Seed, David 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born November 26, 1946, in Nelson, England; son of Harold (a lawyer) and Ivy (a home-maker) Seed; married Joanna Zina, 1978. Education: Cambridge University, M.A., 1968; University of Leicester, M.A., 1969; University of Hull, Ph.D., 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Liverpool, England. Office—Department of English, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, England. E-mail—dseed@liverpool.ac.uk.

CAREER:

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England, reader in English, 1976—, professor of American literature, 2000—.

MEMBER:

International Gothic Association, British Association for American Studies.

WRITINGS:

The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1988.

The Fiction of Joseph Heller: Against the Grain, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1989.

Rudolph Wurlitzer: American Novelist and Screenwriter, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1992.

James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor and author of introduction) Vernon Lee, The Handling of Words and Other Studies in Literary Psychology, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1993.

(Editor and contributor) Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and Its Precursors, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1995.

(Editor and contributor) Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1999.

American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1999.

(Editor, with Andy Sawyer, and contributor) Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2000.

(Editor and author of introduction) American Travellers in Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (Liverpool, England), 2000.

(Editor and author of new foreword) Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2004.

Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control, Kent State University Press (Kent, OH), 2005.

(Editor and author of introduction) Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2005.

(Editor and contributor) Essays and Studies: Literature and the Visual Media, D.S. Brewer (Rochester, NY), 2005.

(Editor and contributor) A Companion to Science Fiction, Blackwell Publishers (Malden, MA), 2005.

(Editor and contributor) The Yearbook of English Studies 37.2: Science Fiction, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2007.

General editor, "Science Fiction Texts and Studies" series, Liverpool University Press, 1994—.

SIDELIGHTS:

David Seed once told CA: "The majority of writers I have written about are on the edges of the so-called literary canon. I hope, in most of my essays and books, to demonstrate that non-mainstream figures deserve the serious critical attention that has been reserved, until comparatively recently, for more established writers. This interest has led me into genres such as spy and detective fiction and, more recently, science fiction.

"I helped secure the move of the collection of the Science Fiction Foundation to Liverpool, where it has been joined by manuscript collections of writers such as Brian Aldiss, Olaf Stapledon, and John Wyndham. The Liverpool University archive is unique in Europe. In order to help coordinate the publication of studies on science fiction, Liverpool University Press launched the ‘Science Fiction Texts and Studies’ series. The series is attracting scholarship from the United States, France, Austria, and Australia, among other countries."

Seed later added: "I have been researching into the application by novelists of cinematic techniques in their writings and also into the narrative and descriptive methods of travel writings. In addition to the fields described above, I am also publishing essays on the culture of the Cold War and on spy fiction."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, January, 2000, R. Cormier, review of American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film, p. 913.