Shortlisted for the Spread the Word : Books to Talk About 2008.
Jeff Lint was author of some of the most inventive Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century, with one if his contemporaries being Philip K. Dick an author we have championed on Lovereading. From Lint's days amongst the Beat movement to the belated success he had in the nineties Aylett writes a thoroughly absorbing account of a fascinating life.
"There was also a problem with the first edition of Rigor Mortis. The biographical notes on the back cover— with the by now inevitable photo of Lint kissing a tortoise— stated that Lint had died in 1972. The media, poised to praise him after his death, sprang in with lamentations that he had been tragically neglected by commercial enterprise and that it was baffling that his artistic genius had not been more appreciated. Their bitter embarrassment upon learning that he was still alive and open to their patronage drove a bigger wedge than ever between the media and Lint— they had no recourse but to pretend he did not exist at all. 'So in terms of money, publicity and ease of progress,' Lint observed, 'all remains the same.'"Jeff Lint was author of some of the strangest and most inventive satirical SF of the twentieth century.He transcended genre in classics such as Jelly Result and The Stupid Conversation, becoming a cult figure and pariah. Like his contemporary Philip K. Dick, he was blithely ahead of his time.Aylett follows Lint through his Beat days; his immersion in pulp SF, psychedelia and resentment; his disastrous scripts for Star Trek and Patton; the controversies of The Caterer comic and the scariest kids' cartoon ever aired; and his belated Hollywood success in the 1990s.It was a career haunted by death, including the undetected death of his agent, the suspicious death of his rival Herzog, and the unshakable "Lint is dead" rumors, which persisted even after his death.
