Wisman, Ken 1947-

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WISMAN, Ken 1947-

(Kenneth Wisman)

PERSONAL: Born July 7, 1947, in New York, NY; married Lois Wiseman; children: one son. Education: Fairleigh Dickinson University, B.A.; postgraduate study at University of Michigan.

ADDRESSES: Home—Applewood Village, 91 Cortland Lane, Boxborough, MA 01719.

CAREER: Worked at various jobs in United States and Europe; technical writer.

WRITINGS:

FANTASY

Weird Family Tales: A Journal of Familial Maledictions, Earth Prime (Parma, OH), 1993.

Frost on the Window: Fourteen Stories of Christmas, Pulphouse (Eugene, OR), 1995.

Weird Family Tales II: The Curse Continues, Dark Regions Press (Concord, NH), 1995.

Fourteen Fantasies from a Shop Called Imagination, Dark Regions Press (Concord, NH), 2001.

Eden (novel), Dark Regions Press (Brentwood, CA), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Although he earns a living as a technical writer, Ken Wisman has also emerged as a writer in the fantasy genre. Frost on the Window: Fourteen Stories of Christmas provides new twists on this ancient holiday, reflecting religious undertones both Christian and pagan. Weird Family Tales: A Journal of Familial Maledictions and its sequel, Weird Family Tales II: The Curse Continues, bring together stories of a family uniquely cursed by supernatural entities.

Wisman's debut novel, Eden, maintains the author's interest in the supernatural but with more of a scientific, or at least science-fiction, premise. When artists and scientists travel to a distant planet to create a world without conflict where the lion can literally lie down in peace with the lamb, "things proceed to go merrily wrong," in the words Zone online reviewer Patrick Hudson. One of the scientist-creators decides that the entire project is wrong-headed, and soon a kind of holy war breaks out, with the creators turning their skills toward making bioweapons that will ruthlessly destroy each other. Throughout, Wisman intersperses his own philosophical commentary on the unfolding events. For Boheme online contributor Eamon Graham, "the story is neither so utopian nor dystopian that one comes away feeling that they have just read a polemic; rather, the author simply presents food for thought with outlines of his own vision of the possibilities of the future." Keep It Coming contributor Kelli Ballard found Wisman to be "an author without compare. His studies and findings may have you changing your beliefs, or at least giving them serious consideration."