INGS, Simon (David)

(1965-)

   UK writer who began publishing sf with "Blessed Fields" in Other Edens III (anth 1989) ed Christopher EVANS and Robert HOLDSTOCK; and who has become moderately prolific as an author of short stories. His first novel, Hot Head (1992), heatedly and congestedly, and with moments of CYBERPUNK-ish brilliance, presents the life-story and adventures-inVIRTUAL REALITY and other realms-of a lesbian Muslim wanderer in the early 21st century. SI's 2nd novel, City of the Iron Fish (1994), significantly differs from the first novel. The eponymous city, whose physical existence seems as arbitrary as all other physical phenomena in the world of the novel, is reminiscent of such fantasy edificial concentrations as Mervyn PEAKE's Gormenghast, or M. John HARRISON's Viriconium. But the surrealdance of speculation-about cosmology in general, as well as the reality-making function of ART in a world which lacks natural meaning-distinguishes this novel apart from its models. SI may prove to be one of the writers to capture the 1990s.

   JC