Welcome to the official website of British author John Lucas,
whose humorous science-fiction novel Faster Than Light was
published by small press Dedalus in January 2002.
Unfortunately it failed to make him either rich or famous, and as a result he's become increasingly
confused and embittered. When not scribbling away on his ill-fated second-novel, he can often
be found wandering in a daze through the streets of Wimbledon, scavenging scraps of food from
the bins outside Burger King, or being jeered at by school-children.
Little-Known Lucas Facts
John Lucas was brought up in Ashford, Middlesex, an undistinguished London suburb best known for its foul-smelling pig farm and close proximity to Heathrow Airport. He spent most of his childhood dreaming1 about jungles and coral reefs and other such far away places.
His second earliest memory is of being brought downstairs by his parents to witness the Apollo 11 moon landing on TV. Despite being a great fan of J.G. Ballard, he remains unconvinced that this was the most significant event of the twentieth century.
In the late 1980s he spent four years at Christ's College, Cambridge, drinking cheap wine and carrying out unsuccessful time travel experiments. He now lives in Wimbledon with his wife Sharona, daughter Kate (aged five) and son James (aged two). He's hopeful that his children will grow up to be a lot more sensible than their father.
He strongly believes that anyone remotely interested in fiction should read The Tin Men by Michael Frayn, and/or Dimension of Miracles2 by Robert Sheckley. If you haven't done so, you should stop surfing the web right now, and go and read them3.
John's Writing
If you're interested in John's novel Faster Than Light, you can click here to read David Langford's review from SFX magazine, or here to read a review from the Scotland on Sunday.
On this website you can read an unpublished short story, or find out how to contact him. If you'd really like to bring some happiness into his otherwise barren and meaningless existence, why not read his book (preferably by buying a copy, although you could read the first chapter for free), and then send him an email telling him how good you think it is.
In February 2005, Elastic Press will
be publishing a themed anthology called the Book of Numbers, containing a story of John's called Approaching Zero.
Their previous anthology The Alsiso Project was an excellent read,
and hopefully this one will be too.
Footnotes 1 You have to remember that this was back in the 1970s, when the newspapers weren't so full of the fact
that the coral reefs and the jungles are all being destroyed by climate change and development, and it was
therefore still possible for a child to think of such places as being beyond the reach of everyday humdrum society.
Now that we all know how terribly fragile such places are, it's no longer possible to think of
them so naively. It seems reasonable to assume that the psychological trauma caused to a whole generation by this unprecedented
loss of innocence is at least partially responsible for many of the horrors of the late twentieth century. 2 Dimension of Miracles is (I believe) the book that inspired Douglas
Adams to write The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (although I did read somewhere that Adams
denied this).
3 Scandalously, Dimension of Miracles is currently out of print, but
it's well worth buying secondhand (e.g. on
abebooks).