Al Sarrantonio

Al Sarrantonio
Born May 25, 1952 (1952-05-25) (age 59)
New York City, United States
Occupation Writer, Editor, Publisher
Nationality American
Period 1968-current
Genres Horror fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mysteries, Westerns
www.alsarrantonio.com

Al Sarrantonio (born May 25, 1952, in New York City) is an American horror and science fiction author who has published, over the past thirty-five years, more than forty-five books and eighty short stories. He has also edited numerous anthologies and has been called "brilliant" and "a master anthologist" by Booklist.

Contents

Background and education

Sarrantonio was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. He began his professional career at the age of 16 with a nonfiction appearance in one of legendary editor Ray Palmer’s publications. 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. Another prominent attendee that year was Bruce Sterling.

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: Halloweenland, Hallows Eve and Horrorween, the last of which incorporates three shorter Orangefield pieces: the short novel Orangefield, and novelettes Hornets and The Pumpkin Boy). Other horror novels include Moonbane, October, House Haunted 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, publisher, anthologist) and worked in so many genres (he has even edited three collections of humor, including The National Lampoon Treasury of Humor) his work, always interesting and often brilliant, has not, perhaps, gained the attention it deserves.

Select awards and honors

Winner:

Nominated:

Select bibliography

Novels

The Orangefield Cycle

The "Five Worlds" science fiction trilogy

The "Masters of Mars" science fiction trilogy

Babylon 5 series

Short Story Collections

"Summer"
"Sleepover"
"Eels"
"Letters From Camp"
"Roger in the Womb"
"The Return of Mad Santa"
"Baby Boss and the Underground Hamsters"
"Trail of the Chromium Bandits"
"The Man in the Other Car"
"Hedges"
"The Silly Stuff"
"The New Kid"
"Ahead of the Jonses"
"The Artist in the Small Room Above"
"The Dancing Foot"
"Liberty"
"Dust"
"The Pumpkin Boy"
"The Ropy Thing"
"The Only"
"The Beat"
"In the Corn"
"Two"
"The Coat"
"The Haunting of Y-12"
"Billy the Fetus"
"Stars"
"Bags"
"The Red Wind"
"The Green Face"
"White Lightning"
"The Glass Man"
"Violets"
"The Quiet Ones"
"Hornets"
"Preface"
"Father Dear"
"The Ropy Thing"
"The Electric Fat Boy"
"Sleepover"
"In the Corn"
"Stars"
"The New Kid"
"Pumpkin Head"
"Pumpkin Head"
"The Man With Legs"
"The Spook Man"
"Wish"
"Under My Bed"
"The Big House"
"Bogy"
"The Corn Dolly"
"The Electric Fat Boy"
"Snow"
"Garden of Eden"
"The Dust"
"Father Dear"
"Children of Cain"
"Red Eve"
"Pigs"
"Richard's Head"
"Boxes"

Anthologies containing stories by Al Sarrantonio

Books Edited by Al Sarrantonio

Magazine appearances

Comic book adaptions

External links