THOMAS, Thomas T(hurston)

(1948-)

   US writer who began writing sf with The Doomsday Effect (1986), as by Thomas Wren, which won the Compton Crook Best First Novel AWARD. The novel describes-in terms that anticipated Greg BEAR's The Forge of God (1987) and David BRIN's Earth (1990) - the effect upon Earth of arampaging BLACK HOLE. The narrative efficiency of the tale, and the briskly knowledgeable handling of scientific material, marked TTT as a HARD-SF writer of considerable potential. First Citizen (1987) is aNEAR FUTURE tale mixing, in a typical hard-sf manner, POLITICS and ECONOMICS. An Honorable Defense * (1988) with David A. DRAKE, tied to the latter's Crisis of Empire sequence (each volume being essentially written by a different collaborator under Drake's supervision), is military sf, featuring a disgraced soldier who may be expected to save the Empire, which will then find that it has been in need of him. The Mask of Loki (1990) with Roger ZELAZNY is a fantasy set in the 13th and 21st centuries.Me: A Novel of Self-Discovery (1991) is sf, told from the point of view of the eponymous AI. Crygender (1992), with an anonymous collaborator, depicts the hermaphrodite owner of a bordello on Alcatraz Island, by now owned by a Japanese consortium. Flare (1992), again with Zelazny, describes with absorbed detail the effects of the short and violent life of a deadly solar flare.

   JC

   See also: MEDICINE.