SMITH, D(avid) Alexander

(1953-)

   US investment banker and writer who served as Treasurer of the SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA 1987-90 and has written several articles on wargame strategy (GAMES AND TOYS). He began publishing sf with Marathon (1982), \#1 in the Marathon sequence, which continues with Rendezvous (1988) and Homecoming (1990). The sequence is a First-Contacttale which depicts, with very considerable cunning, the slow process of learning and ultimate CONCEPTUAL BREAKTHROUGH attendant upon any genuine confrontation of Homo sapiens with the Other. In this case, the Cygnan ALIENS, who are rendezvousing with humans in interstellar space, areintriguingly perceived through flawed human eyes. Although DAS succumbs to some cliched presentation of sf conventions - for instance, the neurotic AI aboard the human starship - this slow, densely realized SPACE-OPERAepic deserves considerable notice.For some time, in conjunction with the Cambridge Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, DAS had been building aSHARED-WORLD portrait of Boston, Massachusetts, focusing on a period about 100 years hence when the central city has accreted into a vast defensive cube and has seceded from the USA. His own novel, In the Cube: A Novel of Future Boston (1993), focuses on this historical moment; a shared-worldanthology, Future Boston (anth 1994) ed DAS, ranges backwards and forwards around the locus of the Cube. The whole enterprise demonstrates the potency of the shared world in those cases where creators, owners and writers are the same persons.

   JC