Back to entry: yanovsky_v_s | Show links blue
(1906-1989) Russian physician and author, in France between 1927 and 1942, when he emigrated to the United States, whose nonfiction deals in popular terms with medical issues. He is of sf interest for No Man's Time (trans Isabelle Levitin and Roger Nyle Parris from Russian ms 1967), which W H Auden, in his introduction, describes through reference to J R R Tolkien's concept of the Secondary World. More precisely, the tale can be seen as Crosshatch Fantastika, intermixing a sublunary world with the kind of exemplary microworlds commonly encountered in male Quest narratives [for Crosshatch, Quest and Secondary World see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. In tracking down a McGuffin figure, the protagonist spends time in a Pastoral enclave, traverses a surreal version of the North American Great Lakes, ends up in an urban Dystopia, exaggeratedly described. There are hints throughout of the humourless arduousness of metaphysical Archipelago tales like David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus (1920) or Philip Pullman's Galatea (1978). [JC]
born Russia: 1906
died New York: 20 July 1989
works (selected)
links
Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction edited by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight.
Accessed 05:58 am on 27 April 2024.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/yanovsky_v_s>