Richard A. Lupoff

Richard A. Lupoff

2013 photo of Dick Lupoff
Born Richard Allen Lupoff
(1935-02-21) February 21, 1935
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Pen name Ova Hamlet
Robert A. Mainline
Ray Razzberry
Addison Steele II
Addison E. Steele
A. E. Van Hocked
Occupation Writer
Nationality American
Genre Science fiction, mystery, horror
Notable works
Spouse Pat Lupoff

Richard Allen "Dick" Lupoff (born February 21, 1935) is an American science fiction and mystery author, who has also written humor, satire, non-fiction and reviews. In addition to his two dozen novels and more than 40 short stories, he has also edited science-fantasy anthologies. He is an expert on the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs and has an equally strong interest in H. P. Lovecraft.

Background

Born February 21, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, Lupoff began his writing career in science fiction fandom in the 1950s, working on a number of science fiction fanzines including Xero, which he edited in the early 1960s with his wife Pat and Bhob Stewart. It received the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1963. The roster of contributors included such names as Dan Adkins, James Blish, Lin Carter, Avram Davidson, L. Sprague de Camp, Roger Ebert (then 19 years of age), Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Eddie Jones, Roy G. Krenkel, Frederik Pohl and Bob Tucker. In 2004, a hardcover anthology, The Best of Xero, coedited with Pat Lupoff and featuring a nostalgic introduction by Ebert, was published by Tachyon Publications. It was in turn nominated for the Hugo Award.

Lupoff also wrote reviews for the fanzine Algol, and he was an editor of Edgar Rice Burroughs for Canaveral Press. In a memoir for Omni On-Line, he recalled the chain of events that led him to write his 1965 biography of Burroughs (reprinted in 2005 by the University of Nebraska Press' Bison Books):

In 1963, I was working for IBM in the Time/Life Building at 50th Street and Sixth Avenue. Pat and I had long since moved to Manhattan and had a wonderful apartment on East 73rd Street. I had a second job, moonlighting as an editor for Canaveral Press at 63 Fourth Avenue. Working for Canaveral, I found myself acting as Edgar Rice Burroughs' posthumous editor. After assembling a couple of volumes of Burroughs' previously uncollected short stories and preparing several of his unpublished novels for release, I was asked by the owners of the company, Jack Biblo and Jack Tannen, to write a book about him. That was the genesis of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, my first book.[1]

Before becoming a full-time writer in 1970 he worked in the computer industry, including for IBM.

Fiction writing

He began publishing fiction in 1967 with the novel One Million Centuries, followed by Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971) and Into the Aether (1974). He is credited with more than 50 books, plus short fiction, non-fiction and memoirs. He sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, such as Ova Hamlet, a name he frequently used for parodies. Pastiche and recursiveness are features of his writing: "pastiche" in that much of his work involves writing stories that play with styles or even universes created by other writers; "recursiveness" meaning that his work often includes other authors or friends as characters.

Among his best-known novels are the duology Circumpolar! (1984) and Countersolar! (1985). His novel Sword of the Demon was nominated for the 1977 Nebula Award.[2] Robert Silverberg described it as "a strange and austerely beautiful fable that cuts across genre lines."[3]

His short fiction, which has often been collected and anthologized, includes the short story "12:01 PM". Originally in the December 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the story was adapted into both the Oscar-nominated short film 12:01 pm (1990) and the TV movie 12:01 (1993). Lupoff appeared in both films as an extra.[4] The major plot device is a time loop, and bears great similarity to that of 1993's Groundhog Day. Lupoff and Jonathan Heap, director of the 1990 film, were "outraged" by the apparent theft of the idea, but after six months of lawyers' conferences, they decided to drop the case against Columbia Pictures.[4]

His novelette "After the Dreamtime" and his short story "Sail the Tide of Mourning" received Hugo Award nominations in 1975 and 1976. His first collection of short mystery stories is Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix (Crippen & Landru, 2008).

His and Steve Stiles' collaborative graphic novel The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer, originally a series of comic strips in Heavy Metal, is considered a forerunner of steampunk.

Bibliography

Series

Novels

Stories

Non-fiction

Edited

References

  1. ↑ Lupoff, Richard. "SF Recollections", Timebinders: Omni Online, January 1995.
  2. ↑ Locus
  3. ↑ "Books", Cosmos, July 1977, p.35.
  4. 1 2 "SF Recollections by Richard Lupoff". Timebinders. Archived from the original on November 15, 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
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