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Murphy, Derryl

(1963- ) Canadian author who began publishing work of genre interest with "Father Time" for Tesseracts⁴ (anth 1992) edited by Michael Skeet and Lorna Toolis, which he assembled with other early work in Wasps at the Speed of Sound (coll 2005). An acute sense of the state of the planet in the very Near Future drives much of this work: a tale like "Day's Hunt" (1996 TransVersions #5) scarifyingly immerses its readers in oceanic waters irretrievably lost to Pollution and Climate Change; several tales, like "Lost Jenny" (Fall 1999 On Spec) or "Summer's Humans" (in Wasps at the Speed of Sound, coll 2005), utilize Aliens, either to focus the attention on the ecocide of this planet through their gaze, or to suggest that Homo sapiens will almost certainly attempt to export twenty-first-century models of "development" to other worlds. Other stories use Time Travel in a similar search for perspectives on the Disasters afflicting or about to afflict humanity. Cast a Cold Eye (2009 chap) with William Shunn is fantasy. [JC]

Derryl Murphy

born Middleton, Nova Scotia: 20 April 1963

works

Napier's Bones (Toronto, Ontario: ChiZine Publications, 2011) [pb/Erik Mohr]

collections and stories

Wasps at the Speed of Sound (Canton, Ohio: Prime Books, 2005) [coll: publisher's address, not given in body of book, may be Rockville, Maryland: pb/Elaine Chen]
Cast a Cold Eye (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2009) with William Shunn [novella: chap: hb/Steve Leary]
Over the Darkened Landscape (Bonney Lake, Washington: Fairwood Press, 2012) [coll: pb/Antonello Silverini]

works as editor

Senary: The Journal of Fantastic Literature (Edmonton, Alberta: Fallen Octopress, 1992) with Wayne Malkin [anth: pb/]

links

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 07:12 am on 13 December 2025.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/murphy_derryl>