Thomas M. Disch

Author profile

born

February 02, 1940 in Des Moines, Iowa, The United States

died

July 05, 2008

About this author

Poet and cynic, Thomas M. Disch brought to the sf of the New Wave a camp sensibility and a sardonicism that too much sf had lacked. His sf novels include Camp Concentration, with its colony of prisoners mutated into super-intelligence by the bacteria that will in due course kill them horribly, and On Wings of Song, in which many of the brightest and best have left their bodies for what may be genuine, or entirely illusory, astral flight and his hero has to survive until his lover comes back to him; both are stunningly original books and both are among sf's more accomplishedly bitter-sweet works.

In recent years, Disch had turned to ironically moralized horror novels like The Businessman, The MD, The Priest and The Sub in which the nightmare...more

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Books by Thomas M. Disch

Average rating: 3.79 · 4,761 ratings · 485 reviews · 125 distinct works

	Camp Concentration 3.74 avg rating — 652 ratings — published 1968 — 13 editions	My rating:
	334 3.66 avg rating — 244 ratings — published 1972 — 10 editions	My rating:
	The Genocides 3.70 avg rating — 239 ratings — published 1965 — 7 editions	My rating:
	On Wings of Song 3.72 avg rating — 204 ratings — published 1979 — 12 editions	My rating:
	The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World 3.79 avg rating — 184 ratings — published 1998 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The M.D. 3.58 avg rating — 157 ratings — published 1989 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Brave Little Toaster 3.98 avg rating — 95 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Businessman 3.43 avg rating — 106 ratings — 8 editions	My rating:
	The Priest 3.68 avg rating — 71 ratings — 7 editions	My rating:
	The Prisoner 3.30 avg rating — 113 ratings — published 1969 — 10 editions	My rating:

More books by Thomas M. Disch…

Series by Thomas M. Disch

Supernatural Minnesota (4 books)
by Thomas M. Disch

3.54 avg rating — 378 ratings

The Brave Little Toaster (2 books)
by Thomas M. Disch

3.90 avg rating — 113 ratings

Quotes by Thomas M. Disch

“Laughter is just a slowed down scream of terror.”
― Thomas M. Disch

7 people liked it

“All children... feel a demonic sympathy with those things that cause disorder in the grown-up world.”
― Thomas M. Disch, The Genocides

5 people liked it

“Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.”
― Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration

5 people liked it

See all Thomas M. Disch's quotes »

Polls

Random Sci-Fi for June

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5 votes, 9.6%

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4 votes, 7.7%

Camp Concentration, by Thomas M. Disch

3 votes, 5.8%

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1 vote, 1.9%

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1 vote, 1.9%

52 total votes

5 comments

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