Williams, Heathcote
Entry updated 10 June 2024. Tagged: Author, Theatre.
(1941-2017) UK poet, playwright, actor, political activist and author, initially notable in sf circles for his connections with the 1960s British New Wave, though he did not contribute material to its typical outlets; most of his work was, in fact, technically nonfantastic, though his plays – like his most famous, AC/DC (first performed Royal Court Theatre, London, 1970; in Gambit International Theatre Review, coll 1971) – were often so flamboyantly transgressive that they could be mistaken for a maddened verisimilitude of the days to come. One of his plays, however, The Immortalist (performed 1977; 1978 chap), consists of an interview with its 278-year-old protagonist (see Immortality), whose views are scarifying (see Satire).
Autogeddon (1991), a book-length heavily illustrated quasi-narrative poem (a length and form not usual in contemporary Poetry), treats the historically very rapid rise of the automobile as a metastatic invasion of the planet, an apocalyptic take, though focused on America, that may be derived in part from Williams's unmade screenplay, with the collaboration of J G Ballard, for Crash (1974 chap); the later version directed by David Cronenberg is unconnected. It might be noted that Williams's nightmare is essentially of the car devastatingly in motion; except for the apocalyptic front cover image of an automobile graveyard [see Picture Gallery under links below], the transformation of the living spaces of the world through parking needs – America itself has one billion parking spaces – is not addressed. Ballard's nonfiction piece "Autopia or Autogeddon" (29 November 1984 Guardian) was a direct influence. Autogeddon itself, which inspired the Julian Cope album Autogeddon (1994), iconographically much closer to Mad Max (1979) directed by George Miller than to Genre SF, not to the credit of the latter, where the suicide by car of the planet passed almost without notice (see Transportation). [JC]
John Henry Jasper Heathcote-Williams
born Helsby, Cheshire: 15 November 1941
died Oxford, Oxfordshire: 1 July 2017
works (highly selected)
- The Immortalist (London: Calder & Boyars, 1978) [play: chap: first performed 1977 Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: pb/]
- Crash! (no place given: for the authors, 1984) with J G Ballard and David Essinger [filmscript: film not made: Ballard's input may have been vicarious: pb/]
- Autogeddon (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991) [book-length poem: hb/]
links
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