Mike Resnick

Themes

Two notable trends run through the majority of Resnick's science fiction work. The first is his love of fable and legend. Many of his stories read like legends, featuring larger-than-life characters with colorful names like The Widowmaker, Lucifer Jones, The Forever Kid, and Catastrophe Baker. Their adventures are often similarly legendary. Resnick is also interested in how legends form, and sometimes includes bards as characters. The book The Outpost deals most with these themes, as it includes a story told from multiple perspectives and a bard who openly intends to exaggerate and edit his accounts to make them more interesting. Resnick's books in this vein bear some resemblence to Westerns.

The other main trend in Resnick's work is drawing on themes of Africa - African history, African culture, colonialism and its aftermath, and traditionalism. He has visited Africa often, and draws on this experience. Many of his science fiction stories are allegories of African history and politics. Other stories are actually set in Africa or have African characters.

Selected Bibliography

The Birthright Universe

• Birthright: The Book of Man - vignettes chronicling the rise and fall of mankind in the galaxy.
• The Dark Lady - an art dealer investigates a mysterious painting.
• Santiago - story of a legendary outlaw of the future.
• The Widowmaker - story of the clone of a famous bounty hunter.

Other SF

• Kirinyaga - a future witchdoctor tries to preserve traditional African culture in a designed Utopia.
• Adventures - tales of Lucifer Jones, a freewheeling, likeable scoundrel. Set in the early 1900s.
• Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun? - short story collection.

Links

• Official Mike Resnick website
• Bibliography - cleaner and easier to read than the one at the official site.

Referenced By