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(1955- ) US entrepreneur, editor and author who began to publish work of genre interest with "My Sister, My Self" in Isaac Asimov's Tomorrow's Voices (anth 1984) edited anonymously, the first story in his Jon and Lobo sequence, which after some further short stories continues with One Jump Ahead (2007) – a novel debut which won the Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Memorial Award – Slanted Jack (2008), Overthrowing Heaven (2009), Children No More (2010) and No Going Back (2012). The protagonists of the series, set in various Space Opera venues, are Jon, who has been augmented by Nanotechnology implants, and Lobo, a Mecha-like mobile Weapon which houses an AI (and Jon). The worlds in which they operate are dominated by vast predatory corporations, may justly be described as Dystopian. The two warriors for hire engage in various Military SF exploits, leavened by Jon's humane if obsessive concern with the children facing damage wherever their missions take them. Van Name's anthologies [see below] are inventive, including Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology (anth 1996) with Richard Butner and John Kessel, which assembles stories from the 1994 session of the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop, which he had founded with Kessel in 1985. [JC]
born Florida: 14 March 1955
works
series
Jon and Lobo
works as editor
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 10:56 am on 5 October 2024.
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