In keeping with the theme of writers who were once prominent but have been to a large degree forgotten, or at least neglected, I’m goinmg to write about two writers whose namaes might be familiar to you: Wlater M. Miller, Jr., and Tom Reamy. Both were born on January 23.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

First, Wlater M. Miller, Jr. (1923-1996). To the extent that he is remembered today, W;ter M. Miller, Jr. is known as the author of the classic post-nuclear holocaust novel A Cnaticle for Leibowitz. An episodic tale of a group of monks who preserve knowledge, only to end up creating the seeds of the next holocausts, it is widely regarded as a classic.

After Miller’s death, a sequel was published, St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which was finished by Terry Bisson. I haven’t read that one, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first one when I read it in my 20s.

Miller primarily wrote during the 1950s. He produced a rather significant body of work in short fiction. Most of it remaiins uncollected. Maybe because so much of it was published in the second tier magazines rather than Galaxy, F&SF, and Astounding, although he did have some work show up in the top markets. There have been several collections of Miller’s short fiction over the years, but most of them reuse stories in the other books.

MIller won one of the earliest Hugo Awards for his novella, “The Darfstellar”, which was published in the January 1955 issue of Astounding. I read it in the first volume of The Hugo Winners, way back in ninth grade. I remember very little about it except that it involved the theater in some way and the protagonist’s landlord kept calling him a “bom”. I did enjoy the story.

The best place to look for his work would be in The Best of Wlater M. Miller, Jr. This was one of the Pocket Books Best of series, not the Del Rey series. There was also a Science Fiction Book Club edition, but I’ve never seen a copy, and until I started writing this post didn’t know one existed.

I’m not sure why MIller quit writing. He certainly could have had a long career, I suppose. I wish someone would put together a retrospective of his work. He seems like the sort of writer NESFA would publish.

Tom Reamy

Another writer who had a short career, not because he stopped writing but because he died just has he was starting to see some success, was Tom Reamy (1935-1977). I’ve written about Reamy before. He was born and is buried in a (very) small town less that half an hour from where I currently live. Although Reamy grew up in Texas, he lived a number of years of his adult life in Kansas, where much of his work is set.

His short fiction was collected in San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories in 1979. Last year, Subterranean published Under the Hollywood Sign, which is the most complete collection we’ll probably ever see of his work unless some unpublished stories turn up.

I had read a few of his stories in high school in the issues of F&SF where they originally appeared and for the most part liked them. I was reading through the new collection last summer and early fall in  the order they are in the book. Not all of them were my cup of tea, although Reamy’s writing was powerful enough to keep me reading when I might otherwise have stopped since some of the stories weren’t to my taste.

Reamy died before the publication of his first novel, Blind Voices. This book has been compared to the work of Ray Bradbury, and rightfully so. It concerns a carnival that comes to a small Kansas town in the fall of 1929. Some of the farmers discuss the stock market crash.

I really liked this one a lot. (Well, except for one scene. Really? You had to go there?} And it did remind me of Bradbury. There’s the sinister carnival with the dark secrets, the small town on the prairie, and the time period. While not an exact copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes, Blind Voices certainly pays homage to the book. I don’t know if Reamy consciously meant for it to be a homage, or if he had ever read Bradbury. I can’t imagine that he wasn’t familiar with Ray’s work. Valancourt is either going to reprint Blind Voices or perhaps by now already has. I’m not going to buy that edition because I have several paperback copies, and also because I think the cover art on the Valancourt edition sucks.

Howard Waldrop and I discussed Reamy more than once at Armadillcon, as did Willie Siros. Tom was friends with both Howard and Willie, and they were able to make Reamy more of an individual in my mind.

Reamy’s career was just getting started when he passed away. I have no doubt that if he had lived, he would have gone on to become a major fantasy writer.