 In the 1980s Dowling met Jack Vance after doing critical work on his oeuvre (Vance later named a planet after him in the novel "Throy"); Fritz Leiber; and Harlan Ellison, with whom he travelled in the Australian outback.Dowling went on to co-edit (with Richard Delap and Gil Lamont) Ellison's large single-author collection "The Essential Ellison" (1987; revised/expanded edition 2000).Some of Dowling's reviews and critical pieces which first appeared in "Science Fiction" magazine in the 1980s have seen reprint, including "Catharsis Among the Byzantines