Ian Watson Biography

British science fiction writer, born in North Shields, Northumberland, educated at Balliol College, Oxford. Among the most intellectually adventurous practitioners of the genre, Watson's work has been compared to that of O. Stapledon and A. C. Clarke. In his first and best-known novel, The Embedding (1973), an analysis of the meaning of language unites three separate plots into one complex argument. The Jonah Kit (1975) uses the transcendent suicide of the planet's whales as its climax. His other works include The Martian Inca (1977), Deathhunter (1981), The Book of the River (1984), Whores of Babylon (1988), The Fire Worm (1988), Lucky's Harvest (1993), and The Fallen Moon (1994). Of his several story collections, the most engaging and memorable are perhaps The Very Slow Time Machine (1979), Salvage Rites (1989), and The Coming of Vertumnus (1994).