He began publishing SF stories in the mid-1970s, and wrote some SF plays, none published but most performed, including a powerful adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1982 novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Ryman’s second novel, The Child Garden (1988), won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and confirmed him as a major figure in contemporary SF. He published a hypertext novel, 253/ (1998; www.ryman-novel.com/) and a science fiction novel, Air (2005), about the future of the internet. Although much of his work in the last decade or more is not genre, including a novel about Cambodia, he has continued to publish excellent genre short fiction. And he became a spokesperson for the unfortunately named “mundane SF” movement in recent years, dedicated to using real science and technology and Earth or nearby settings in the genre. His 2009 anthology, When It Changed, is a collection of mundane science fiction stories, each written by a science fiction author with advice from a scientist, and with an endnote by that scientist explaining the plausibility of the story.
