Line #16 Creator/ThomasMDisch


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thomasdisch_0.jpeg]]
2
3	->''"Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror."''
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5	Thomas M. Disch (1940-2008) was an American writer, poet, and critic. His early works were often bleak and nihilistic, with titles like ''The Genocides'' and ''Camp Concentration''. It is therefore somewhat ironic that he is best remembered for his children's book, ''The Brave Little Toaster'', which was made into a [[WesternAnimation/TheBraveLittleToaster Disney film]].
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7	Disch's first novel, ''The Genocides'' (1965), attracted the attention of Creator/BrianWAldiss and Creator/MichaelMoorcock, and soon Disch was a regular in Moorcock's UK magazine ''New Worlds'', which was leading a literary movement that would soon become known as NewWaveScienceFiction. Disch's success in the UK lead to him being selected to write a novel based on the quirky British TV show, ''Series/{{The Prisoner\|1967}}''.
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9	In addition to his fiction and {{poetry}}, Disch worked as a theatre critic for the ''New York Times'' and ''The Nation''. He later published well-received books of literary criticism. In the late 1980s, he also wrote for one of the last TextAdventure video games ever published, a work called ''Amnesia''.
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11	!! Works with a page on this wiki:
12	* ''Literature/TheGenocides''
13	* "[[Literature/AgainDangerousVisions Things Lost]]" (short story)
14	* ''WesternAnimation/TheBraveLittleToaster''
15	* ''WesternAnimation/TheBraveLittleToasterGoesToMars''
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17	!! Selected other works:
18	* ''Literature/TheHouseThatFearBuilt'' (1966, with Creator/JohnSladek)
19	* ''Literature/CampConcentration'' (1968)
20	* ''The Prisoner'' (1969, based on [[Series/ThePrisoner1967 the TV show]])
21	* ''Highway Sandwiches'' (1970, poetry collection, with Creator/CharlesPlatt and Creator/MarilynHacker)
22	* ''Fun With Your New Head'' (1971, short stories)
23	* ''Literature/ThreeThirtyFour'' (1972)
24	* ''Getting Into Death and Other Stories'' (1976, short stories)
25	* ''Literature/OnWingsOfSong'' (1979)
26	* ''Here I Am, There You Are, Where Were We'' (1984, poetry collection)
27	* ''Literature/TheMDAHorrorStory'' (1991)
28	* ''The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World'' (1998, nonfiction)
29	* ''Literature/TheVoyageOfTheProteus'' (2007)
30	----
31	!! Tropes in his other works:
32	* AlienInvasion: In ''Literature/ThePuppiesOfTerra'' (a.k.a. ''White Fang Goes Dingo''), highly advanced energy beings take over earth with no difficulty at all. They're a race of aesthetes--they behave exactly like late-Victorian gay males--and [[spoiler:they abandon Earth when humans will simply ''not'' cease thinking about disgusting things]].
33	* AlienKudzu: ''The Genocides'' has the Earth transformed in a monoculture for alien crops, and the aliens consider humans to be pests and try to exterminate them. [[spoiler:They succeed.]]
34	* DownerEnding: ''The Genocides'' ends with [[spoiler:a chapter of FauxlosophicalNarration pondering the extinction of humanity.]]
35	* {{Fingore}}: In "Descending" the main character finally makes it to the bottom of an apparently endless series of down escalators, way past the exit level, only to discover that the up escalator is out of order. He promptly has a mental breakdown and [[spoiler:sticks his fingers under the bottom treads of the down escalator]].
36	* GardenOfEvil: In ''The Genocides'', aliens gradually transform Earth so that their uncanny, tree-like Plants [[SingleBiomePlanet cover the entire land surface]]. [[KillAllHumans Doing away with the human race]] makes this project easier to complete.
37	* MisterSeahorse: In a variant, the short story "Emancipation" featured a man who gets surgically altered so he can ''breast-feed'' his child, in a future where gestation routinely occurs in PeopleJars.
38	* PersecutionFlip: American tourists in Morocco in the story "Casablanca" quickly become unwanted foreigners after the US is annihilated in a nuclear exchange. The reason? The companies behind their credit cards and travelers checks have also been destroyed, and they only have small amounts of the local currency.
39	* PestController: In the short "The Roaches," the main character discovered that she possessed the ability to telepathically communicate with and command cockroaches. Let's just say that it turned out to be not so good of a thing in the end...

Context Creator / ThomasMDisch