Michael Greatrex Coney (September 28, 1932 - November 4, 2005) was a British science fiction writer who spent his last years in Canada. Born in Birmingham, England on September 28, 1932, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1972. He died at age 73 of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, on November 4, 2005 at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital palliative care unit.
Settings and themes vary between the different novels. A common ele...
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Michael Greatrex Coney (September 28, 1932 - November 4, 2005) was a British science fiction writer who spent his last years in Canada. Born in Birmingham, England on September 28, 1932, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1972. He died at age 73 of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs, on November 4, 2005 at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital palliative care unit.
Settings and themes vary between the different novels. A common element is that you follow rather ordinary people who are buffeted by forces beyond their strength, and mostly not much concerned with them. Most SF gives the superior powers to the leading characters, or has them acquire it during the course of the tale. Coney avoided this, and cleverly satirised it in The Hero of Downways.
The stories do also tie in with the cultural concerns of the time:
Another of Coney's themes is small isolated communities - The Hero of Downways, Winter's Children and Fang, the Gnome. A different perspective is seen in ‘...
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