FOSTER, Alan Dean

(1946-)

   US writer, raised in Los Angeles; interestingly, he has listed Carl Barks (1901-), the long-unacknowledged creator of the best COMIC strips and books in the Disney stable, as one of his formative influences (on his depiction of older characters). ADF began publishing sf with "SomeNotes Concerning a Green Box" for The Arkham Collector in 1971, and has collected short stories in With Friends Like These . . . (coll 1977), its companion, . . . Who Needs Enemies? (coll 1984), and The Metrognome and Other Stories (coll 1990). ADF is best known, however, for a prolific andgenerally competent output of novels and novelizations.Several of his best books fit into a loose double sequence of novels set in a multifarious Galaxy dominated by the Humanx Commonwealth, a venue well suited as anarena for SPACE OPERAS and encounters with ALIEN races. The central sequence follows the life of young Flinx, an orphan with PSI POWERS and the friendship of a highly potent pet alien named Pip, and comprises (in order of internal chronology): For Love of Mother-Not (1983); a connected trilogy made up of ADF's first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972), Orphan Star (1977) and The End of the Matter (1977); Bloodhype (1973); and Flinxin Flux (1988). A second, looser sequence consists of Nor Crystal Tears (1982); Midworld (1975); a connected trilogy made up of Icerigger (1974),Mission to Moulokin (1979) and The Deluge Drivers (1987), the three comprising his best work to date; Voyage to the City of the Dead (1984); and Sentenced to Prism (1985). Sometimes reminiscent of the earlier work of Poul ANDERSON, the sequence is expansive and colourful, though tending to melodrama and prone to the fable-like use of such sf and fantasy elements as ESP and dragons.Individual novels have tended more to a clear-headed commercial exploitation of various genre categories, though Cachalot (1980), whose whale-like aliens are of interest, The Man who Usedthe Universe (1983) and Cyber Way (1990) perhaps stand out.Of ADF's numerous novelizations, the most notable are possibly Dark Star * (1974), based on DARK STAR (1974), Star Wars * (1976), as by George LUCAS, the director of STAR WARS (1977), Alien * (1979), based on ALIEN (1979), Aliens: A Novelization * (1986), based on ALIENS (1986), and Alien