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Working name of US author James Richard Cook (1944-2022), who began publishing work of genre interest with "Mortality" in Analog for January 1987; he subsequently published several sf stories in this journal, and a very large number of nonfiction pieces on computer technology. As an author of fiction he is most noted for his fantasy, primarily for the Wizard sequence of Technofantasy-tinged tales – beginning with Wizard's Bane (1989) – which are set in a secondary world ideally arranged for its protagonist, Computer nerd Clyde Zumwalt, who has been transported into the venue, to use his skills to transform society and defeat foes; the echoes of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) must be deliberate, though there is no underlying sf argument to sustain them.
Limbo System (1989), about the inadvertent release of inimical Aliens from what may have been a Prison star, is sf; though Mall Purchase Night (1993), whose eponymous shopping centre is set on a divide between our world and Faerie, is a Walpurgis Night fantasy (as per title). [JC]
born 1944
died 13 January 2022
works
series
Wiz Zumwalt/Wizard
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 18:11 pm on 13 July 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cook_rick>