Thompson, Douglas
Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1967- ) Scottish architectural designer and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Icarus in Nouvelleville" in Subtle Edens: An Anthology of Slipstream Fiction (anth 2008) edited by Allen Ashley; it is assembled in The Sleep Corporation: The Collected Stories of Douglas Thompson (coll 2015). His first novel, Ultrameta: A Fractal Novel (2009), uses sf devices like Time Travel to expand the perspective and further dislocate its protagonist who, burdened with multiple Identities, transacts a world City which partakes of the nature of many cities. Sylvow (fixup 2010) depicts a similarly fractured whose sibling protagonists gradually understand that a quasi-sentient natural world (see Gaia) is beginning to deal with the Homo sapiens plague. Malthrop, the murderous protagonist of Mechagnosis (2012), and his father have invented (see Inventions) an extremely large Machine which gobbles memories and memorabilia to enable him to Time-Travel, an activity which evokes pursuit from generically-incompatible worlds, for one of them is a police inspector, and others are angels. Apoidea (2011 ebook) describes the Ecological catastrophe of bee extinction, and the mixed success of the "cyber bees" designed to take over.
Entanglement (2012), like a transfigured Fantastic Voyage, submits duplicates of its astronaut protagonists, via Matter Transmission, to a series of various worlds, each of them providing an exemplary model of the nature of civilized life. The Rhymer: An Heredyssey (2014), even more explicitly Thompson's than previous novels, assembles Equipoisally within its abstract but recognizable quest narrative a range of modes, as its protagonist, who does or does not suffer from Amnesia, acquires and discards Identities as he voyages through venues depicted in fantasy and/or sf terms, a Doppelganger in search of a twin to haunt. In sf terms, he may be Immortal; in fantasy terms, he may be True Thomas the Rhymer; neither description is likely to hold firm. Thompson is an author of wild imagination who seems able to contain it, and who may write some important fiction as a consequence of that. [JC]
Douglas Thompson
born Glasgow, Scotland: 1967
works
- Ultrameta: A Fractal Novel (London: Eibonvale Press, 2009) [hb/]
- Sylvow (London: Eibonvale Press, 2010) [hb/David Rix]
- Apoidea (no place given: theExaggeratedpress, 2011) [ebook: na/]
- Mechagnosis (Leeds, West Yorkshire: Dog Horn Publishing, 2012) [pb/]
- Entanglement (Dartford, Kent: Elsewhen Press, 2012) [pb/]
- The Rhymer: An Heredyssey (Dartford, Kent: Elsewhen Press, 2014) [pb/]
- Barking Circus (Dusseldorf, Germany: Zagava, 2020) [hb/]
collections and stories
- The Sleep Corporation: The Collected Stories of Douglas Thompson (no place given: theExaggeratedpress, 2015) [coll: pb/]
- Ravine (Bucharest, Romania: Mount Abraxas Press, 2021) [story: chap: pb/]
- A Man Worth Killing (Bucharest, Romania: Mount Abraxas Press, 2021) [story: chap: pb/]
- Vouchsafe Incarnadine (Bucharest, Romania: Mount Abraxas Press, 2021) [story: chap: hb/Eugene Berman]
links
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