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Gee, Maurice

(1931-    ) New Zealand author active from 1955, best known for a non-fantastic trilogy comprising Plumb (1978), Meg (1981) and Sole Survivor (1983), and for a later anatomy of the "Matter" of his constrictive native land, Blindsight (2005). His Young Adult fantasies – Under the Mountain (1979), in which ancient Monsters awaken within activated volcanoes, later adapted for television; and The World Around the Corner (1980), for younger readers – are relatively tentative. More complex is the World of O trilogy – The Halfmen of O (1982), The Priests of Ferris (1984) and Motherstone (1985) – which moves from unquestioning use of sf/fantasy conventions to a less certain view of morality: the human saviours of the Parallel World of O realize that its inhabitants must discover their own solution to the problem of good and evil, even at the price of their sentience. Of his adult books, The Burning Boy (1990) complicates the relationship between a (typically) disfigured protagonist and the New Zealand world, by intermixing a paranormal intensification of his Intelligence. The Salt Trilogy, beginning with Salt (2008), is fantasy. Gee's virtues include a strong sense of character and place. [MMacL/JC]

Maurice Gough Gee

born Whakatane, New Zealand: 22 August 1931

works

series

O

• The Halfmen of O (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press, 1982) [O: hb/Gary Hebly]
• The Priests of Ferris (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press, 1984) [O: hb/Gary Hebly]
• Motherstone (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press, 1985) [O: hb/Gary Hebly]

Salt

• Salt (Victoria, British Columbia: Orca Book Publishers, 2009) [Salt: hb/]
• Gool (Victoria, British Columbia: Orca Book Publishers, 2010) [Salt: pb/]
• The Limping Man: The Salt Trilogy Book Three (Victoria, British Columbia: Orca Book Publishers, 2011) [Salt: hb/]

individual titles

• Under the Mountain (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press, 1979) [hb/]
• The World Around the Corner (Auckland, New Zealand: Oxford University Press, 1980) [chap: hb/]
• The Burning Boy (London: Faber and Faber, 1990) [hb/]

links

• New Zealand Book Council: Maurice Gee
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 08:07 am on 26 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/gee_maurice>