In terms of science fiction, Texas boasts one of the earliest short stories. In 1865, the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph newspaper published a short story by Aurelia Hadley Mohl titled “An Afternoon’s Nap, or: Five Hundred Years Ahead” describes a far-future utopia and briefly mentions air travel, radio, television, and colonies on the moon and various planets. It is one of the first American science fiction short stories written by a woman. In context, this was the same year as Jules Verne published From the Earth to the Moon and it precedes Around the World in Eighty Days and Twenty thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
As modern science fiction began to take shape during the pulp era, Texas writers took a strong role in the field. Jack Williamson was raised in far west Texas, and as a young 20-year-old college student at West Texas State Teachers College in Canyon, TX near Amarillo, he sold his first science fiction story “The Metal Man” to Amazing Stories where it appeared in the December 1928 issue. He sold several more stories to Hugo Gernsback before leaving the school. Williamson is more generally recognized as a New Mexico writer.
Neal Barrett Jr.: His idiosyncratic and unique tales mark Neal Barrett Jr. as a truly different writer. His masterpiece The Hereafter Gang wherein Doug Hoover takes a trip across Heaven (or maybe Texas or Oklahoma, it gets confusing) with the ultimate sweet young heartthrob carhop/sex goddess to find Nirvana, the fantasy series featuring the swashbuckling pig Aldair out to save the princess, the short story “Winter on the Belle Forche” with its literary mashup of Liver Eatin’ Johnson and Emily Dickinson, and his countless other works all have a quirk that is hard to describe and even harder to forget. After more than 50 years of producing unusual and acclaimed stories, the SFWA honored Barrett as an Author Emeritus in 2010.
Bradley Denton: Born and raised in Kansas, Brad Denton has been on Texas for more than 20 years. His novels Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede and Lunatics use Texas settings. Lunatics, in particular, deals with the unique moon towers that illuminate Austin. His short fiction collections The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians and A Conflagration Artist won the World Fantasy Award. The story “Sergeant Chip” won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Charles Harness: Despite four Hugo and two Nebula nominations, Charles L Harness remains largely unknown to most fans. His novel The Paradox Men (aka Flight to Nowhere) has been hailed as a classic space opera. Though celebrated throughout the UK when published in Authentic Science Fiction in 1953, the novelette The Rose did not appear in the US until 16 years after its initial publication. NESFA Press published a collection of his short fiction (An Ornament to His Profession), a collection of novels (Rings), and a standalone novel (Cybele, With Bluebonnets). The Science Fiction Writers of America in 2004 recognized Harness as Author Emeritus.
Robert E. Howard: Perhaps the greatest of all the pulp writers, Howard lived in the small west Texas town of Cross Plains, located near Brownwood and Abilene. His series characters include Conan the Barbarian, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mac Morn the Pict, Solomon Kane the Puritan wanderer, Sailor Steve Costigan, and El Borak. Writing only a few novels, Howard concentrated on short fiction. Many collections of his works exist with Skullface and Others, Kull of Atlantis, and Red Shadows among the finest. Howard only penned one science fiction tale, Almuric, a sword-and-planet novel which rivaled some of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline (who was Howard’s agent that sold the story to Weird Tales following Howard’s death). The strong storytelling that typified Howard’s writing influenced a variety of science fiction and fantasy writers. Two biographies (Dark Valley Destiny by L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp and Blood and Thunder by Mark Finn) present sharply contrasting images of a great writer and enigmatic person. The film The Whole Wide World focused on Howard’s relationships with his family and his girlfriend during the final years of his life. (As a side note, the de Camps later moved to Plano, TX Texas, north of Dallas following the sale of their library and personal papers to the University of Texas. They remained there until their deaths in 2000 about six apart. It is tempting to include them here but the majority of their work had been long completed before the move and they never truly embraced their inner Texans.)
Joe R. Lansdale: The prolific Joe R. Lansdale started off, like his friend Lewis Shiner, writing detective stories in Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine (Detective Fiction As You Like It collects the Lansdale and Shiner solo and collaborative efforts). He soon graduated into the dark horror and western fields. For his over 500 short stories, some 40 novels, and numerous comic scripts, Lansdale collected a variety of awards including the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Novel, the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, and the American Horror Award. He accomplished all this while developing an original martial arts style called Shen Chuan, which eventually landed him in the Martial Arts Hall of Fame as both a performer and as an instructor. While rarely dabbling in science fiction, some of his better works including The Drive-In series, “Tight Little Stitches On A Dead Man’s Back,” and the steampunk novella “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel” are undeniably science fiction.
Ardath Mayhar: Noted for her strong characters, Ardath Mayhar quietly exploded onto the science fiction/fantasy scene in the late 1970’s with a series of fantasy novels with titles such as How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon, Exiles on Vlahi, and Seekers of Shar-Nuhn that evoked Andre Norton and Lord Dunsany. Mayhar produced the first authorized sequel to H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy series: the entertaining Golden Dreams: A Fuzzy Odyssey. As a contributor to Writer’s Digest, she helped beginning writers hone their own style. Mayhar wrote fantasy, science fiction, western, and other novels over the years. Perhaps the pinnacle of her career, The World Ends in Hickory Hollow is now considered a classic of post-apocalyptic fiction. Mayhar was named an SFWA Author Emeritus in 2008. She passed away in 2012.
Cormac McCarthy: El Pasoan Cormac McCarthy would probably be shocked to be considered a “genre” writer of any sort. But The Road, his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, is post-apocalyptic and can only be classified as science fiction. Parts of Blood Meridian are astoundingly horrific and the character of the Judge can be viewed as supernatural.
Elizabeth Moon: The award-winning Elizabeth Moon works in both the science fiction and fantasy fields. The Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, the first of her Paksenarrion series won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. The Speed of Dark won the Nebula Award in 2003. A former Marine, Moon’s science fiction works often contain military and space opera themes. An avid fencer, she is a member of the SFWA Musketeers.
Michael Moorcock: Since the mid-1990’s, the legendary Michael Moorcock spends half his year in Texas, dividing the remaining time between Paris, London, and Spain. Winner of countless awards including the Nebula, World Fantasy, and the British Science Fiction, he additionally garnered a SFWA Grand Master and received the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention and the Horror Writers of America. Author of over 100 books, Moorcock’s works feature a panoply of characters such as Elric of Melnibone, the Eternal Champion, Dorian Hawkmoon, and Jerry Cornelius. During the 1960’s, he edited New Worlds which served as one of the boiling pots of the New Wave and featured the work of Moorcock, Thomas M. Disch, John Sladek, Norman Spinrad, J. G. Ballard, and many others. Among some of his best work The Best of Michael Moorcock, Mother London, The Final Programme, Gloriana, and The War Hound and the World’s Pain. His studies of fantasy—Wizardry and Wild Romance and Fantasy: The 100 Best Books (edited with James Cawthorn)—display his vast knowledge and individual opinions of many works of fiction.
Chad Oliver: Writer, teacher, and friend to all, Chad Oliver influenced a generation of authors as the Dean of Texas science fiction. His novels, among the first to feature anthropological themes, predated the better-known works by Ursula K. LeGuin and Michael Bis
hop. Oliver’s juvenile novel Mists of Dawn, an early effort, featured a time travel story of early man. Shadows in the Sun, his first adult novel, starred a tall, pipe-smoking Texas anthropologist which one reviewer found improbable. He obviously never met Oliver who used himself as a model.
Tom Reamy: Part of the Big D in ’73 WorldCon bid and the Dallas Futurian Society, Tom Reamy produced the multiple Hugo nominated fanzine Trumpet. He began writing in the early 1970’s and was a member of the Turkey City Writers’ Workshop. His novella “San Diego Lightfoot Sue” won a Nebula Award in 1975. Reamy also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1976. A collection of his short fiction (everything except his story for the infamous The Last Dangerous Visions) appeared the following year as San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories. Reamy died in 1977 of a heart attack before the publication of his only novel, Blind Voices, which has been compared to Ray Bradbury or Clifford Simak if they had been writing The Circus of Dr. Lao.
Lewis Shiner: Originally writing detective stories for places like Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine, Lewis Shiner quickly moved over into science fiction. His presence in Austin and discussions with Bruce Sterling led him to be closely associated with the cyberpunk movement. The Sterling-edited fanzine Cheap Truth provided a forum for Shiner and others to decry the state of science fiction and to give rise to many of the concepts incorporated into cyberpunk. His World Fantasy Award winning novel Glimpses deals with classic unreleased albums of rock-and-roll such as The Beach Boys’s Smile and The Doors’s Celebration of the Lizard. Short stories offer perhaps the greatest showcase of Shiner’s talents. Collected Stories features his finest tales. New Shiner works appear only sporadically, with only seven novels appearing since 1984. Now located in North Carolina, his most recent novel is Dark Tangos (2011).
Bruce Sterling: Futurist Bruce Sterling began his writing career with a sale to Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions (recounted in Ellison’s introduction to Sterling’s first novel Involution Ocean (1977)). His early short stories, set in his Mechanist/Shaper universe, showcased the conflict between computer and genetics based technologies. These stories spawned the collection Crystal Express and the novel Schismatrix. Sterling’s samizdat/fanzine Cheap Truth, which he edited as Vincent Omniveritas, criticized the moribund state of science fiction and helped to usher in the cyberpunk movement. His association with other cyberpunk writers William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Pat Cadigan, and Lewis Shiner as well as the ideological nature of his articles led to him being dubbed “Chairman Bruce.” The Sterling-edited Mirrorshades, one of the bestselling anthologies of all time, is the Bible of the cyberpunk movement. Sterling won two Hugos for novelettes “The Bicycle Repairman” and “Taklamakan”. His novel Islands in the Net won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel while Distractions won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Lisa Tuttle: Guest of Honor at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention Lisa Tuttle was one of the founders of the Houston Science Fiction Society. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1974 (in a tie with Spider Robinson). Tuttle’s novels frequently focus on gender issues and feminism. Her An Encyclopedia of Feminism is a basic text in the movement. An early graduate of the Clarion science fiction program, she has taught at it and at the university level. In a controversial move, she refused the 1982 Nebula Award for her short story “The Bone Flute” because of what she felt were unfair advantages gained by some writers when their editors sent their work out to all members of SFWA when not all publications could afford to do this practice. Her novels include Familiar Spirit which is set in the Austin house and neighborhood in which she lived. Since 1981, she has lived in the UK.
Howard Waldrop: Though born in Mississippi, Howard Waldrop got to Texas as fast as he could. His unique stories, often born out of the Texas tall tale, frequently dabble in alternate histories. Works such as “Ike at the Mike” where Dwight Eisenhower gets distracted on his way to West Point and becomes a celebrated jazz musician or “Custer’s Last Jump” where Little Big Horn features airships and paratroopers typify Waldrop’s output. Collections Things Will Never Be the Same and Other Worlds, Better Lives from Old Earth Books offer a great retrospective of his best work. Who else would try to incorporate such diverse ideas as the H. G. Wells Martians invading Texas or John Bunyan and Izaak Walton fishing for Leviathan in the Slough of Despond? The last of the dodos story “The Ugly Chickens” won Waldrop the World Fantasy and the Nebula Awards in 1981.
Gene Wolfe: Named a Grand Master by SFWA in 2013, recipient of the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention, member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and winner of multiple Nebula, World Fantasy, British Science Fiction, Campbell, and World Fantasy Awards, Gene Wolfe created the celebrated works The Book of the New Sun (which includes The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch). Wolfe went to high school and college in Texas. Wolfe’s prose is dense and frequently features hidden depths and allusions that become apparent only upon rereading. Award nominations include 20 Nebula nominations (two wins), 13 World Fantasy Award nominations (five wins), and nine Hugo nominations (but, alas, no wins). His short fiction can best be seen in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories, Storeys From the Old Hotel and The Best of Gene Wolfe.
Appendix B: Other Texas Writers You Should Check Out
Lou Antonelli: One conversation with Lou Antonelli will reveal that he is not a native born Texan. Raised in Massachusetts and New York, he moved to Texas in 1985. A journalist by trade, Antonelli writes short fiction with a Texas setting, frequently with a twist ending.
Bill Baldwin: Former NASA contractor, Bill Baldwin is a fan of old fashioned space opera. The Helmsman series has been described as if Horatio Hornblower had grown up to become the Gray Lensman and had sex. The series also features talking Soviet bears who work as space engineers.
Damien Broderick: Australian by birth, Damien Broderick currently lives in the San Antonio area. He has won the Ditmar Award (the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award) five times for novels The Dreaming Dragons, Striped Holes, Transmitters, The White Abacus, and the non-fiction title Earth is But a Star: Excursions through Science Fiction to the Far Future.
Melissa Mia Hall: The masterful short story writer Melissa Mia Hall sadly languished in obscurity. Though she tried her hand at novels, Hall never quite got one to the point of publication before her sudden death in 2011 at 56. Her stories frequently appeared in the Shadows series edited by Charles Grant. Hall regularly reviewed science fiction, fantasy and horror for Publishers Weekly.
Katherine Eliska Kimbriel: Fire Sanctuary, the first of her three Nuala novels, earned Katherine Eliska Kimbriel a John W. Campbell nomination for Best New Writer. She has also written two novels featuring Alfreda Golden-Tongue, starting with Night Calls as well as short fiction.
Jay Lake: The child of a Foreign Service officer, Jay Lake grew up in Nigeria. A Writers of the Future winner in 2003 and Campbell Award winner in 2004 for Best New Writer, Lake has produced 11 novels and six short story collections while also editing 12 titles. His Mainspring novels (Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion) are set within a steampunk society.
Joe McKinney: San Antonio policeman Joe McKinney writes police procedurals masquerading as science fiction and horror novels. The science fiction novel Quarantined deals with a medical emergency requiring the total isolation and eventual destruction of San Antonio. Flesh Eaters, one of his Dead World zombie novels, won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel from the Horror Writers of America.
Henry Melton: Wire Rim Books publisher Henry Melton now occupies the spot vacated by Robert Heinlein of providing action science fiction novels with strong teenage characters. The first novel Emperor Dad won the Darrell Award for Best Novel. His books fall into several general groupings such as Small Towns, Big Ideas (presenting characters from a rural background facing big proble
ms. Each book is a standalone), and The Project Saga, a large-cast multi-generational space epic.
Warren Norwood: Vietnam vet Warren Norwood started out writing space opera with The Windhover Tapes (four novels between 1982 and 1984), earning him nominations for the John W. Campbell Award in 1983 and 1984. He wrote 13 novels before retiring to teach writing and play music. Norwood died in 2005 from liver disease and kidney failure.
George W. Proctor: Educator and writer, George W. Proctor co-edited Lone Star Universe with Steve Utley in 1976 as well as Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 3 with Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote in a variety of fields, including fantasy and westerns. Among his science fiction novels are The ESPer Transfer, Starwings, and Stellar Fist. Proctor died in 2008.
Joe Pumilia: One of the driving forces behind the Houston Science Fiction Society and its magazine The Purple Obscenity, Joe Pumilia wrote short stories. He and Bill Wallace created the Lovecraftian imitator M. M. Moamrath, the fictional author of “The Next to the Last Voyage of the Cuttle Sark,” “Curse of the Kritix,” and “Riders of the Purple Ooze.”