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Malamud, Bernard

(1914-1986) US author whose fiction, beginning with The Natural (1952), a mythopoeic tale of US Baseball set in a modestly fabulated New York, makes use of techniques and motifs from Russian-Jewish folklore and story-telling traditions, with the result that many of his short stories are technically fantasies. His only novel of strong genre interest, God's Grace (1982), mixes sf and fable – at times uneasily (see Equipoise) – in the tale of a lone Last Man survivor of a nuclear Holocaust, followed by a God-inflicted Flood, who attempts to restart civilization on a remote Island by breeding a group of intelligent apes (see Apes as Human) that has also, rather miraculously, survived God's savagery, which they emulate. Eventually, all but one convert to Christianity. [JC]

see also: End of the World; Religion.

Bernard Malamud

born New York: 26 April 1914

died New York: 18 March 1986

works

• The Natural (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952) [hb/Amy Powers]
• God's Grace (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982) [hb/Honi Werner]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 20:19 pm on 8 June 2023.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/malamud_bernard>