Notes: Arnold Federbush

Houghton Mifflin, 1973

Arnold Federbush published two novels, The Man Who Lived in Inner Space (Houghton Mifflin, 1973) and Ice! (Bantam, 1978). The Man Who Lived in Inner Space concerns a man crippled by an explosion at a chemical factory who becomes an ocean dweller after learning to breathe in the ocean depths. This brings him to meditations on consciousness and the interconnectedness of everything. Ice! describes a rapidly returning Ice Age that descends upon New York City, presaging in a number of ways the disaster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

Federbush was born in New York City on 16 March 1935, the son of Isadore Federbush (the manager of a manufacturer of ladies underwear, according to the 1940 US Census), and his wife Sarah, both emigrees from Russia. Arnold had two older sisters. He received a B.A. from Washington Square College of New York University, and an M.A. in Theater Arts from UCLA, where he made a student film called 111th Street (1963). He worked as a film writer and film editor (e.g., on the TV movie I'm a Fool (1977) starring Ron Howard). He wrote a screenplay adaptation of the 1965 autobiographical novel Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown, but it was never produced, the same fate met by his screenplay for his own novel The Man Who Lived in Inner Space. 

Bantam, Mass market original

Federbush died of cancer in Los Angeles on 4 September 1993. A third novel, reportedly on spontaneous human combustion, was left unfinished.