Ironmonger, John
Entry updated 23 June 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1954- ) Kenyan-born zoologist and author, in UK from late childhood, who also publishes as by J W Ironmonger; active from the early 1990s. His first novel, Daughters of Artemis (2002) as by J W Ironmonger, depicts a moderately Near-Future world after Biological agents deployed during World War Three have almost eliminated the male sex; the reintroduction of any large number of men is resisted due to fears that the Utopia made possible by their effective absence will be destroyed. The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder (2012) tests the water margins of Fantastika through its protagonist's Borgesian attempts to catalogue the contents and workings of his own brain. The Coincidence Authority (2013; vt Coincidence 2014) sees "coincidence" as a deceptive term, as future events may be predetermined. This sense of entrapment is intensified in Not Forgetting the Whale (2015; vt The Whale at the End of the World 2022), whose protagonist escapes from doomed London to a tiny town in Cornwall in order to avoid the predictions (see Precognition) of planetary Disaster irrefutably generated by a Computer programme he has devised. The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild (2020) is a study in the determinist implications of inherited Memory.
Der Eisbär un de die Hoffnung auf Morgen (trans Tobias Schnettler from English manuscript 2023; original English text as The Wager and the Bear 2025) is set in the same threatened Cornish world as Not Forgetting the Whale, beginning with a contemporary wager between a climate denier and a young man desolated by the planetary consequences of Climate Change: the two will meet half a century onwards in the denier's abode, which will be under water or (if he is correct) still safe. As the tale moves through Near-Future years, the denier, who is treated with some sympathy, must confront the anguish of being wrong. The waters continue to rise. [JC]
John W Ironmonger
born Nairobi, Kenya: 8 July 1954
works (selected)
- Daughters of Artemis (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2002) as by J W Ironmonger [hb/]
- The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder (London: Orion Books/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2012) [hb/]
- The Coincidence Authority (London: Orion Books/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2013) [hb/] as by J W Ironmonger
- Coincidence (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014) as by J W Ironmonger [vt of the above: pb/]
- Not Forgetting the Whale (London: Orion Books/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2015) [hb/]
- The Whale at the End of the World (London: Orion Books/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2022) [vt of the above: pb/]
- The Many Lives of Heloise Starchild (London: Orion Books/Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2020) [hb/]
- Der Eisbär un de die Hoffnung auf Morgen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2023) [trans by Tobias Schnettler from English manuscript: binding unknown/]
- The Wager and the Bear (New Mills, Derbyshire: Fly on the Wall Press, 2025) [original English version of the above trans: pb/Edward Bettison]
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