Stadler, Matthew
Entry updated 26 October 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) US author, most of whose work is nonfiction comprising attempts – some modestly persuasive – to reconcile the postmodern consciousness of enlightened citizens of the world with the planetary spread or sprawl of the city over the past century. In Where We Live Now (coll), where he embraces (to a degree) the concept of the Zwischenstadt ["in-between city"] espoused by Thomas Sieverts (1934- ) in 1997. Something of this attempted rescue of a human dimension in regions that most authors define as Dystopia colours The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee: His Researches (1993) Stadler's only novel to use the tools of Fantastika to shape his perception of things. The eponymous protagonist, adrift in an oppressive unnamed American City, finds himself fleeing to the Netherlands, which are now half-drowned, a condition which implies a Near Future setting; but the climax of the book submerges Dee in epiphanies that mix history, Sex and prophecy. [JC]
Matthew Stadler
born Seattle, Washington: 19 January 1959
works (highly selected)
- The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee: His Researches (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993) [hb/Gloria Adelson]
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