MacAuley, Robie
Entry updated 16 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1919-1995) US author, active as a non-genre story writer from 1947 but almost certainly best known for his first novel, The Disguises of Love (1952). His second, A Secret History of Time to Come (1979), which is sf (see Mainstream Writers of SF), describes in quasi-Pastoral terms a balkanized America (see Ruined Earth) around two centuries after race conflicts had instigated World War Three. The protagonist embarks on a Fantastic Voyage, with the aid of a venerated ancient roadmap, discovering various societies as Ruins-and-Futurity and cultural Amnesia tropes are evoked through a proliferation of overgrown, indecipherable twentieth-century artefacts. A slaving raid, in which he interferes, takes centre stage, overshadowing any glow generated by the protagonist's earlier travels. [JC]
Robie Mayhew MacAuley
born Grand Rapids, Michigan: 31 May 1919
died Boston, Massachusetts: 20 November 1995
works
- A Secret History of Time to Come (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1979) [hb/Mark Hess]
links
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