Jump to content

Randall Garrett

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Theotherandy (talk | contribs) at 19:35, 27 March 2008 (→‎The Gandalara Cycle with Vicki Ann Heydron: gave contents for The Gandalara Cycle I and added The Gandalara Cycle II, both based on looking at the books). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure sf, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet.

Biography and writing career

Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books—the novel Too Many Magicians and two short story collections—set in an alternate world where a joint British-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is himself partially modelled on Sherlock Holmes), elements that often appear in his shorter works. Michael Kurland would continue to write Lord Darcy stories.

Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of Hightower" (a pun on "garret"). The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett in conjunction with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips) was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

An inveterate punster (defining a pun as "the odor given off by a decaying mind"), he was a favorite guest at science fiction conventions and friend to many fans, especially in Southern California.

Garrett suffered an attack of encephalitis in the early 1980s and was not able to write after that; he spent the last years of his life in a coma.

In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series.

He was also ordained in the Old Catholic Church.[1]

Works

Series

Lord Darcy

  • Too Many Magicians (1979, magazine serialization 1966)
  • Murder and Magic (1979, collection of 1964-1973 stories)
  • Lord Darcy Investigates (1981, collection of 1974-1979 stories)
  • Lord Darcy (2002) (contains the contents of the three books above plus 2 uncollected stories, with minor editing to remove repetitions of the backstory)

with Robert Silverberg, as Robert Randall

with Laurence M. Janifer, as Mark Phillips

The Gandalara Cycle with Vicki Ann Heydron

Novels

Collections

Notable short fiction

  • Probability Zero (1944) first published science fiction story.
  • The Best Policy (1957), in which a smart Earthling manages to convince a reconnaissance group of hostile aliens who abduct him that the earthlings are far more advanced and superior race, and instead of a hostile takeover, they send humble ambassadors. The catch is the aliens have a perfect truth detector and the hero has to phrase every line carefully so that while being literally honest he can pull off such a huge lie.
  • Despoilers of the Golden Empire, in which he spun a pulp yarn of space flight, swordplay, and derring-do, only to reveal it to be a deception, an account of the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro with careful misdirection in the text.

Complete list of publications

Novels and anthologies

Novelles and Short stories

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Randall_Garrett&oldid=201394394"