Richard A. Lupoff

Richard A. Lupoff
2013 photo of Dick Lupoff
Born	Richard Allen Lupoff (1935-02-21) February 21, 1935 Brooklyn, New York, United States
Pen name	Ova Hamlet Robert A. Mainline Ray Razzberry Addison Steele II Addison E. Steele A. E. Van Hocked
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	US
Citizenship	US
Genre	Science fiction, mystery, horror
Notable works	Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs Space War Blues 12:01 PM Lovecraft's Book
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 After assembling a couple of volumes of Burroughs' previously uncollected short stories and preparing several of his unpublished novels for release, I was asked by the owners of the company, Jack Biblo and Jack Tannen, to write a book about him.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.

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, notably 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. Robert Silverberg described it as "a strange and austerely beautiful fable that cuts across genre lines."

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. 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.

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.

Series

• Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
  • Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1978) [as by Addison E. Steele]
  • Buck Rogers: That Man On Beta (1979) [as by Addison E. Steele]
• Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon (Dungeon series)
  • First book: The Black Tower (1988)
  • Sixth book: The Final Battle (1990)
• Sun's End
  • Sun's End (1984)
  • Galaxy's End (1988)
• Twin Planets
  • Circumpolar! (1984)
  • Countersolar! (1985)
• Detective Fiction
  • The Comic Book Killer (1988)
  • The Classic Car Killer (1992)
  • The Bessie Blue Killer (1994)
  • The Sepia Siren Killer (1994)
  • The Cover Girl Killer (1995)
  • The Silver Chariot Killer (1996)
  • The Radio Red Killer (1997)
  • One Murder at a Time (associated short fiction) (2001)
  • The Emerald Cat Killer (2012)
  • Rookie Blues (one-off) (2012)

Novels

• One Million Centuries (1967)
• Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971)
• Into the Aether (1974)
• The Crack in the Sky [vt Fool's Hill (1978 UK)](1976)
• Sandworld (1976)
• Lisa Kane (1976)
• The Triune Man (1976)
• Sword of the Demon (1977)
• The Return of SkullFace (1977)
• Space War Blues (1978)
• Lovecraft's Book (1985)
• The Forever City (1988)
• The Comic Book Killer (1988)
• The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer (1991) with Steve Stiles
• Night of the Living Gator (1992)
• Marblehead (Ramble House, 2006). The unexpurgated edition of Lovecraft's Book.

Stories

• The Ova Hamlet Papers (1979)
• The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick / Hyperprism (1994)
• Before...12:01...and After (1996) Fedogan & Bremer, pub. Introduction by Robert Silverberg.
• Claremont Tales (2001)
• Claremont Tales II (2002)
• Terrors (2005)
• Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix (2006). Crippen & Landru (2006)
• The Compleat Ova Hamlet (2007)
• Deep Space (2009)
• Visions (2009)
• Dreams (2011)
• Killer’s Dozen (2013)
• Dreamer’s Dozen (2015)

Non-fiction

• Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1965, a 2005 reprint in the Bison Frontiers of Imagination series)
• All in Color for a Dime (co-ed w/Don Thompson) (1970)
• The Comic-Book Book (co-ed w/Don Thompson) (1973)
• Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Martian Vision (1976)
• Writer at Large (1998)
• The Great American Paperback (2001)
• The Best of Xero (w/Pat Lupoff) (2005)
• WRITER: Volume 1 (2010)
• WRITER: Volume 2 (2010)
• WRITER: Volume 3 (2016)

Edited

• All in Color for a Dime (1970), collection of essays about comic books, with Don Thompson
• What If? Volume 1, Stories That Should Have Won The Hugo, (1980), stories from 1952–1958.
• What If? Volume 2, Stories That Should Have Won The Hugo, (1981).
• The Best of Xero, (2005), selections from Xero
• What If? Volume 3 (2014)

External links

• "Richard Lupoff at Shorter Length" by Claude Lalumière
• Bibliography on SciFan
• Richard A. Lupoff at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• ERBzine: "Lupoff of Mars" by Dale R. Broadhurst
• Earl Kemp on Richard Lupoff