The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel]
Page 19
Spencer gasped for air, trying to say something, anything. The other Spencer knelt down next to him and wiped a bit of sweat away from his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he placed something on Spencer's chest and left.
Spencer struggled to focus his eyes.
It was a perfect blue bellflower.
—The End—
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Mike Resnick
Mike was born on March 5, 1942. He sold his first article in 1957, his first short story in 1959, and his first book in 1962.
He attended the University of Chicago from 1959 through 1961, won 3 letters on the fencing team, and met and married Carol. Their daughter, Laura, was born in 1962, and has since become a writer herself, winning 2 awards for her romance novels and the 1993 Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer.
Mike and Carol discovered science fiction fandom in 1962, attended their first Worldcon in 1963, and 81 sf books into his career, Mike still considers himself a fan and frequently contributes articles to fanzines. He and Carol appeared in five Worldcon masquerades in the 1970s in costumes that she created, and won four of them.
Mike labored anonymously but profitably from 1964 through 1976, selling more than 200 novels, 300 short stories and 2,000 articles, almost all of them under pseudonyms, most of them in the “adult” field. He edited 7 different tabloid newspapers and a pair of men's magazines, as well.
In 1968 Mike and Carol became serious breeders and exhibitors of collies, a pursuit they continued through 1981. (Mike is still an AKC-licensed collie judge.) During that time they bred and/or exhibited 27 champion collies, and were the country's leading breeders and exhibitors during various years along the way.
This led them to purchase the Briarwood Pet Motel in Cincinnati in 1976. It was the country's second-largest luxury boarding and grooming establishment, and they worked full-time at it for the next few years. By 1980 the kennel was being run by a staff of 21, and Mike was free to return to his first love, science fiction, albeit at a far slower pace than his previous writing. They sold the kennel in 1993.
Mike's first novel in this “second career” was THE SOUL EATER, which was followed shortly by BIRTHRIGHT: THE BOOK OF MAN, WALPURGIS III, the 4-book TALES OF THE GALACTIC MIDWAY series, THE BRANCH, the 4-book TALES OF THE VELVET COMET series, and ADVENTURES, all from Signet. His breakthrough novel was the international bestseller SANTIAGO, published by Tor in 1986. Tor has since published STALKING THE UNICORN, THE DARK LADY, IVORY, SECOND CONTACT, PARADISE, PURGATORY, INFERNO, the Double BWANA/BULLY!, and the collection, WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE THE PLANET PLEASE SHUT OFF THE SUN? His most recent Tor releases were A MIRACLE OF RARE DESIGN, A HUNGER IN THE SOUL, THE OUTPOST, and the THE RETURN OF SANTIAGO.
Even at his reduced rate, Mike is too prolific for one publisher, and in the 1990s Ace published SOOTHSAYER, ORACLE and PROPHET, Questar published LUCIFER JONES, Bantam brought out the Locusbestselling trilogy of THE WIDOWMAKER, THE WIDOWMAKER REBORN, and THE WIDOWMAKER UNLEASHED, and del Rey published KIRINYAGA: A FABLE OR UTOPIA and LARA CROFT, TOMB RAIDER: THE AMULET OF POWER. He has recently completed A GATHERING OF WIDOWMAKERS for Meisha Merlin, DRAGON AMERICA for Phobos, and LADY WITH AN ALIEN for Watson-Guptill, and is working on STARSHIP: MUTINY for Pyr and THE MOEBIUS TRIP and A CLUB IN MONMARTRE for Watson-Guptill.
Beginning with SHAGGY B.E.M. STORIES in 1988, Mike has also become an anthology editor (and was nominated for a Best Editor Hugo in 1994 and 1995). His list of anthologies in print and in press totals more than 35, and includes ALTERNATE PRESIDENTS, ALTERNATE KENNEDYS, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN ORBIT, BY ANY OTHER FAME, DINOSAUR FANTASTIC, and CHRISTMAS GHOSTS, plus the recent STARS, co-edited with superstar singer Janis Ian.
Mike has always supported the “specialty press", and has numerous books and collections out in limited editions from such diverse publishers as Phantasia Press, Axolotl Press, Misfit Press, Pulphouse Publishing, Wildside Press, Dark Regions Press, NESFA Press, WSFA Press, Obscura Press, Farthest Star, and others. He recently agreed to become the science fiction editor for BenBella Books.
Mike was never interested in writing short stories early in his career, producing only 7 between 1976 and 1986. Then something clicked, and he has written and sold more than 140 stories since 1986, and now spends more time on short fiction than on novels. The writing that has brought him the most acclaim thus far in his career is the “Kirinyaga” series, which, with 64 major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction.
He's recently begun writing short non-fiction as well. He sold a 4-part series, “Forgotten Treasures", to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and is a regular columnist for Speculations ("Ask Bwana") the SFWA Bulletin ("The Resnick/Malzberg Dialogues"), and wrote a bi-weekly column for the late, lamented GalaxyOnline.com.
Carol has always been Mike's uncredited collaborator on his science fiction, but in the past few years they have sold two movie scripts—SANTIAGO and THE WIDOWMAKER, both based on Mike's books—and Carol is listed as his collaborator on those.
Readers of Mike's works are aware of his fascination with Africa, and the many uses to which he has put it in his science fiction. Mike and Carol have taken numerous safaris, visiting Kenya (4 times), Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Botswana, and Uganda, and have two more planned for the next four years. Mike edited the Library of African Adventure series for St. Martin's Press, and is currently editing The Resnick Library of African Adventure, and, with Carol as co-editor, The Resnick Library of Worldwide Adventure, for Alexander Books.
Since 1989, Mike has won five Hugo Awards (for “Kirinyaga", “The Manamouki", “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge", and “The 43 Antarean Dynasties", and “Travels With My Cats"), a Nebula Award (for “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge"), and has been nominated for 27 Hugos, 11 Nebulas, a Clarke (British), and six Seiun-shos (Japanese). He has also won a Seiun-sho, a Prix Tour Eiffel (French), 2 Prix Ozones (French), 10 HOmer Awards, an Alexander Award, a Golden Pagoda Award, a Hayakawa SF Award (Japanese), a Locus Award, 2 Ignotus Awards (Spanish), a Futura Award (Croatian), an El Melocoton Mechanico (Spanish), 2 Sfinks Awards (Polish), a Fantastyka Award (Polish), and has topped the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll six times, the Scifi Weekly Hugo Straw Poll three times, and the Asimov's Readers Poll four times. In 1993 he was awarded the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction, and in 2001 and 2004 he was named Fictionwise.com's Author of the Year in open competition with Dan Brown, Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, Louis L'Amour, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
David Gerrold
David Gerrold is known by most for the popular “Trouble With Tribbles” Star Trek episode. Also known for the Chtorr, Dingilliad and Star Wolf sagas or the books “When Harlie Was One", “The Martian Child” and more...
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-one books: thirteen novels of science fiction or fantasy, one YA novel, two thrillers, three story collections, and two books on writing. Her most recent books are PROBABILITY SPACE (Tor, 2002), the conclusion of a trilogy that began with PROBABILITY MOON and PROBABILITY SUN, CROSSFIRE (Tor, 2003), and NOTHING HUMAN (Golden Gryphon Press, 2003). The trilogy concerns quantum physics, a space war, and the nature of reality. CROSSFIRE, set in a different universe, explores various ways we might co-exist with aliens even though we never understand either them or ourselves very well. NOTHING HUMAN concerns a bleaker future, in which we have trashed Earth beyond the point of human habitability. So we genetically engineer our descendants—who may or may not be considered human.
Kress's short fiction has appeared in all the usual places. She has won three Nebulas: in 1985 for “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” in 1991 for the novella version of “Beggars In Spain,” w
hich also won a Hugo, and in 1998 for “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.” Her work has been translated into Swedish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Japanese, Croatian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Greek, Hebrew, and Russian. Kress is the monthly “Fiction” columnist for WRITER'S DIGEST MAGAZINE. She teaches regularly at Clarion.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Robert Scheckley
Mr. Sheckley wrote more than 15 novels and around 400 short stories; the actual total is uncertain since he was so prolific in his heyday, the 1950's and 60's, that magazine editors insisted he publish some stories under pseudonyms to avoid having his byline appear more than once in an issue. Four of his stories were made into films; the best known, “The Tenth Victim” (1965), starred Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Maplewood, N.J., Robert Sheckley joined the Army in 1946 after graduating from high school, and served in Korea. In 1951 he received an undergraduate degree from New York University and sold his first short story. Over the next two decades, he was a major force in the development of modern science fiction. His first collection of stories, published in 1954, was hailed as one of the finest debut volumes in the field. In the 1960's he found a wider market for his science fiction in magazines like Playboy. Many of his novels were well received, among them “Journey Beyond Tomorrow” (1962) and “Dimension of Miracles” (1968), but Mr. Sheckley was best known for his short stories.
At a time when science fiction was just starting to grapple with the social implications of technology—from atomic bombs to missile-carrying rockets—Mr. Sheckley turned a satirist's eye on the genre and its concerns. Like Ray Bradbury, he was interested in the scientific apparatus of science fiction—space travel, time travel, extrapolated futures—only so far as it served his purpose. While Mr. Bradbury poetically mourns the failure to live up to our dreams of the future, Mr. Sheckley mocked the self-delusions that lead to dreams in the first place. He reveled in the freedom the genre afforded him to dramatize the fears and anxieties of everyday life. When he wrote about the war between the sexes, he conjured a future in which disappointed lovers had the legal option of using real bullets to express their anger.
When he wrote about alienation as a state of mind, he sealed the reader in an endless loop of disaffection that reduced the outside world to a hallucination wrapped in an illusion. Because he leavened his darkest visions with wit and absurdist plotting, he is considered one of science fiction's seminal humorists, and a precursor to Douglas Adams, whose “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” (1979) seems to take place in a Sheckleyan universe. But Mr. Sheckley's work is darker than Mr. Adams's; the smiles he evokes leave a bitter taste on the lips. A better comparison might be to Kafka, a fabulist who could never understood why his friends didn't laugh when he read his stories to them. Mr. Sheckley's fiction has been translated into German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish and Lithuanian. His work is especially popular in Russia and Eastern Europe. Mr. Sheckley's marriages to his first four wives, Barbara Scadron, Ms. Kwitney, Abby Schulman and Jay Rothbell, ended in divorce. At the time of his death he was separated from his fifth wife, Gail Dana. Other survivors include a son, Jason, from his first marriage, a daughter, Alisa Kwitney, from his second marriage; a daughter, Anya, and a son, Jed, from his third marriage; his sister Joan Klein of New York; and three grandchildren.
Robert Sheckley passed away on the morning of December 9, 2005.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Brian Herbert
Brian Herbert, the author of numerous novels and short stories, has been critically acclaimed by leading reviewers in the United States and around the world. The eldest son of science fiction superstar Frank Herbert, Brian moved 23 times before graduating from high school. Finances were tight in those days, as his father (with success still years away) worked on and off as a newspaperman and sometimes solely as a writer, neither of which brought in enough money to support a family of three children, including Brian, his younger brother, Bruce, and their older sister, Penny.
Funds were in such short supply that Brian's mother, Beverly, would sometimes pick only a few bills out of a hat to be paid and disregard the rest. In one of the places they lived, a small shack on the Tacoma tide flats, the children slept on an unheated porch, and in another—a remote cabin reached by traversing a steep trail—their father heated the house by intentionally getting on mailing lists and then burning the junk mail. There were even years in which the children received no presents on Christmas Day.
Life was never dull, however. An impulsive, restless man, Frank Herbert constantly sought out new opportunities, fresh adventures. This included two writing sojourns with his family to Mexico, including one with fantasy author Jack Vance and another in an old Cadillac LaSalle hearse—the family car.
An honor student, Brian was skipped ahead, so that he graduated from high school at the age of 16. He married at a young age as well, and while a full-time student at UC Berkeley (where he received a BA in Sociology), he worked in order to support his wife, Jan, and their baby daughter, Julie. The marriage has lasted for more than three decades and has produced three daughters, Julie, Kimberly, and Margaux.
Brian has been involved in a wide variety of professions and endeavors, including work as an author and editor, a business manager, an inventor of board games, and as a creative consultant for television and for collectible card games. He did not begin his writing career until he was nearly 30 years old. Prior to that he worked as an insurance underwriter and agent, an award-winning encyclopedia salesman, a waiter, a busboy, a maid (not a typo), and a printer. He and his wife once owned a double-decker London bus, which they converted into an unusual gift shop. Brian also operated a mail-order record and tape business, in which he sold “golden oldies” music to remote regions of the world, including the Australian outback.
His first two books were humor collections, INCREDIBLE INSURANCE CLAIMS and CLASSIC COMEBACKS. After that a steady stream of novels ensued, including SIDNEY'S COMET, THE GARBAGE CHRONICLES, SUDANNA SUDANNA, MAN OF TWO WORLDS (with Frank Herbert), PRISONERS OF ARIONN, THE RACE FOR GOD (preliminary Nebula nominee in 1990), MEMORYMAKERS (with Marie Landis), and BLOOD ON THE SUN (with Marie Landis). Among his edited books are THE NOTEBOOKS OF FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE and SONGS OF MUAD'DIB.
When Brian was in his late 20s and early 30s he began to grow close to his father, a complex, enigmatic man. The son's effort to unravel the intriguing mysteries of his father began with a detailed journal that Brian maintained for years, chronicling the fascinating events of the Herbert family—a document which ultimately encompassed the tragic deaths of his mother and father, and which he expanded into a comprehensive biography of Frank Herbert—DREAMER OF DUNE. The quest to understand one's father—which Joseph Campbell has described as one of the epic hero journeys of mankind, continued as Brian studied the entire six volume DUNE series and created a massive DUNE CONCORDANCE. This would prove to be an invaluable reference book in the writing of additional DUNE books in the three-volume PRELUDE TO DUNE series, which Brian undertook with Kevin J. Anderson in 1998.
Today Brian and his sister Penny manage the magnificent legacy of their father's works, and through projects such as PRELUDE TO DUNE are opening new realms of Frank Herbert's vivid imagination to millions of his loyal fans.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Laura Resnick
Laura Resnick is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, the daughter of prolific science fiction author Mike Resnick. She was the winner of the John W. Campbell Award for the Best New Writer in Science Fiction for 1993. She also writes romance novels under the pseudonym Laura Leone.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Kay Kenyon
“I was raised in Duluth, where winters can freeze your eyes open unless you blink often enough. People who know me well say that this explains a lot a
bout me. I am energetic (you have to keep moving in a cold climate) and layers deep (think snow drifts up to the eaves.)
“I began my writing career as a copywriter at WDSM-TV. Moving to Seattle, I spent years in TV and radio, writing copy and voicing commercials. At some point I realized I was a better writer than actress, and began writing-science fiction.
“What else would I write? My father was a brilliant socialist and humanitarian, and my mother was a hard-working saint. We lived in a multi-plex where a neighbor hung himself in the attic and the rent was hard to scrape together. I believed in the possibility of better world. Though I never took much interest in politics, I was an idealist about humanity's fate and I thought science fiction could help.
“I still believe this. My early favorites were Kate Wilhelm and Robert Silverberg. (Think “Downward to the Earth.") I believe that what we can imagine has the power to change us; what evolves socially and scientifically begins with what we can conceive and hope for. And furthermore, science fiction is just so much fun!
“After living in Seattle for a few decades, my husband Tom and I moved to the sunny side of the state of Washington. We live in Wenatchee between the Columbia River and the Cascade foothills. I'm writing full time these days, but every once in a while one or more of our grown sons shows up and we drop everything. Tom and I share a love of motorcycles and the TV show American Chopper. Weekends often find us on the Harley exploring the desert country we've adopted. My cat prefers that I stay home and write. I try not to disappoint him too often.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *