Lindsay Gutteridge

Lindsay Gutteridge, full name Thomas Gordon Lindsay Gutteridge, was a British author, commercial artist, and art teacher, born in 1923 in County Durham, England, and died in 2007. He is remembered for the Matthew Dilke trilogy, published by Jonathan Cape between 1971 and 1975, beginning with Cold War in a Country Garden. The series follows agents miniaturized to quarter-inch height to test strategies for coping with overpopulation, blending Cold War-style espionage with ecological concern and adventure; the final volume, Fratricide Is a Gas, moves the action to the Peruvian jungle. All three books were illustrated by Bill Botten. Gutteridge's science fiction is distinctive for using miniaturization less as a gimmick than as a lens on environmental anxiety and Cold War politics, both preoccupations of early-1970s British speculative fiction.