Ward, Henry
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1921-1989) Pseudonym of French author Henri-Louis-Luc Viard (1921-1989), who also wrote as by Louis-François Beaumetz and Louis-François Carlemont. His sf novels, as by Ward, are Les soleils verts (1956; trans Neame as The Green Suns 1961) and L'enfer est dans le ciel (1958; trans Alan Neame as Hell's Above Us 1960). The first book contains a detailed biography of Henry Ward in the introduction, claiming that he was a scientist educated at Cambridge in the UK and then Columbia in the USA, that at the request of the State Department he liaised between atomic research units in France and the USA in 1939-1940 (which Viard at age 18 could not have done), and that he was later connected with the destruction of the V-Bomb centre at Peenemünde. This information seems to be a hoax designed to lend verisimilitude to the two books, both documentary-style Technothrillers involving conspiracy at high political levels involved with the investigation of implausible sf events vis à vis the space programme, Aliens on Mars, the Suez conflict and Parallel Worlds. Henry Ward appears as a character in both. [PN/JC]
Henri-Louis-Luc Viard
born 11 August 1921
died 11 March 1989
works
- Les soleils verts (Paris: Jeheber, 1956) [pb/]
- The Green Suns (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1961) [trans by Alan Neame of the above: hb/]
- L'enfer est dans le ciel (Paris: Del Duca, 1958) [pb/]
- Hell's Above Us (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1960) [trans by Alan Neame of the above: hb/]
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