BUNCH, David Roosevelt

(? -)

   US writer of poetry and sf. He graduated as Bachelor of Science at Central Missouri State College and as MA in English at Washington University, worked as a civilian cartographer for the US Air Force 1954-73, and began publishing sf with "Routine Emergency" for If in 1957; before that he had published about 200 non-sf stories. Much of his sf work was assembled as Moderan (coll of linked stories 1971), a series of short, narratively deranged, fable-like tales which describe in satirical terms (SATIRE) a radically technologized future world where, after a nuclear HOLOCAUST, humans have been transformed into CYBORGS, the surface of the world is plastic, and thought and action are both solipsistic and deeply melancholy. The book's portrait of a manufactured humanity works as an arraignment of the late-20th-century slide into speed-lined rootlessness, and demonstrate his heterodoxy in the world of sf. Some of his poetry was assembled as We Have a Nervous Job (coll 1983 chap). Of the many non-Moderan stories, "That High-Up Blue Day that Saw the Black Sky-Train Come Spinning" (1968) has been described as an outstanding conflation of moral seriousness and Grand Guignol. The relentlessness of his vision and the "zany" extremity of his rendering of it ensure DRB's market inconspicuousness, but suggest that, for his readers, he will remain a vivid influence; and it may well be that, with the release of Bunch! (coll 1993), his considerable stature will be more widely understood.

   JC

   See also: ABSURDIST SF; AMAZING STORIES; CYBERNETICS.