| Will Murray (writer) | |
|---|---|
| Born | William Murray April 28, 1953 |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer |
| Notable works | Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Doc Savage The Destroyer Squirrel Girl |
Will Murray (born April 28, 1953) is the author of more than fifty novels, a scholar of pulp fiction and a writer of numorous comic books. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms.
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Murray is the literary executor for the estate of Lester Dent, the creator of Doc Savage, and has published eight Doc Savage novels from Dent's outlines under Dent's pseudonym, Kenneth Robeson,[1] the most recent of which, The Desert Demons, is the first release in Altus Press's new Wild Adventures of Doc Savage series. He was one of the ghostwriters for The Destroyer series, writing or co-writing more than 40 of the novels.[2] He has written Cthulhu Mythos stories, including a pair of stories about Nug and Yeb, the Twin Blasphemies, and contributed single novels in the Executioner and Mars Attacks series.
Murray is also a prolific author of nonfiction about pulp writers like Dent, Shadow creator Walter B. Gibson and H. P. Lovecraft. He edited the fanzines Duende and Skullduggery, and co-authored The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine and The Assassin's Handbook, a Destroyer sourcebook. For Necronomicon Press, he edited Tales of Zothique and The Book of Hyperborea, two collections of stories by Clark Ashton Smith. His essays have appeared in books ranging from S. T. Joshi's compedium on H. P. Lovecraft, An Epicure in the Terrible, to Jim Beard's survey of the classic 1960s Batman TV show, Gotham City 14 Miles. He also contributed to the encyclopedias St. James Crime and Mystery Writers, St. James Science Fiction Writers, Contemporary Authors and The Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Other Murray stories have appeared in The UFO Files, Future Crime, Miskatonic University, 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, The Cthulhu Cycle, Disciples of Cthulhu II, Cthulhu's Reign, The Yig Cycle, Dead But Dreaming II, Horror for the Hollidays and many others.
He wrote the retro-pulp collection Spicy Zeppelin Stories under various pen names.
For National Public Radio, he adapted Lester Dent's 1934 novel, The Thousand-Headed Man as a six-part serial for The Adventures of Doc Savage, which aired in 1985, and was released on CD by Radioarchives.com in October 2010.
Many of his novels have been released as audiobooks. Radioarchives.com is issuing Murray's Doc Savage novels in talking book format, beginning with Python Isle and White Eyes in the summer of 2011. Murray is also providing audio commentary for the company's Spider audiobooks, which are beling released as part of their Will Murray's Pulp Classics line.
Interviewed by Ralph Dula on home.gate.net in July 2000 just before the publication of Empyre, Murray noted that since writing the book, some of it had already come true, specifically citing the Egypt Air 990 incident, where the co-pilot apparently threw his passenger jet into a fatal suicide dive while reciting verses from the Qur'an. Murray went on to warn, "No one should be surprised if other elements of Empyre don't prove uncannily precognitive." A year later on September 11, his prediction was validated in the most dramatic way possible.
With S. T. Joshi and Jon L. Cooke, Murray organized The Friends of H. P. Lovecraft, which raised funds to place a memorial plaque dedicated to the Providence fantasy writer on the grounds of Brown University's John Hay Library on the centennial of Lovecraft's birth in August, 1990.
As former contributing editor to Starlog magazine, Murray visited movie sets and locations all over the world, interviewing the casts and crews of Hollywood genre films ranging from 1985's Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins to Watchmen in 2009. For Starlog Press, he single-handedly wrote most or all of the souvenir magazines and pressbooks for Rambo III, Total Recall and The Shadow.
A contributor to numerous anthologies, Murray has written stories about such classic characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, The Hulk, The Spider, The Avenger, The Green Hornet, The Secret 6, Sherlock Holmes, Sky Captain, Honey West, and Lee Falk's immortal Ghost Who Walks, The Phantom.
For Marvel Comics, he scripted The Destroyer black & white magazine, as well as single stories starring Iron Man and The Punisher.
With artist Steve Ditko, Murray co-created Squirrel Girl, and in her debut, Murray scripted an over the top story of a 14 year old girl who supposedly defeated Dr. Doom, one of the most powerful comic book villains of all time, by commanding ordinary squirrels to somehow chew through armor that is tough enough to withstand direct blows by the Incredible Hulk. Subsequent writers have continued this humorous conceit until the seemingly unbeatable mutant is now arguably the most powerful superhero in the Marvel Comics Universe.
Murray wrote the introduction to the Marvel Comics Omnibus volume, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics, as well as introductions to Volume 2 of Daring Mystery Comics, Mighty Thor Masterworks Volume 9, Mystic Comics Volume 1, and Young Allies Vol 2.
Murray's 2000 novel, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre (which identifies him as a trained coordinate remote viewer) accurately predicted many of the operational details of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, including the use of hijacked airliners to target U. S. cities. One of his Destroyer novels, Rain of Terror (1989) told the tale of an Arab despot's attempts to attack America using magnetically-propelled steam locomotives as makeshift ICBMs. After the first strike failed to hit the White House, a second pulversizes the fictional Magnus Building and the multi-tower North Am complex in lower Manhattan, resulting in scenes of destruction and rescue that today read like excerpts from the September 11 tragedy. A later Destroyer, Angry White Mailmen (1996), focused on a terrorist group allied with the Taliban attempting to blow up the World Trade Towers. In one scene, a terrorist named Al Ladeen hires a private plane and after shooting the pilot, in a suicide strike flies the aircraft into a highrise hotel in lower Manhattan. It is to be noted that this book was released after the World Trade Towers were attacked in 1993. The Taliban came into power in Afghanistan until 1996.
Murray currently acts as consulting editor for Sanctum Books' successful Doc Savage, Shadow, Avenger and Whisperer reprints. He has also written several introductions to the reprints being published by Altus Press, covering characters such as Secret Agent X, The Cobra and Lester Dent's Lee Nace. With Off-Trail Publications' John Locke, he has co-edited the three-volume The Gangland Sagas of Big Nose Serrano, which collects all 12 of Anatole Feldman's rare Big Nose Serrano stories, featuring the legendary Prohibition gangster of early 1930s Chicago. For Black Dog Books, he penned introductions to their ongoing Lester Dent Library series of pulp magazines reprints.
An explorer of the metaphysical, Murray's training includes six years at a Spiritualist Church, and four years with former U.S. Army Ranger and Star Gate Remote Viewer, Major David Morehouse, author of Psychic Warrior. Working in the meta-consciousness field since 1997, he has taught Remote Viewing and related disciplines to a wide variety of persons, including journalists and law enforcement professionals.
In 1979, he received the Lamont Award (named after Lamont Cranston) for his contributions to the furtherance of pulp fiction research. And in 1999, he earned the Comic Book Marketplace award for research excellence in the area of comics history.