Hope, Christopher
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1944- ) South African poet and author, active from around 1970; in UK and France from 1975. He is of sf interest primarily for his Satirical portrayals of South Africa, a land riven from his point of view by aspirations and betrayals. His first novel, the nonfantastic A Separate Development (1980), anatomizes the post-Apartheid world through the picaresque life of its troubled protagonist. His second novel, Kruger's Alp (1984), depicts a Near Future Dystopian South Africa, where aspirations have hardened into tyranny without significant gains for the complexly challenged land. A similar vision suffuses My Chocolate Redeemer (1989), with some rightwing politicians in France are confronted by a Mysterious Stranger, ex-ruler and "Redeemer" of the imaginary African country of Zanj and presumed to be a cannibal, whose arrival in a small French town creates chaos.
Several of the stories assembled in The Garden of Bad Dreams and Other Stories (coll 2008) fantasticate mundane settings; central to the collection are two sf tales: "Wall Story", set in a walled-in enclave (see Zone) in a travel-restricted Near Future urban world; and "The Day Out", where a Genetically Engineered elite finds it increasingly difficult to stave off the effects of Climate Change, Ecological degradation, and chronic Pandemics. [JC]
Christopher David Tully Hope
born Johannesburg, South Africa: 26 February 1944
works (selected)
- A Separate Development (Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1980) [hb/]
- Kruger's Alp (London: Heinemann, 1984) [hb/]
- My Chocolate Redeemer (London: Heinemann, 1989) [hb/from Balthus]
collections and stories
- The Garden of Bad Dreams and Other Stories (coll 2008) (London: Atlantic Books, 2008) [coll: hb/Andy Bridge]
links
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