“I wrote constantly from the time I learned how: poetry, stories, plays. But I began writing fiction purposefully in 1969, with a futurist fantasia that I had no way to describe, and that I lacked the skills to make readable. It was called Learning to Live With It. Just finishing a draft was enough to make me believe I could write a book that could be read, and I chose science fiction because it seemed the easiest to sell. It DID sell, so I wrote another.”
Otherwise (Harper Prerennial, 2002) A compilation of my first three novels: The Deep, Beasts, and Engine Summer. All are science fiction of different sorts, all were published originally by Doubleday as library hardbacks, then republished as stand-alone paperbacks. An earlier version (1994) was published by Bantam Books and called Three Novels.
Engine Summer (1979): That first oddity, at last published, after extensive revision. American centuries after the collapse and disappearance of technology; a pastoral. Selected by David Pringle for inclusion in his authoritative 100 Best Science Fiction Novels. “Crowley… has enough genuine imagination for ten ordinary science-fiction writers, and he never spends it on anything merely novel or showy.” –Kirkus “Engine Summer is a short, elegiac novel of incomparable beauty and sadness.” –Punchnels
Beasts (1976): Irresponsible gene splicing results in hybrid creatures – the “leos,” who are lion and human, and a fox-human, Reynard. A future-America dystopian tale looking back to medieval beast-fables. “In describing the fundamental conflict between those who would live in harmony with nature and those who would try to master it, Crowley displays a prodigious inventiveness… a memorable tale that ends too soon.” — New York Times
The Deep (1975): Set on a distant planet, this tale of dynasts and monsters is actually based quite closely on events in the English “Wars of the Roses” in the 15th century. “Extraordinary…It has genuine beauty” —Ursula K. Le Guin