Lewis Shiner

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Lewis Gordon Shiner (born December 30, 1950 in Eugene , Oregon ) is an American writer, best known for writing science fiction . In 1994 he received the World Fantasy Award for the novel Glimpses .

Life

In his youth, the family moved often because his father was employed as an archaeologist in different places. For three years the family lived in Globe , Arizona , then in Santa Fe , followed by a longer stay in Europe and Sudan , where excavations took place on the occasion of the flooding by the Aswan Dam . Eventually his parents sent him to a private school in Dallas .

In an accident with a hand-held circular saw in 1966, he sustained an injury to his left hand with protracted consequences and severe pain, which was treated with Demerol , which led to addiction. He had wanted to become a rock and roll guitarist, the finger injury made that impossible, which is why he switched to a drummer . Music, and especially rock'n'roll, forms the background to several of Shiner's stories.

After school, Shiner had begun to study Russian at Southern Methodist University (SMU), but with little inclination or success, which is why he dropped out of studies and earned a living in construction for a while and played in a band on the side. In 1971 he began to study again at SMU, now English and with some success, at least up to undergraduate , after which he turned back to music, then worked in a record store and finally began to write seriously in 1974. When his first story, Tinker's Damn, was finally accepted by GALILEO magazine and published in 1977, he had since found himself forced to take a job again, this time in the nascent computer industry.

Eventually he moved to Austin , Texas , where he joined the Turkey City Writer’s , a group of science fiction writers who criticized one another's work in workshops, including Lisa Tuttle , who helped create the story Stuff of Dreams 1981 appeared in the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , edited by Edward L. Ferman , which marked a turning point in Shiner's previously very sluggish writing career.

In 1981 he married Edith Beumer, then a film student who lived in the Austin neighborhood. Shiner stopped drinking and started showing up at conventions . In 1978 he met the writer Joe Lansdale at the World Fantasy Convention in Fort Worth . Now he became friends with John Kessel , Karen Joy Fowler and Jim Blaylock . He also became acquainted with Bruce Sterling and through him came into contact with the emerging cyberpunk trend .

Shiner decided to revise a novel project that had been left behind, which then resulted in his first published novel Frontera (1984). It is about an expedition to Mars , which, on behalf of one of the global mega-corporations that now control the fate of mankind, is to establish contact with a group of colonists in order to bring a powerful new technology developed there into the hands of the group - by whatever means. The novel was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards and was a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Award .

Shiner's second novel Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) goes back to ideas that he developed during a lengthy stay in Mexico and the fascination he experienced there with the Yucatan jungle and the forgotten cities of the Maya . The novel is about the search of the reporter John Carmichael and the anthropologist Thomas Yates for the brother of Yates who has disappeared in the Mexican jungle, a rock musician who, under the guidance of a shaman , experiments with magic mushrooms that do not simply cause visions and hallucinations, but send them back to the consumer in the time of the Mayans. This novel was also nominated for the Nebula and the Locus Award.

In 1990 Shiner was a lecturer at the Clarion West Writers' Workshop , a renowned workshop for budding science fiction writers. In the same year his novel Slam was published , in which the protagonist's marriage falls apart, just like Shiner's marriage at that time.

The novel Glimpses (1993), for which Shiner received the World Fantasy Award , is also about a journey into the past, but now the past golden era of rock music, in which the protagonist Ray Shackleford takes a spiritual journey into the time of Brian Wilson , Jim Morrison , Jimi Hendrix and of course the Beatles and the Beach Boys , where he finds their lost or never realized works and gives them life. Despite the World Fantasy Award, the novel was not a financial success and Shiner was again forced to take a full-time job in the computer industry.

After Glimpses , Shiner turned away from the genres of science fiction and fantasy. In 1999, Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story was published , the story of a young woman trying to find her way into the music industry, which reflects similar problems in Shiner's career as a writer. Little followed for a few years. From 2008 Shiner's novels were published by Subterranean Press , most recently Outside the Gates of Eden (2019), in which music is once again the topic - the 1960s, the Summer of Love and what became of the dreams and utopias of the Woodstock generation , demonstrated by the fate of two friends. His older novels were also reprinted by Subterranean Press . In 2007, faced with the decline of the magazine market in the US and the difficulty of publishing short stories adequately, Shiner set up the Fiction Liberation Front website , where he made his short stories and novels available for download under a free license .

In 1983 Shiner was the editor of Modern Stories magazine . He was also the editor of the anthology When the Music's Over (1991) and was involved in the Wild Cards project directed by George RR Martin , for which he wrote several short stories and contributed to the central figure of Fortunato, a pimp gifted with telepathic and telekinetic powers.

bibliography

Novels
  • Frontera (1984)
  • Wild Cards 3: Jokers Wild (1987, with Edward Bryant , Leanne C. Harper, George RR Martin , John J. Miller, Walton Simons, and Melinda M. Snodgrass )
  • Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988)
  • Slam (1990)
  • Glimpses (1993)
  • Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story (1999)
  • Black & White (2008)
  • Dark Tangos (2011)
  • Outside the Gates of Eden (2019)
Collections
  • Nine Hard Questions About the Nature of the Universe (1990)
  • The Edges of Things (1991)
  • Private Eye Action As You Like It (1998, with Joe R. Lansdale )
  • Love in Vain (2001)
  • Collected Stories (2010)
  • Heroes and Villains (2017)
Short stories
  • Tinker's Damn (1977)
  • Black as the Night (1979, with Joe R. Lansdale)
  • Deep Without Pity (1980)
  • Kings of the Afternoon (1980)
  • Rake-Off (1980)
  • Stuff of Dreams (1981)
    • German: Trip to the dream world. In: Ronald M. Hahn (Ed.): In the fifth year of travel. Heyne (Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4005), 1983, ISBN 3-453-30942-1 .
  • Blood Relations (1981)
  • Tommy and the Talking Dog (1982)
  • Brujo (1982)
  • Snowbirds (1982)
  • The Circle (1982)
  • Promises (1982)
  • Things That Go Quack in the Night (1983, with Edith Shiner)
    • English: croaking in the night. In: HJ Alpers (ed.): Companions of the night. Moewig (Moewig Phantastica # 1821), 1985, ISBN 3-8118-1821-X .
  • Man Drowning (1983, with Joe R. Lansdale)
  • Mystery Train (1983)
  • Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1983)
  • Plague (1983)
  • Deserted Cities of the Heart (1984)
  • Twilight Time (1984)
  • Till Human Voices Wake Us (1984)
  • Stompin 'at the Savoy (1985)
  • The War at Home (1985)
    • German: The war at home. 1988.
  • Mozart in Mirrorshades (1985, with Bruce Sterling )
    • German: Mozart with mirror glasses. In: Bruce Sterling (Ed.): Spiegelschatten. Heyne (Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4544), 1988, ISBN 3-453-03133-4 .
  • Jeff Beck (1986)
  • Cabracan (1986)
  • Dancers (1987)
    • German: dancer. In: Michael Nagula (ed.): Atomic Avenue. Heyne (Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 4704), 1990, ISBN 3-453-04287-5 .
  • Epilogue: Third Generation (1987)
  • The Long, Dark Night of Fortunato (1987)
  • Pennies from Hell (1987)
  • Rebels (1987)
  • Six Flags over Jesus (1987, with Edith Shiner)
  • Odd Man Out (1988)
  • Zero Hour (1988)
  • Love in Vain (1988)
  • Oz (1988)
  • Gold (1989)
  • The Gene Drain (1989)
  • His Girlfriend's Dog (1989)
  • Steam Engine Time (1989)
  • Kidding Around (1990)
  • Language (1990)
  • Match (1990)
  • Omphalos (1990)
  • Scales (1990)
  • Soldier, Sailor (1990)
  • White City (1990)
  • Wild for You (1990)
  • Horses (1991)
  • Fractal Geometry (1991)
  • Relay (1991)
  • The Apparition (1991)
  • The Kiss (1991)
  • Riders (1991)
  • Dirty Work (1992)
  • Sticks (1992)
  • Voodoo Child (1993)
  • Secrets (1993)
  • Sitcom (1995)
  • Castles Made of Sand (1997)
  • Like the Gentle Rain (1997)
    • German: Like warm rain. In: Ronald M. Hahn (Ed.): The Mars Princess. Heyne (Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy # 6330), 1999, ISBN 3-453-15663-3 .
  • Flagstaff (1998)
  • The Killing Season (1998)
  • Prodigal Son (1998)
  • Lizard Men of Los Angeles (1999)
  • The Tale of Mark the Bunny (1999)
  • Primes (2000)
  • The Best Part of Making Up (2001)
  • Perfidia (2004)
  • Golfing Vietnam (2007)
  • The Long Ride Out (2007)
  • Straws (2007)
  • Ceremony (2008)
  • The Death of Che Guevara (2009)
  • A Box of Thunder (2011)
  • Canto MCML (2012)
  • Application (2012)
  • Doctor Helios (2013)
  • Friedrich the Snow Man (2013)
  • The Black Sun (2014)
  • Doglandia (2017)
  • The Next (2017)
Anthology (as editor)
  • When the Music's Over (1991)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lewis Shiner's Autobiography , accessed August 9, 2019.
  2. ↑ Review of Frontera in the Speculiction blog, accessed on August 10, 2019.
  3. ↑ Manifesto of the Fiction Liberation Front , accessed August 11, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Shiner, Lewis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shiner, Lewis Gordon (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Eugene , Oregon