Today, March 30, marks the birthday of two writers whose work deserves to stay in print, Chad Oliver (1928-1993) and Dennis Etchison (1943-2019). Oliver wrote science fiction and Etchison horror, but interstingly enough, both had connections to what has become known as the California school.

Chad Oliver

Chad Oliver was for years a faculty member in the Anthropology Department at the University of Texas. He was department chair twice. Oliver got his graduate degree at UCLA. It was shile there that he met some of the writers working in the area, such as Richard Matheson.

Oliver wasn’t there long enough to really be considered a member of the Califoronia school, although it was while he was in California that his work first began to appear in print. His first published story was “The Land of Lost Content” in 1950.

Oliver used his professional background for most of his fiction, and as a result, he is regarded as an athropological science fiction writer.

I met him once, at one of the Armadillocons in the early nineties. He was a tall, imposing person who was once of the nicest and personable people at that convention. NESFA published a two volume omnibus of his short fiction that is worth getting a copy of. The also published an omnibus of three novels with first contact as the theme, From Other Shores. It contained Shadows in the Sun, Unearthly Neighbors, and The Shores of Another Sea.

Chad Oliver only wrote six novels, but considering the time demands of an academic career, especially at an institution such as The University of Texas, that’s pretty good.

Dennis Etchison’s genre work was primarily as a short story writer in the horror field. He only published a handful of novels. Most of his books are collections. He would be an excellent candidate for Centipede Press’s series of Masters of the Weird Tale.

Etchison studied at the UCLA film school in the early 1960s. Much was his output was in the form of scripts and screenplays.

My memory says it was while he was there he took a writing class with Charles Beaumont as the instructor. After Beaumont’s death, William F. Nolan took over as instructor. The book where Etchison mentions that is in a box somewhere, so I can’t confirm it. If that’s not correct, someone please let me know in the comments.

Etchison first published short story was in 1961 with “Odd Boy Out”. His first collection should have been published in 1971, but the publsiher went bankrupt right before the publication date. Etchison’s first collect was The Dark Country, which was published in 1982. I read it years ago, but it wasn’t quite to my taste. I recently listened to the audiobook version while traveling, and my opinion was much higher. The Dark Country was critically acclaimed  when published and went a long way to establishing him as a major writer of the dark fantastic.

Etchison was also an editor. He edited five anthologies in addition to the three volume Masters of Darkness series, which was one of the high water marks of dark fantwsy and horror in the late eighties and early nineties.