Jack Dann, one of SF’s most versatile and esteemed novelists, short story
writers, and anthologists, has led a complex and fascinating life – after surviving the brutal tensions of military school and a months-long
near-death experience in a hospital’s terminal wards, he embarked on the life of an author in the full swing of the Sixties, finding his voice
amid momentous social unrest, the creative ferment of New York and the
genre New Wave, and turbulent personal loves and friendships. Insinuations, both autobiography and meditation on memory and the changing self,
reflects these rites of passage in fascinating detail and mesmerizing
prose.
Recorded here also are many compelling later episodes from Dann’s
extraordinary career – his comradeship and literary collaborations with
such eminences of SF as Gardner Dozois, George Zebrowski, Barry N.
Malzberg, Michael Swanwick, and Jack C. Haldeman II; his rapid climb
from journeyman writer to bestselling master novelist; his deep
immersions in the Renaissance, the US Civil War, and his own past as he
researched and constructed his well-known cross-genre masterpieces; and
his decision, momentous both for himself and for SF, to start a new life in Australia, where he has become an influential and popular figure on
the speculative fiction scene.
Insinuations is one of the finest memoirs yet to emerge from the
SF community, essential reading for anyone interested in the genre’s
history and its innermost creative processes.
