John Rankine is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author, who has written books as John Rankine and Douglas R. Mason. Rankine was born in Chester and went to Manchester University where he was a friend of Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess

John Burgess Wilson  – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...

 (mentioned in Little Wilson and Big God, AB's autobiography).

We know little of his life until 1966, when his first short stories and novels were published while he was in his mid-forties. The novels have a very sixties

1960s

The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...

 and seventies

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

 feel to them. One theme he worked with was that of a shorter life span, possibly borrowed from William F. Nolan

William F. Nolan

William Francis Nolan is an American author, who wrote stories in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. He is best known for coauthoring the novel Logan's Run, with George Clayton Johnson. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1976 horror film Burnt Offerings which starred Karen Black and...

's Logan's Run, but while the background and theme seemed similar, The Resurrection of Roger Diment took the concept in a totally different direction.

Rankine also wrote television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 novels in the Space: 1999

Space: 1999

Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television series that ran for two seasons and originally aired from 1975 to 1977. In the opening episode, nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side explodes in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, knocking the Moon out of orbit and...

universe.

Novels

• From Carthage Then I Came a.k.a. Eight Against Utopia (1966)
• Ring of Violence (1968)
• The Tower of Rizwan (1968)
• Landfall is a State of Mind (1968)
• The Janus Syndrome (1969)
• Matrix (1969)
• Horizon Alpha (1971)
• Dilation Effect (1971)
• Satellite 54-Zero (1971)
• The Resurrection of Roger Diment (1972)
• The End Bringers (1973)
• The Phaeton Condition (1973)
• Operation Umanaq (1973)
• The Omega Worm (1976)
• Pitman's Progress (1976)
• Euphor Unfree (1977)
• Mission to Pactolus R. (1978)
• The Typhon Intervention (1981)
• In the Eye of the Storm (2001)
• The Darkling Plain (2001)

Series

Dag Fletcher

1. The Blockade of Sinitron (1966) [as by John Rankine]
2. Interstellar Two-Five (1966) [as by John Rankine]
3. One is One (1968) [as by John Rankine]
4. The Plantos Affair (1971) [as by John Rankine]
5. The Ring of Garamas (1972) [as by John Rankine]
6. The Bromius Phenomenon (1973) [as by John Rankine]

Space 1999

• 2 Moon Odyssey (1975) [as by John Rankine]
• 5 Lunar Attack (1975) [as by John Rankine]
• 6 Astral Quest (1975) [as by John Rankine]
• 8 Android Planet (1976) [as by John Rankine]
• 10 Phoenix of Megaron (1976) [as by John Rankine]

Space Corporation

1. Never the Same Door (1968) [as by John Rankine]
2. Moons of Triopus (1968) [as by John Rankine]
3. Binary Z (1969) [as by John Rankine]

Anthologies containing stories by Douglas R Mason

• New Writings in SF 7
  New Writings in SF 7
  New Writings in SF 7 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by John Carnell, the seventh volume in a series of thirty, of which he edited the first twenty-one...
  
  (1966)
• New Writings in SF 9
  New Writings in SF 9
  New Writings in SF 9 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by John Carnell, the ninth volume in a series of thirty, of which he edited the first twenty-one...
  
  (1966)
• New Writings in SF 11
  New Writings in SF 11
  New Writings in SF 11 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by John Carnell, the eleventh volume in a series of thirty, of which he edited the first twenty-one. It was first published in paperback by Corgi in 1967, followed by a hardcover edition by Dennis Dobson in 1968...
  
  (1968)
• New Writings in SF 16
  New Writings in SF 16
  New Writings in SF 16 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by John Carnell, the sixteenth volume in a series of thirty, of which he edited the first twenty-one...
  
  (1969)
• New Writings in SF 21
  New Writings in SF 21
  New Writings in SF 21 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by John Carnell, the last volume he oversaw in the New Writings in SF prior to his decease; later volumes in the series were issued under the editorship of Kenneth Bulmer. It was first published in hardcover by Sidgwick &...
  
  (1972)

Short stories

"Folly to Be Wise" (1966)
"The Man Who Missed the Ferry" (1966)
"There Was This Fella..." (1968)
"All Done by Mirrors" (1969)
"Algora One Six" (1972)

External links

• Fantastic Fiction UK
• Golden Apple, Wallasey