Norman Spinrad


Norman Spinrad is one of the great American New Wave SF writers, whose most famous novel is probably the brilliant, controversial and aggressive 'Bug Jack Barron'. He is also the author of the 'what if Adolf Hitler wrote SF?' satire 'The Iron Dream'. The answer to the question of course, is that he'd be indistinguishable from the other run-of-the-mill, right-wing xenophobes who wrote most American SF of the time. However it should be said that the book is considerably less fun than it sounds because, basically, it reads like one of the slightly less palatable Heinlein novels.

His home-page: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/normanspinrad

His ten favourite books: http://books.guardian.co.uk/top10s/top10/0,6109,139272,00.html

The world's most reductionist review ever (of 'Bug Jack Barron'): http://www.allscifi.com/Topics/Info_1913.asp

If you don't have the time to read the whole review rest-assured that the protagonist is classified 'hard-edged' on the sensitivity index and the simple answer to 'inner struggle?' is 'yes'. Almost makes you wish for John Clute. Almost.

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