David Roosevelt Bunch

Background

Bunch was born on August 7, 1925 on a farm outside Lowry City, Missouri.

Education

He graduated from Central Missouri State University with a Bachelor of Science degree, then received a master"s degree in English from Washington University in Saint Louis. He pursued a Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature at Washington University and the State University of Iowa, but rather than completing his doctoral dissertation, he shifted to creative writing and studied for two years at the Iowa Writers" hop before dropping out.

Career

He worked mainly in the genres of science fiction, satire, surrealism, and literary fiction. Although prolific and critically acclaimed, Bunch remained obscure throughout his career. He is mainly known for a series of violent, bleak stories set in the cyborg dystopia of Moderan, which collectively form a satire on humanity’s obsession with violence and control.

According to his long-time proponent Judith Merril, Bunch published over 200 stories and poems prior to his first professional sale, a short story called "Routine Emergency" in the December 1957 edition of If.

He published at least 100 stories in science fiction magazines between 1957 and 1997, and nearly as many in literary magazines. Number comprehensive David R. Bunch bibliography is known to exist.

Bunch published almost exclusively in little magazines, digest-sized fiction magazines and fanzines, making a complete tally difficult (as the latter, particularly, are poorly indexed, and few indexes cover both the full range of little magazines and their more-commercial peers). Much of Bunch"s recognition comes from his inclusion in Harlan Ellison"s defining New Wave anthology Dangerous Visions.

Of the 32 writers selected, Bunch was the only one to have two stories included: "Incident in Moderan" and "The Escaping".

Although Dangerous Visions has been continually in print since 1967, no other Bunch material has seen print (including anthologies) since 1997. Throughout his career, Bunch worked on a group of satirical far-future San Francisco stories set in Moderan, a version of Earth paved over entirely with gray plastic and controlled by perpetually warring cyborg fortresses. Although the society of Moderan seems to project an appearance of personal valor and military perfection, its citizens are ultimately powerless, dominated by their own petty insecurities and hubris.

Forty-six of the Moderan stories were collected in Moderan (1971), linked by a complex frame-story.

The collection was never reprinted and has become a collector"s item. Despite its relative rarity, it is cited as a major work of New Wave science fiction and it influenced cyberpunk.

Bunch continued to write and publish Moderan stories throughout his career. He had longed to see a complete collection of the Moderan sequence published, but that has not taken place.

Achievements

• His second collection of stories, Bunch!, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1993.