Harris, MacDonald
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym used by US academic and author Donald William Heiney (1921-1993) for most of his fiction from 1947 on; though composed in a smooth and accessible style, his novels (all as by Harris) tend significantly and non-mimetically to foreground any elements of fantasy (see Fabulation) with which they may deal. Bull Fire (1973) treats a modern family romance in terms of the myth of the Minotaur. The Balloonist (1976) recounts a failed 1897 Balloon expedition to the North Pole in terms reminiscent of Jules Verne's Voyages extraordinaires; indeed, the book is dedicated to Verne. The Carp Castle (2012), on the other hand, treats a 1920s expedition by Airship (see Ship of Fools) as a Fantastic Voyage towards an Arctic Utopia envisioned in terms of Theosophy. The Little People (1986) takes its title from the myth of faerie, though in a delusional frame. Glowstone (1987) posits a kind of Alternate History in which a woman strongly reminiscent of Marie Curie (1867-1934) makes identical scientific discoveries. Screenplay (1982), a Time-Travel tale, deposits its hero in a film-noir version of 1920s Hollywood (see California). Three of the stories assembled in The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions (coll 1988) carry a contemporary Marco Polo involuntarily backwards in time to the increasingly fabulous world of the original Polo (1254-1324). [JC/GF]
Donald William Heiney
born South Pasadena, California: 7 September 1921
died Newport Beach, California: 24 July 1993
works
- Bull Fire (New York: Random House, 1973) [hb/Wendell Minor]
- The Balloonist (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1976) [hb/Judith Leeds]
- The Little People (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1986) [hb/Honi Werner]
- Glowstone (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987) [hb/Honi Werner]
- Screenplay (New York: Atheneum, 1982) [hb/Paul Bacon]
- The Cathay Stories and Other Fictions (Santa Cruz, California: Story Line Press, 1988) [coll: pb/Lysa Howard-McDowell]
- Hemingway's Suitcase (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) [hb/]
- The Carp Castle (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Galileo Publishers, 2012) [pb/]
links
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