2000), analyses the same historical figure brought to a different life in John Fowles's A Maggot (1985). [JC/NT]
see also: UFOs.
Richard Francis
born Shawford, Hampshire: 14 May 1945
works (selected)
- Blackpool Vanishes (London: Faber and Faber, 1979) [hb/nonpictorial]
- Whispering Gallery (London: André Deutsch, 1984) as Richard H Francis [hb/Bill Tinker]
- Swansong (London: Collins, 1986) [hb/John Holmes]
- The Land Where Lost Things Go By Olive Watson (Manchester, England: Carcanet Press, 1990) [hb/John Booth]
- Taking Apart the Poco Poco (London: Fourth Estate, 1995) [hb/]
- Fat Hen (London: HarperCollins, 1999) [pb/]
- The Old Spring (Birmingham, England: Tindal Street Press, 2010) [hb/James Nunn]
nonfiction
- Transcendental Utopias: Individual and Community Work at Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997) [nonfiction: Utopias: hb/]
- Ann the Word: The Story of Ann Lee, Female Messiah, Mother of the Shakers (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and their Search for Utopia (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2020) [nonfiction: hb/]
links
- Richard Francis
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Posthumous Fantasy
- Picture Gallery
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