Michael G. Coney

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Michael Greatrex Coney (28 September 1932 - 4 November 2005) was a British science fiction writer, best known for his novel Hello Summer, Goodbye.

Life

Coney was born in

The stories also relate to the cultural concerns of the time. His first novel, Mirror Image (1972), intensified the American genre's Cold War emphasis on impostors and secret invaders; in this case, the "amorphs", who are indistinguishable from terrestrials, are themselves convinced that they are human.[1]

After a first group of dystopian tales, Coney began to change his themes. His later works The Celestial Steam Locomotive and Gods of the Greataway could almost be set on a transfigured Vancouver Island.^[2]

Another of Coney's themes concerns small isolated communities, as in The Hero of Downways, Winter's Children and Fang, the Gnome. In Syzygy the inhabitants of a small town, a fairly recent settlement on an alien planet, struggle to survive the hidden dangers of the planet's ecosystem; in Brontomek! the same characters a few years later face a wholly human threat.

A different perspective is seen in his Hello Summer, Goodbye, an adventure/mystery among people who are not quite human, on a planet rather like Earth, but with significant differences. It is generally agreed to be his best novel.^[1] I Remember Pallahaxi, a previously unpublished sequel to Hello Summer, Goodbye, was published posthumously in 2007.

Brontomek! received the

• Mirror Image (1972)
• Syzygy (1973)
• Friends Come in Boxes (1973)
• The Hero of Downways (1973)
• Winter's Children (1974)
• Monitor Found in Orbit (1974) (Short story collection)
• The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch (1974; UK title The Girl with a Symphony in her Fingers)
• Hello Summer, Goodbye (UK title, also known as Rax in USA, and Pallahaxi Tide in Canada; 1975)
• Charisma (1975)
• Brontomek! (1976)
• The Ultimate Jungle (1979)
• Neptune's Cauldron (1981)
• Cat Karina (1982)
• The Celestial Steam Locomotive (1983)
• Gods of the Greataway (1984)
• Fang, the Gnome (1988)
• King of the Scepter'd Isle (1989)
• A Tomcat Called Sabrina (1992)
• No Place for a Sealion (1992
• I Remember Pallahaxi (2007; sequel to Hello Summer, Goodbye — published posthumously)
• Flower of Goronwy (2014; published posthumously)

The Celestial Steam Locomotive and Gods of the Greataway are two parts of a single tale, Cat Karina, Fang, the Gnome and King of the Scepter'd Isle are independent stories set in the same universe. Brontomek! is set on the same world as Syzygy (and has many of the same characters) and is also associated somewhat with Mirror Image and Charisma.

Non-Fiction

• Forest Ranger, Ahoy! Porthole Press, Sidney BC, 1983.
• Forest Adventure: a guide to the British Columbia Forest Museum. By Gray Campbell and Michael Coney. Porthole Press, Sidney BC, 1985.

Awards and nominations

• British Science Fiction Association Award
  1977 for Brontomek!
• Best Novelette Nebula Award 1995 nomination - Tea and Hamsters
• 5
  Prix Aurora Award
  nominations

References

Sources

• ISBN 0-312-13486-X
  .

• A bibliography, in PDF
• Michael G. Coney at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Obituary in the Victoria Times Colonist.
• Obituary in The Guardian
• Obituary by John Clute
• An interview given near the end of his life
• A tribute at Lonely Cry
• The True Worth of Ruth Villiers, a short story by Michael G. Coney, reproduced with permission on Cordula's Web