Wells, Robert
Entry updated 3 March 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1929-2021) UK author who began publishing sf with "The Machine That Was Lonely" in the Observer in 1954, one of that newspaper's prize competition stories assembled as A.D. 2500: The Observer Prize Stories (anth 1954) edited anonymously. Wells later concentrated on novels, beginning with The Parasaurians (1969), in which fake safaris against Robot Dinosaurs turn into a more serious threat to the hero – an early appearance in the SF Megatext of a pattern of story central to Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park sequence from 1990 on. Candle in the Sun (1971) explores a Last Man scenario through the plight of a man left alone in a deep-ocean station (see Under the Sea) with reason to believe life has ended above, though he soon meets a culture of aquatic Mutants. In the first volume of the Shroud sequence, Right-Handed Wilderness (1973), a Biological threat to the human species surfaces suddenly, though the two Telepathic protagonists are able to cope; they return in The Spacejacks (1975), a conspiracy-drenched Space Opera involving the eponymous ship salvagers and Alien Invasion and super-advanced science. [JC]
Frank Charles Robert Wells
born London: 31 January 1929
died 12 November 2021
works
- The Parasaurians (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1969) [pb/Paul Lehr]
- Candle in the Sun (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1971) [pb/Paul Lehr]
- Right-Handed Wilderness (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973) [pb/Chris Foss]
- The Spacejacks (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1975) [pb/Richard Powers]
links
previous versions of this entry