Today, December 16, marks two birthdays, Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Randall Garrett (1927-1987), and Phillip K. Dick (1928-1982).
I’m not going to talk much about Clarke. He was a pedophile. And while he wrote some stories that have achieved classic or near-classic status, I’ve enjoyed some of his work and will read more of it.
But I’m not going to honor that sort of a person with a detailed profile, even with the limited details I put in these posts.
Randall Garrett was a top name back in the late fifties and early sixties. He took a break from writing in the late sixties and early seventies before returning to writing in the late seventies. That break probably didn’t help his reputation any. The reading public is fickle, and how soon they forget.
Garrett wrote some novels and stories in collaboration with Robert Silverberg. I’ve not read any of them, athough I do have copies of some.
Where Garrett made his mark was in a series of mysteries about a magician names Lord Darcy. These were set in an alternate timeline in which magic worked. They were originally published in Analog, of all places. Garrett started them before his hiatus and returned to the series when he resumed writing.
The Darcy series were legitimate mysteries, with clues and suspects and someone in the role of detective.
He also collaborated with his wife, Vicki Ann Heydron, on the seven volume Gandalara series. I’ve not read these, but they look like a lot of fun in a sword and sorcery/sword and sandal kind of way.
He has faded into obscurity, which is a sahme. randall garrett was one of the best writers from the middle of the last century.
Garrett’s work was mostly at shorter lengths and for the most part remains uncollected. It would be nice if someone published an omnibus of hsi work that included more than must the stories that have been reprinted. There’d enough stories to fill multiple volumes.
Randall Garrett is my favorite of the three writers whose birthday is today.
Phillip K. Dick needs no introduction here, as I’m sure most of you are familiar with his work.
If you haven’t read any of it, you’ve probably seen at least one film adaptation of his work.
Phillip K. Dick was highly prolific at both short and novel lengths.
He was a different kind of writer from most of the ones who either preceded him or were his contemporaries. There’s a level of paranoiz in his fiction that was quite new in the fifties and early sixties.
Dick’s best known works are Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?, which became the basis of the film Bladerunner, and The Man in the High Castle. I’ve read both of them, but my favorite of the novels he wrote was Time Out of Joint.
Dick’s short fiction was, in my mind, a little better than his novels, although I am certainly open to revising that assessment. It’s been a while since I read his work.
Fortunately, his short fiction isn’t hard to find, and neither are his novels. They are available in priint, electroinc, and audio formats.