Jack Dann (born February 15, 1945) is an American writer best known for his science fiction, as well as an editor and a writing teacher, who has lived in Australia since 1994.
He has published over seventy books, the majority being as editor or co-editor of story anthologies in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres.
Following an incident during which gang members let off fireworks, which led to injuries, his parents enrolled him in a military academy, which he chose against the alternative option of a reform school, and where he remained for two years.
He was considered unlikely to survive by his doctors, and spent four months recovering in hospital, at one stage sharing a ward with members of the Mafia who had been injured in a gun battle.
He attributes a major change in outlook to his survival, and began a search for a fulfilling and meaningful vocation, which eventually led to him taking up writing.
[4][7] Initially he combined continued sales of his stories with work as a door-to-door salesman, which began after a commission for his first novel, Starhiker, was not finalized by his prospective publisher and he had become indebted, expecting payment for the piece.
[9] He currently lives on a farm overlooking the sea near Foster, in the Gippsland region of Victoria, but also typically spends some period of each year in Los Angeles and New York.
In 1987 he published In the Field of Fire, co-editing with then wife, Jeanne Van Buren, a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories relating to the horrors of the Vietnam War.
In August 2003 he published Gathering the Bones, as co-editor with Ramsey Campbell and Dennis Etchison, a collection of horror stories from the United Kingdom, The US and Australia, which was included in Library Journal's "Best Genre Fiction of 2003" and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award.
Across over 30 volumes, this series collected and republished short stories centering on a number of fantasy and science fiction themes, such as aliens, mermaids, dinosaurs, dragons, and clones.
Short stories, novelettes and novellas have comprised the vast majority of his fiction and over 100 of these, in multiple genres, have been published across his writing career.
[19] The novel begins in a small town in the 19th-century fashioned Midwestern United States, which is separated from reality: apparently it is the only human settlement left on Earth, now situated close to Hell.
[19] Set in the 21st Century, it presents a post-apocalyptic world in which telepathic shock waves – an outbreak of collective fear from the unconscious of millions - have led to widespread destruction and the reduction of many human beings to inhuman "screamers".
The protagonist, Raymond Mantle, searches through this shattered world for his wife, whose absence from his life he is aware of, but whose actual presence in his memories has been erased by the "Scream".
The novel also imagines a future where unfamiliar forms of consciousness, introduced by the new telepathic reality created by the "Scream", have altered the nature of humanity and questionable moral practices have become common, including the commercial availability of suicide in scenarios such as a reenactment of the sinking of the Titanic and the option of gambling with one's organs.
[13] Set in a 22nd-century Earth overshadowed by mega-corporations, the novel follows John Stranger, a Native American who is forced from his reservation home by the Trans-United company to work in orbital space construction.
Stranger's shamanistic skills become prized by his employer to assist in a race against rival companies to decode an alien transmission containing blueprints for a faster-than-light space drive.
[9] Dann's major historical novel depicts a version of the Renaissance in which Leonardo da Vinci actually constructs a number of his inventions, such as a flying machine, whose designs are well known from his surviving sketches.
He later employs some of his military inventions during a battle in the Middle East, while in the service of a Syrian general – events which Dann projects into a year of da Vinci's life about which little is known.
The journey is marked by indulgent, illegal and destructive behavior on the part of both men, apparently influenced by a curse placed upon John by Whiteshirt, which equally affects Charlie and leaves them acting ostensibly as caricatures of the worst aspects of their natures.
"[24] A companion volume, Promised Land, appeared from PS Publishing in 2007 and further explores, through short stories and novellas, both elements of the actual and alternative 1950s setting as presented in the novel.
This is instigated by the discovery of the purported remains of the infamous doctor, and the apparent need to purge the effects of a spiritual ailment, which strikes him at Mengele's graveside, and may be the source of diseases with which he has become afflicted.
His stories are sometimes reminiscent in style to the work of Franz Kafka or Jorge Luis Borges and can be complex and challenging to the reader, with a considerable sense of mystery.
[26] He is known for his meticulous and extensive research of his subjects and their relevant setting, which has been a salient feature of his alternative history novels such as The Memory Cathedral, The Rebel: an Imagined Life of James Dean and The Silent.
[4][27] He studied in Method acting in the 1960s, a technique which involves total immersion into a character's life, experiences, habits and outlook, and parallels this propensity for in depth research.
[29] Charisma, memory, myth, witnessing the reality of The Holocaust and transformation are all themes in Dann's work he has either identified himself or have been highlighted by reviewers and commentators.
[7][28] His stories often deal with achieving transcendent states, undertaking spiritual journeys or encountering confronting experiences that dramatically alter the psyche.
[30] Many involve young men who are liberated from naive origins by journeys marked by alien, revelatory or otherwise confrontational experiences which transform them, leaving them with a greater connection and awareness of their general environment or wider fields of consciousness.
[23][31] He has linked this preoccupation with his experience of coming close to death as a young man, following his hospitalisation in 1965, which he claims had a similar transformational effect on his character.
Dann has a Jewish background, and although affirming an affinity with the cultural aspects of this, has distanced himself from the theological tenets of Judaism due to his atheist outlook.