Watson, Ian

(British, 1943– )

Watson was born in North Shields, educated at Oxford, and lectured in Dar es Salaam, Tokyo, and elsewhere before becoming a full-time science fiction writer in 1976. Begin with The Jonah Kit (1975), in which human consciousness is experimentally implanted in whales. The creatures become channels for alien intelligences, who help humanity through a crisis in scientific knowledge. God's World (1979) begins with the appearance of angelic beings at holy sites around the world. A spacecraft is built to carry explorers to their place of origin in God's World, where the sinister truth about the angels emerges. In The Flies of Memory (1990) a pyramidal spaceship arrives bearing insect-like aliens. Monuments, buildings, and eventually whole cities begin disappearing as they are transported to protective storage on Mars.

Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven  DH