Ray Nelson

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Radell "Ray" Faraday Nelson (born October 3, 1931 in Schenectady , New York ) is an American science fiction writer and cartoonist.

Life

Robot with robot dog from the 1939 World's Fair

Nelson's parents are electronics engineer Walter Huges Nelson and teacher Marie Nelson, née Reed. Nelson describes the impression of a futuristic future world at the 1939 World's Fair in New York as a formative experience . He began to work at a young age, first from 1947 for Inland Lakes Flying Service in Cadillac , Michigan , then from 1950 for the Hudson Motor Company in Detroit and from 1951 as a sign painter in Chicago . In 1954 he studied art history at the Chicago Art Institute and also worked as a printer for the Northside Poster Companyin Chicago and 1955/1956 as a commercial artist for the Artcraft Poster Company in Oakland , California. In 1957 he went to France, studied French at the Alliance française and in 1958 art at the Sorbonne . In 1959 he made translations for Jean Linard, a draftsman and editor of SF fanzines who lived in Vesoul . During this time Nelson and Michael Moorcock made money smuggling Henry Miller's books that were banned in Britain , for which Nelson was expelled and Moorcock was arrested.

Nelson met the Norwegian Kirsten Enge († 2011) in France and married in 1957. In 1958 his only son was born. It was Nelson's third marriage, previously he was married to Perdita Lilly (1951–1955), who was the subject of Nelson's first book publication, the poetry collection Perdita: Songs of Love, Sex, and Self Pity . His second marriage was to Lisa Mullikin (1955–1957).

In 1960 Nelson returned to the United States with his young family, graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree in the same year and trained as a computer programmer the following year. In 1963, his first science fiction story Turn Off the Sky (German as Schalt den Himmel ab ) appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction . In his own opinion the best thing he ever wrote. Since then he has tried to write something similar: "It's hard to start at the top and then work your way down." Harlan Ellison spoke of the "first story of the New Wave ", at the same time it was so controversial that a Hugo -Nomination has been withdrawn.

The same year as Turn Off the Sky and the short story appeared Eight O'Clock in the Morning (German as eight o'clock in the morning ) that the submission of John Carpenter's movie you live (1988). In 1967, Nelson's first novel, The Ganymede Takeover , was published in collaboration with Philip K. Dick , in which worm-like invaders from Ganymede take over the earth. The novel was as uneasy mixture of Dick's obsessive interest in the ambivalent nature of reality and a space opera - Plot described.

Nelson's second SF novel Blake's Progress (1975) tells as part of an alternative story in which the poet and painter William Blake embarks on a journey through time with his more talented (and more personable) wife Kate . Also to be mentioned is The Prometheus Man from 1982, which describes a dystopian future society in which only a few people have work and a large majority of the "unemployed" are penned and administered in camps, which leads to unrest.

Nelson also wrote a number of pornographic novels for Greenleaf in the early 1970s under the pseudonym RN Elson.

Propeller beanie

Apart from his literary achievements, Nelson based his claim to immortality on the invention of the propeller beanie , the umbrella cap decorated with a propeller, an emblematic attribute of the young SF fan. Nelson says:

"Centuries after all of my writings have been forgotten, a propeller beanie will still be rotating somewhere in the galaxy."

The invention is said to have been made when Nelson was in 10th grade. In the early 1980s, Nelson and artist Dave Rike founded the Second International Beanie Brigade , a more virtual group of propeller hats.

In the years after 1967 Nelson worked as a lecturer and teacher in various institutions, first at Berkeley Free University (1967/1968), then as the founder of the Microcosm Fiction Workshop and from 1968 as a teacher at the Adams Junior High School in El Cerrito .

From 1977 to 1978 Nelson was President of the California Writers Club and in 1983 received the Jack London Award presented by the latter . In 2003 he received the Rotsler Memorial Fanzine Artist Award for his artistic contributions to SF fandom , in 2007 the Emperor Norton Award and in 2014 the Fan Activity Achievement Award for his life's work as an SF fan.

bibliography

Novels
  • The Ganymede Takeover (1967, with Philip K. Dick)
    • English: The Invaders of Ganymede. Bastei Lübbe Science Fiction Paperback # 21082, 1976, ISBN 3-404-05193-9 .
  • The Agony of Love (1969)
  • Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1969)
  • How to Do it (1970, as RN Elson)
  • Black Pussy (1970, as RN Elson)
  • Sex Happy Hippy (1970, as RN Elson)
  • The DA's Wife (1970, as RN Elson)
  • Blake's Progress (1975, also as Timequest , 1985)
  • The Ecolog (1977)
  • The Prometheus Man (1982)
  • Dogheaded Death (1989)
  • Virtual Zen (1996)
Poetry
  • Perdita: Songs of Love, Sex, and Self Pity (1960?)
Short stories
  • Turn Off the Sky (1963)
  • Eight O'Clock in the Morning (1963)
    • German: exactly eight o'clock in the morning. In: Charlotte Winheller (Ed.): Music from space . Heyne General Series # 286, 1964.
  • Food (1965)
  • The Great Cosmic Donut of Life (1965)
  • Strange Mara (1971)
  • The Escapist (1972)
  • Time Travel for Pedestrians (1972)
  • A Song on the Rising Wind (1974)
  • The City of the Crocodile (1974)
  • Who's the Red Queen? (1976)
  • Flesh Pearl (1976)
  • Then Beggars Could Ride (1976, Beggars # 1)
  • The Revolt of the Unemployables (1978, Beggars # 2)
  • Nightfall on the Dead Sea (1978)
  • Dimension of Horror (1979, Richard Blade Adventures # 30, as Jeffrey Lord)
  • Valse Triste (1980)
  • Story (1982)
  • I Goddess (1990)
  • The Devil's Tune (2004)
  • The Way of the Tulpa II (2017)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Linard , BnF entry
  2. ↑ It is the best thing I ever wrote. I've spent the rest of my life since then trying, without success, to write a better one. It's rough to start at the top, and work down. Quoted from: Robert Reginald : Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Gale, Detroit 1979, ISBN 0-8103-1051-1 , p. 1014.
  3. ↑ Stephen H. Goldman: Nelson, Ray . In: James Gunn : The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Viking, New York et al. a. 1988, ISBN 0-670-81041-X , p. 328.
  4. ↑ Propeller Beanie in Fancyclopedia 3 .
  5. ↑ Centuries after all my writings have been forgotten, in some far corner of the galaxy, a beaniecopter will still be spinning. Quoted from the short biography on Nelson's website, accessed June 10, 2018.
  6. ^ Second International Beanie Brigade in Fancyclopedia 3 .
  7. ↑ http://calwriters.org/awards/
personal data
SURNAME Nelson, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nelson, Radell Faraday (real name); Lord, Jeffrey (pen name); Nelson, Ray Faraday (alternative spelling); Nelson, R. Faraday (alternative spelling); Nelson, RF (alternative spelling); Elson, RN (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer and cartoonist
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Schenectady , New York