J. T. McIntosh

JT McIntosh was the stage name of the Scottish science fiction writer James Murdoch MacGregor (* February 14, 1925, † 2008), who published occasionally by the name of James MacGregor. His first short story was published in 1950, his first novel, World Out of Mind was published in 1953. His last work dates from 1979 and is called A Planet Called Utopia.

Importance of his work in the SF

J. T. McIntosh is considered among SF- connoisseurs beside Edmund Cooper (author of the new civilization ) and JG Ballard (author of Crystal World ) as one of the most important English writers of the 1950s to the 1970s. However, his work has qualitatively substantial fluctuations that make it hard to put him in general with the above authors on the same level.

Quality gradient of its various novels

Probably no second author of the SF has in his works such a serious gap between trash and high literature within the fantastic literature of his time as JT McIntosh.

Starts Six Gates from Limbo (1969 - dt: Six Gates of Hell, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1969) as a highly interesting psychological test (of however at the beginning morally extremely doubtful character ), then developed the (good to about half to-read ) novel not only in content - style, with the time to a catastrophe: it culminates in a only as hyper -fascist to be referred to climax when "recognize" the main characters that only the destruction of the earth ( ), with its billion inhabitants survival some insignificant, is able to secure tiny Terran planet colonies. To the horror of the reader, the earth is actually destroyed at the end.

Anders - but not better - it behaves with the book Galactic Takeover Bid ( 1973 - ger: The Crock- expedition, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1976). The work, which describes the psychological problems of astronauts, is distinguished, although by a deeply humanistic attitude, but it is so dry to read that there is not much more wins even by the slaughter of the aliens in the second half of the book of excitement - rather, the impression is created that should be offset by such effects, the lack of voltage.

In very good memory, however, JT McIntosh should his readers with the novel Transmigration (1970 - Germany: The soul hikers, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1973) remain. Sensitive, quiet and supported by internal tension, the author describes the odyssey of the soul of his hero, the need to find a kind of sub-tenants in the bodies of other protagonists on the side of their souls space, which leads to some very interesting intrapsychic conflicts and entanglements. Transmigration is a wrongly geratenes now almost forgotten work of Inner Space literature.

The books of the author

  • World out of Mind (1953 )
  • Born Leader (1954 )
  • The Fittest (1955 ) - German: The survivors
  • One in 300 (1955) - German: One of 300
  • When the Ship Sank (1959 )
  • 200 Years to Christmas (1961 )
  • A Cry to Heaven (1961 )
  • The Iron Rain ( 1962)
  • The Million Cities ( 1963)
  • The Noman Way ( 1964)
  • Out of Chaos (1965 )
  • Time for a Change (1967 )
  • Take a Pair of Private Eyes (1968 )
  • Six Gates from Limbo (1969 ) - dt: Six Gates of Hell
  • A Coat of Blackmail (1970 )
  • Transmigration (1970 ) - German: The soul Wanderer
  • Flight from Rebirth ( 1972)
  • The Space Sorcerers (1972 )
  • The Cosmic Spies ( 1972)
  • Galactic Takeover Bid ( 1973) - dt The Crock- expedition
  • Ruler of the World ( 1976)
  • Norman Conquest, 2066 (1977)
  • This is the Way the World Begins ( 1977)
  • A Planet Called Utopia (1979 )
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