Spencer, John
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1944-2002) UK author, rock musician and one-time art-agency director, founding what would become Young Artists, a major UK agency for preponderantly sf/fantasy artists. His first sf novel, The Electronic Lullaby Meat Market (1975), in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Mick Farren, sets a quirky thriller in a violently hyperbolic Near-Future world described in sex-charged terms reminiscent of the late-1960s counterculture. After editing Echoes of Terror (anth 1980 chap) with Mike Jarvis, Spencer returned to sf with the Charley Case sequence comprising A Case for Charley (1984), Charley Gets the Picture (1985) and Quake City (1996), focusing on a set of idiosyncratic murder mysteries set after the great earthquake of 1997 (see Disaster), when Nevada and Arizona have been destroyed and Los Angeles, which has become an island, has been rebuilt as a vast tourist centre (see California). He is not to be confused with the John Spencer (1946- ) who illustrated a number of fantasy/folklore juveniles in the early 1970s, nor with the publisher John Spencer (see Badger Books). [JC/JGr]
see also: Music.
John Barry Spencer
born London: 5 June 1944
died London: 25 March 2002
works
series
Charlie Case
- A Case for Charley (London: Fontana Books, 1984) [Charlie Case: pb/]
- Charley Gets the Picture (London: Fontana Books, 1985) [Charlie Case: pb/]
- Quake City (London: The Do-Not Press, 1996) [Charlie Case: pb/]
individual titles
- The Electronic Lullaby Meat Market (London: Quartet Books, 1975) [pb/David Pether]
works as editor
- Echoes of Terror (London: Hamlyn Books, 1980) with Mike Jarvis [anth: chap: hb/Gordon Crabb]
links
previous versions of this entry