Wallace, Jon
Entry updated 27 January 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1954- ) UK author, musician and comedian, working with Jon Cross in the comedy sketch duo Scanida-Hus and recording music as Ompsk and Nosp. He began to publish work of genre interest with "The Walrus and the Icebreaker" in Interzone for July/August 2011; some later stories from 2023 are bylined J Wallace. The Kenstibec sequence comprising Barricade (2014), Steeple (2015) and Rig (2016) depicts a Near Future Post-Holocaust world hovering on terminal ruination after unremitting Climate Change and war between artificial and "real" versions of Homo sapiens. Devastated Cities like Edinburgh have become guarded Keeps inhabited by Android-like "artificial" beings known as Ficials, who have been created at least in part through Genetic Engineering, while outlying districts are inhabited by the remaining old-stock humans. During the second volume, the protagonist Kenstibec, now mutilated, plumbs the depths under London; the third moves to the broader venue of the icy North Atlantic, where a flawed Utopia is under construction and the masses are entertained by a dangerous Game (see Games and Sports) somewhat in the vein of The Running Man (1987). [JC]
Jon Wallace
born Guildford, Surrey: 1954
works
series
Kenstibec
- Barricade (London: Gollancz, 2014) [Kenstibec: pb/blacksheep]
- Steeple (London: Gollancz, 2015) [Kenstibec: pb/blacksheep]
- Rig (London: Gollancz, 2016) [Kenstibec: pb/blacksheep]
links
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