Maddox, Tom
Entry updated 25 January 2024. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author and academic Daniel Thomas Maddox (1945-2022), who began publishing polished short stories with "The Mind Like a Strange Balloon" in Omni for June 1985. This introduces characters who reappear in his only novel, Halo (1991), which moves from a Cyberpunk Earth to a Space Habitat, engaging en route in an intense contemplation of the nature of artificial intelligence (see AI; Cybernetics; Robots) in a Virtual-Reality environment. The tale is intermittently hectic, but charged with energy. Maddox published no further sf stories after 1992, although his nonfiction column "Reports from the Electronic Frontier" – covering such real-world topics as Cyberspace, the Internet and word processors – ran in Locus from September 1992 to January 1995.
Maddox collaborated with William Gibson on two scripts for The X-Files, "Kill Switch" (15 February 1998) and "First Person Shooter" (27 February 2000). [JC/DRL]
Daniel Thomas Maddox
born Beckley, West Virginia: October 1945
died 18 October 2022
works
- Halo (New York: Tor, 1991) [chapter 1 first published February 1991 Quanta as "Burning, Burning"; also incorporates rev of "In a Distant Landscape" (1988 Mississippi Review #47/#48): hb/David Mattingly]
links
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