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Kaye, Marvin

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1938-2021) US editor and author, usually of fantasy and horror; early in his career, he wrote some stories with Brother Theodore, a chess player and stage monologuist born Theodore Gottlieb (1906-2001), at some point thought to be a Kaye pseudonym. He edited numerous anthologies [see Checklist below], H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror (Spring 2004-Spring 2009) and Weird Tales (which see) from 2011 to 2014.

Kaye is noted here primarily for the Masters of Solitude sf sequence: The Masters of Solitude (1978) and Wintermind (1984), both written with Parke Godwin; a projected third volume did not appear. Set in a Post-Holocaust America, the first volume depicts a conflict between rural followers of a diseased mutant form of Christianity (see Religion) and a City in which a science-based worldview is encapsulated; in the second, a personal drama and an interesting half-breed protagonist intensify the grain of narrative, but peculiarly diminish the sense, given by the earlier book, of a large sf occasion. The first volume of the Umbrella/Fillmore fantasy sequence – comprising The Incredible Umbrella (fixup 1979) and The Amorous Umbrella (1981) – comically visits various literary worlds such as the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, the London of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens (Mr Pickwick makes a brief appearance), and Flatland; the Recursive SF cast also includes Dracula (see Vampires) and the Frankenstein Monster; the second book features various fairytales, the Loch Ness Monster, and a blank verse mash-up of various Shakespeare plays. The Aubrey House sequence – comprising A Cold Blue Light (1983) with Parke Godwin and Ghosts of Night and Morning (1987) by Kaye alone – moves from supernatural horror to horror without any supernatural element. Fantastique (1992), a fantasy, is elaborately constructed around Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique; The Last Christmas of Ebenezer Scrooge (2003), a Sequel by Other Hands, is an Afterlife fantasy [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. [JC]

Marvin Nathan Kaye

born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 10 March 1938

died New York: 13 May 2021

works

series

Masters of Solitude

  • Masters of Solitude (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1978) with Parke Godwin [Masters of Solitude: hb/Emanuel Shongut]
  • Wintermind (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1982) with Parke Godwin [Masters of Solitude: hb/Paul Bacon]

Umbrella/Fillmore

  • The Incredible Umbrella (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1979) [fixup: stories first appeared February 1976-February 1979 var mags: Umbrella/Fillmore: hb/Cathy Canzani]
  • The Amorous Umbrella (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1981) [Umbrella/Fillmore: hb/Design Works]

A Cold Blue Light

individual titles

collections

works as editor

links

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