Al Sarrantonio
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Al Sarrantonio (born May 25, 1952, in New York City) is an American horror and science fiction author who has published, over the past twenty-five years, more than forty books and sixty short stories. He has also edited numerous anthologies and has been called “a master anthologist” by Booklist.
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[edit] Background and education
Sarrantonio was born in New York City and grew up in Hicksville, on Long Island. He began his professional career at the age of 16 with a nonfiction appearance in the legendary Ray Palmer’s publication Flying Saucers. He continued to write throughout university, and in 1974, after graduation from Manhattan College with a B.A. in English, he attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop at Michigan State University. Other prominent attendees that year were Bruce Sterling and James Patrick Kelly.
[edit] Career
In 1976 Sarrantonio began a professional editing career at a major New York publishing house. His first short fiction, “Ahead of the Joneses,” appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1978, followed by a story in Heavy Metal magazine the following year. In 1980 he published 14 short stories. In 1982, after leaving publishing to become a full time writer, he began his first novel, The Worms, followed by Campbell Wood, Totentanz and The Boy with Penny Eyes. He quickly established himself in the horror field with such much-anthologized stories as “Pumpkin Head”, “The Man With Legs”, “Father Dear,” “Wish”, and “Richard’s Head,” (all of which appear in his first short story collection, Toybox). “Richard’s Head” brought him his first Bram Stoker Award nomination.
Sarrantonio is currently in the midst of a horror saga revolving around Halloween, which takes place in the fictional upstate New York town of Orangefield (novels to date: Hallows Eve and Horrorween, which incorporates three shorter Orangefield pieces: the short novel Orangefield, and [novelette|novelettes]] Hornets and The Pumpkin Boy). Other horror novels include Moonbane, October and Skeletons. He has also written Westerns (West Texas and Kitt Peak), mysteries (Cold Night and Summer Cool) and science fiction (the Edgar Rice Burroughs-inflected trilogy Haydn of Mars, Sebastian of Mars and Queen of Mars, omnibused as Masters of Mars by the Science Fiction Book Club, 2006).
Sarrantonio was book reviewer for Night Cry magazine, the short-lived digest-sized offshoot of the Twilight Zone Magazine, and has been a critic and columnist for other publications. Because he has worn so many hats (novelist, short story writer, critic, essayist,editor, anthologist) and worked in so many genres (he has even edited three collections of humor, including The National Lampoon Treasure of Humor) his work, always interesting and often brilliant, has not, perhaps, gained the attention it deserves.
[edit] Select awards and honors
Winner:
- 2000: Bram Stoker Award – 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense
Nominated:
- 2002: Locus Award – Best Editor
- 2000: International Horror Guild Award - Toybox
- 2000: World Fantasy Award – 999 New Stories of Horror and Suspense
[edit] Select bibliography
[edit] Novels
- Horrorween (Leisure, 2006)
- Queen of Mars (Ace, 2006)
- Sebastian of Mars (Ace, 2005)
- Haydn of Mars (Ace, 2005)
- Hallows Eve (Leisure, 2004; Cemetery Dance, 2006)
- Orangefield (Cemetery Dance, 2002)
- Return (ROC, 1997)
- Journey (ROC, 1997)
- Exile (ROC, 1996)
- Summer Cool (Walker, 1993)
- Kitt Peak (Evans, 1993; Leisure, 2006)
- Skeletons (Bantam, 1992)
- House Haunted (Bantam, 1991)
- West Texas (Evans, 1990; Leisure, 2006)
- October (Bantam, 1990)
- Moonbane (Bantam, 1989)
- Cold Night (TOR, 1989)
- The Boy with Penny Eyes (TOR, 1987)
- Totentanz (TOR, 1985)
- Campbell Wood (Doubleday, 1986; Berkley, 1987)
- The Worms (Doubleday, 1985; Berkley, 1988)
[edit] Novelettes
[edit] Short Story Collections
- Hornets and Others (Cemetery Dance, 2005)
- A Little Yellow Book of Fevered Stories (Borderlands Press, 2004)
- Toybox (Cemetery Dance, 1999; Leisure, 2003)
[edit] Books Edited
- Flights: Extreme Tales of Fantasy (ROC, 2004)
- Redshift: Extreme Tales of Speculative Fiction (ROC, 2001)
- 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense (Avon, 1999; Perennial, 2001)
- 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (with Martin H. Greenberh, Barnes & Noble, 1993)
- The National Lampoon Treasury of Humor (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1991)
- The Fireside Treasury of New Humor (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1989)
- The Fireside Treasury of Great Humor (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1987)
