MacBeth, George

Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author, Poet.

(1932-1992) UK poet and author who contributed six poems to New Worlds from 1966 to 1969. The first of these, "Crab Apple Crisis" (October 1966 New Worlds), is a devastating reductio ad absurdum mapping of World War Three as a dispute between neighbours, organized in terms of the nuclear escalation ladder outlined by Herman Kahn. This appears with three other (non-New Worlds) MacBeth poems in the sf Poetry anthology Holding Your Eight Hands (anth 1969) edited by Edward Lucie-Smith. His novella The Transformation (1975 chap) is a Transgender SF tale whose male protagonist becomes, for a time, the woman he loves. The Survivor (1977) is set on a desert Island after World War Two, where its protagonist experiences various impossible encounters [for Posthumous Fantasy see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. The Rectory Mice (1982), a Beast Fable for children (see again The Encyclopedia of Fantasy), takes place in England before and during World War One; there is a brief glimpse of a Zeppelin (see Airships) passing above the rectory setting, which was MacBeth's home in Oby, Norfolk. In The Testament of Spencer (1992), a Near-Future thriller set in a united Ireland, the protagonist John Spencer finds his mind being invaded by that of the poet Edmund Spenser (?1552-1599), who lived in Ireland from 1580 until his death. [DRL/JC]

George Mann MacBeth

born Shotts, Lanarkshire: 19 January 1932

died Tuam, County Galway, Ireland: 16 February 1992

works (highly selected)

Collected Poems, 1958-1970 (London: Macmillan, 1971) [poetry: coll: hb/]
The Transformation (London: Victor Gollancz, 1975) [chap: hb/photographic]
The Survivor (London: Quartet Books, 1977) [hb/uncredited]
The Rectory Mice (London: Hutchinson, 1982) [illus/hb/Douglas Hall]
The Testament of Spencer (London: André Deutsch, 1992) [hb/Anonymous, "The Vicarage of Shilelah"]

links

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