Hendrix, Howard V
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) US academic and author who began publishing work of genre interest with "In the Smoke" (in L Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Vol 2, anth 1986, ed Algis Budrys); other early work was assembled in Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 (coll 1990 chap). After an academic study of medieval and Renaissance texts that invoke visions of last things, The Ecstasy of Catastrophe: Apocalyptic Literature from Langland to Milton (1990 Switzerland), Hendrix came to broader notice with his Lightpaths sequence comprising Lightpaths (1997), Standing Wave (1998), which examines – sometimes rather doggedly – the implications of the space habitat as a tool for the progress of the human race, both in terms of extraterrestrial politics (of the sort frequently promulgated, without huge verisimilitude, by Hard SF writers), and in terms of the plausibilities of space exploration and settlement. Hendrix's tendency (also shared by many Hard SF writers) to erase plotting difficulties with leaps into Transcendence mars the first volume, and is evident in his work generally. His most impressive single work may be Empty Cities of the Full Moon (2001), remotely connected to the Lightpaths sequence by virtue of being set in an Alternate History which begins to diverge from the former world around the year 2000; by the middle of this twenty-first century, a slow but comprehensive Disaster – caused by a Biological engineering project which goes wrong – has resulted in a Ruined Earth landscape, full of abandoned cities, where survivor savants and clans wander towards various outcomes, not excluding the Transcendental. the Near Future Labyrinth Key sequence comprising The Labyrinth Key (2004) and Spears of God (2006) focuses on the Invention of a Quantum Computer in a post-Cold War frame. Hendrix is a writer of strong intellect but a sometimes faltering sense of how to convey his ideas in fictional form. [JC]
Howard Vincent Hendrix
born Cincinnati, Ohio: 5 March 1959
works
series
Lightpaths
- Lightpaths (New York: Ace Books, 1997) [Lightpaths: pb/Phil Heffeman]
- Standing Wave (New York: Ace Books, 1998) [Lightpaths: pb/Phil Heffeman]
- Better Angels (New York: Ace Books, 1999) [Lightpaths: hb/Victor Stabin]
Labyrinth Key
- The Labyrinth Key (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 2004) [Labyrinth Key: pb/Stanislaw Fernandez]
- Spears of God (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 2006) [Labyrinth Key: pb/Big Dot Design]
individual titles
- Empty Cities of the Full Moon (New York: Ace Books, 2001) [loosely connected to Lightpaths: hb/John Jude Palencar]
collections and stories
- Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 (Boise, Idaho: The Eotu Group, 1990) [coll: chap: pb/Randy Moore]
- The Vertical Fruit of the Horizontal Tree (Beech Grove, Indiana: Talisman, 1994) [story: chap: pb/Doug Herring]
- Human in the Circuit: Collected Stories (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press/The Borgo Press, 2011) [coll: dos: bound with Perception of Death below: pb/Chris Harvey]
- Perception of Death: Collected Stories (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press/The Borgo Press, 2011) [coll: dos: bound with Human in the Circuit above: pb/Chris Harvey]
- The Girls with Kaleidoscope Eyes: Analog Stories for a Digital Age (Bonney Lake, Washington: Fairwood Press, 2019) [coll: pb/]
nonfiction
- The Ecstasy of Catastrophe: Apocalyptic Literature from Langland to Milton (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1990) [nonfiction: hb/]
works as editor
nonfiction
- Visions of Mars: Essays on the Red Planet in Fiction and Science (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2011) with Eric S Rabkin and George Slusser [nonfiction: anth: Mars: Eaton Conference Papers: pb/Frank Schoonover]
- Bridges to Science Fiction and Fantasy: Outstanding Essays from the J. Lloyd Eaton Conferences (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2018) with Gregory Benford, Joseph D Miller and Gary Westfahl [nonfiction: anth: Eaton Conference Papers: pb/Pavel Zhovba]
- Science Fiction and the Dismal Science: Essays on Economics in and of the Genre (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2019) with Jonathan Alexander, Gregory Benford and Gary Westfahl [nonfiction: anth: pb/Shutterstock]
links
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