Richard Cowper, pseudonym of John Middleton Murry Jr., emerged in British science fiction in 1967 with the publication of Breakthrough, his first novel in that genre. In the two decades of his active science-fiction career, Cowper produced a distinguished body of work that is highly praised for its literary elegance. In "The Gulf and the Forest: Contemporary SF in Britain," Brian W. Aldiss cites Cowper among those who revivified the literary tradition of British science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s and returned the genre to the British literary mainstream. Eschewing the conventions of commercial science fiction--the preoccupation with action, conflict, and ideas at the expense of character--Cowper combines sensitive characterization (including frank relationships between the sexes) and evocative description with economical storytelling. He focuses typically on the struggles of a gifted individual to cope with unusual, often visionary or psychic, experiences that challenge commonsense understanding of reality. For...