In 1967 Disch was asked by an editor for a brief biographical sketch of himself. He wrote back: "Occupation: Beach-comber on a semi-global scale." While this was something of a joke, Disch has pursued a rootless existence since 1964. He has lived in Mexico, England, Austria, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and New York. His work has appeared in such varied publications as Playboy, Penthouse, Harper's, Poetry, Paris Review, Transatlantic Review, Mademoiselle, and numerous science-fiction magazines. He has written or edited well over a dozen books, including a volume of poetry.
Disch's wide acceptance is a result of the power and depth of his vision--which tends to be dark, disturbing, and skeptical. He rejects both the melioristic and apocalyptic tendencies of science fiction. Not only do his stories imply that there will be little, if any, progress in the human condition, but they also brilliantly suggest that science fiction's darker visions of the future--with Big Brothers and sinister technologies--are equally fanciful. In Disch's fiction the real horror resides in the fact that the future is always distressingly like our own present; hell is just around the next corner. Disch, along with some of the other New Wave writers such as Michael Moorcock and J.
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