F. Paul Wilson

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F. Paul Wilson

F. Paul Wilson at a book signing in 2007
Born Francis Paul Wilson
May 17, 1946(1946-05-17)
Jersey City, New Jersey, United States Flag of the United States
Occupation Author

Francis Paul Wilson (b. May 17, 1946) is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is also a part-time practicing family physician. He made his first sales in 1970 to Analog and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. In 1981 he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep, and helped define the field throughout the rest of the decade. In the 1990s he became a true genre hopper, moving from science fiction to horror to medical thrillers and branching into interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992-1996.

Among Wilson's best-known characters is the anti-hero Repairman Jack, an urban mercenary introduced in the 1984 New York Times bestseller, The Tomb. Unwilling to start a series character at the time, Wilson refused to write a second Repairman Jack novel until Legacies in 1998. Since then he has written one per year along with side trips into vampire fiction (the retro Midnight Mass), science fiction (Sims), and even a New Age thriller (The Fifth Harmonic).

Throughout his writing – especially in his earlier science fiction works (most notably An Enemy of the State) – Wilson has included explicitly libertarian political philosophy which extends to his "Repairman Jack" series. He won the first Prometheus Award in 1979 for his novel Wheels Within Wheels and one of the most recent (2004) for Sims. The Libertarian Futurist Society has also honored Wilson with their Hall of Fame Award for Healer (in 1990) and An Enemy of the State (in 1991).

Wilson is a noted fan of H. P. Lovecraft.[citation needed]

Like most American science fiction writers directly or indirectly influenced by Campbell's view of the genre as a literature of ideas,[citation needed] Wilson makes use of his work to speculatively explore trends and technologies as they manifest. A prominent example is his novel An Enemy of the State (published in 1980), which was written during the 1970s, an era that saw stagflation develop in the U.S. economy. In that period, inflation in the United States reached its highest level since World War II, due to the issue of fiat money by the Federal Reserve. In Wilson's novel, he extends the "squeeze" of confiscatory taxation and currency debauchment to a conclusion involving a Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation that brings down a galactic empire – and from which humanity's only hope of rescue arrives in the form of an anarchist conspiracy to complete the Empire's downfall and replace that government's "official counterfeit" with honest money. Throughout the book, Wilson runs chapter headings quoting from economic works such as Fiat Money Inflation in France[1].

The Keep was later made into a movie and there is much talk of a Repairman Jack film based on one of Wilson's novels. [[2]]

Hate to say it (being a devout believer in Murphy’s law), but The Tomb looks like it’s on its way to being filmed this year. Last October, after seven years of development, numerous options, five screenwriters, and eight scripts, Beacon Films ("Air Force One," "Thirteen Days," "Spy Game," etc) finally bought film rights. Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista will be partnering and distributing the film here and abroad.The film will be called "Repairman Jack" (the idea is to make him a franchise character).

His short stories "Foet," "Traps" and "Lipidleggin" were filmed as short films and collected on the DVD "OTHERS: The Tales of F. Paul Wilson."

His short story "Pelts" was made into an episode of Masters of Horror.

Contents

[edit] Novels

[edit] The Adversary Cycle

[edit] Repairman Jack

  1. The Tomb (1984), ISBN 0-918372-11-9 (re-released in 2004 under its original title, Rakoshi, by Borderlands Press)
  2. "A Day in the Life" (short story) (1989)
  3. "The Long Way Home" (short story) (1992)
  4. "Home Repairs" (short story) (1996) (later incorporated into Conspiracies)
  5. "The Wringer" (short story) (1996)
  6. "The Last Rakosh" (1990) (later incorporated into All The Rage, then in 2006 as revised hardcover and paperback editions)
  7. Legacies (1998), ISBN 0-312-86414-0
  8. Conspiracies (1999), ISBN 0-312-86797-2
  9. All The Rage (2000), ISBN 0-312-86796-4
  10. Hosts (2001), ISBN 0-312-87866-4
  11. The Haunted Air (2002), ISBN 0-312-87868-0
  12. Gateways (2003), ISBN 0-7653-0690-5
  13. Crisscross (2004), ISBN 0-7653-0691-3
  14. Infernal (2005), ISBN 0-7653-1275-1
  15. Harbingers (2006), ISBN 0-7653-1276-X
  16. "Interlude at Duane's" (short story) (2006) (available exclusively in the James Patterson-edited anthology Thriller)
  17. Bloodline (2007), ISBN 0-7653-1706-0
  18. "Do-Gooder" (short short) (2007) (a 200-copy limited one-sheet "short short")
  19. By The Sword (2008)

[edit] Young Repairman Jack

  1. Secret Histories (young adult novel) (2008)
  2. Secret Vengeance (young adult novel) (2009)
  3. Secret Circles (young adult novel) (2009)

[edit] LaNague Federation

  1. An Enemy of the State (1980), ISBN 0-385-15422-4 (reprinted in 2005, includes "Lipidleggin'" and "Ratman" ISBN 0-9766544-2-3)
  2. Wheels Within Wheels (1978), ISBN 0-385-14397-4 (revised/reprinted in 2005, includes "Higher Centers" and "The Man with the Anteater" ISBN 0-9766544-3-1)
  3. Healer (1976), ISBN 0-385-11548-2 (reprinted in 2005, includes "To Fill the Sea and Air" ISBN 0-9766544-1-5)

[edit] Other Books

[edit] Interviews

[edit] External links

  • The Keep - Page about the film The Keep. Includes interviews with F. Paul Wilson, Michael Mann and Enki Bilal, creator of the visual given to "Molasar" the film version of The Keep's villain.
  • A comical parody page about the movie adaptation of The Keep