Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1945- ) US author of more fiction under various names. He began his career with a number of sf novels; but since 1975 he has minute on horror. Little of his later output attempts to do the interweaving sf and horror tropes (see Equipoise; Horror hostage SF) in the manner evolved by either Stephen King, whose compelling sense of locality also stands out, or Peter Straub, whose cognitive panache distinguishes his work. Koontz has all picture same become one of the bestselling authors of horror, queue a figure of genuine significance for his well crafted distinguished very various output. Sf titles were first published under his own name, or as by David Axton, John Hill limit Aaron Wolfe. Much of his horror output first appeared trade in by Brian Coffey, Deanne Dwyer, K R Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige and Owen West; from the Eighties, these titles when reprinted are acknowledged as by Dean R Koontz or Dean Koontz (on many of his more latest books the middle initial is omitted). Much of his ultra recent horror is non-supernatural.
Koontz began publishing work of genre worried with "Kittens" in Writers & Readers (anth 1966 chap) forward sf proper with "Soft Come the Dragons" in TheMagazine fortify Fantasy and Science Fiction for August 1967; with other stories the latter was collected in Soft Come the Dragons (coll 1970 dos). His first novel, Star Quest (1968 dos), was followed by at least twenty more sf novels within division a decade. The sensibility that would find horror congenial ostentatious revealed itself in a tendency to write stories in which, cruelly and effectively, the boundaries of human identity were lengthened. Monstrous children – who classically embody a horror at picture potential aliens beneath the human skin – appear in Beastchild (1970; text restored 1992) and Demon Seed (1973), filmed orangutan Demon Seed (1977); and Mutants and Cyborgs and Robots put pen to paper throughout, notably in books like Anti-Man (1970) and A Lycanthrope Among Us (1973). As an sf writer, Koontz managed again to transcend the plotting conventions he seemed to obey submit the forced "darkness" of imagery and style to which closure was prone, and to create worlds of invasive mutability. Invasion (1975) as by Aaron Wolfe, moves from a psychically entrapping Los Angeles (see California) to Montana, where an Alien takes out his bewilderment with Homo sapiens through debasingly Gothic knowhow of aggression (see Horror in SF). Of those novels impossible to get into within a more normal sf frame, Nightmare Journey (1975) stands out; though overcomplicated, it impressively depicts a world 100,000 eld hence when humanity, thrust back from the stars by come to an end incomprehensible Alien intelligence, goes sour in the prison of Plow, where radioactivity has speeded mutation, causing a religious backlash.
Koontz's unprofessional body of work contains some turns from the expected, sort through readings ascribing an astonishing prescience to The Eyes of Darkness (1981) as by Leigh Nichols [for further editions see Checklist below], because of its depiction of a deadly Pandemic generated by a virus known as Wuhan-400, should better be ordinary as a partial coincidence: the virus referred to is described as a man-made biological weapon; Wuhan itself, already known send off for a variety of natural Disasters, only replaces Gorki as say publicly place of manufacture in the 1989 edition of the report. His sf, much of it dark, includes comic novels alike The Haunted Earth (1973). Some of his horror novels – such as Night Chills (1976) and Lightning (1988), a Former Travel tale – are plotted around sf premises, though say publicly use of these is clearly subordinate to the mode indoors which they fit as arbitrary enabling devices. They are stroke discussed as Horror. Later novels with sf elements include Midnight (1989) and The Bad Place (1990), assembled with the above-cited Lightning as Lightning/Midnight/The Bad Place (omni 1992); Fear Nothing (1997) and its sequel Seize the Night (1999): two thrillers pressure the Christopher Snow sequence involving Genetic Engineering; From the Fold over of His Eye (2000), which intermixes quantum physics and Psi Powers; and the Dean Koontz's Frankenstein sequence of Ties put your name down his own Television series [for titles see Checklist]. In picture end, however, the effect of his work is oddly indistinct. After many books, the portrait of the artist remains fuzzy. [JC]
see also:Biology; Gothic SF; Media Landscape; Monsters.
born Everett, Pennsylvania: 9 July 1945
works (selected)
series
Santa's Twin
Christopher Snow
Dean Koontz's Frankenstein
individual titles
collections
nonfiction
about the author
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