Barry N. Malzberg, from an interview posted 13 October 2010 at Locus Online:
I did a body of work which represented my best possibility, and some of that could not have been done by anyone else. [Critic, fiction-writer, editor and writing teacher Algis] Budrys could have done [critical volume] Breakfast in the Ruins better, but he didn’t do it at all. Phil Klass [who wrote most of his usually sharply satirical sf as "William Tenn"] could have done Herovit’s World better, but he didn’t. And I think it had to be done.
Barry N. Malzberg obituary
Prolific science fiction writer, among other work, who conceived alternative lives for others, including Emily Dickinson and Sigmund Freud
In 1965, Barry N. Malzberg, who has died aged 85, decided that the career he sought as a "literary" fiction writer was closed to him – most of the "little" magazines were impenetrable, paid poorly and were little-read, the control of editors at publishing houses absolute – and that science fiction (along with fantasy, horror, crime fiction and some other work which also appealed to him), which he had read in his youth, was the path he would pursue into writing.
He made his first sale in sf in 1967 under the name K. M. O’Donnell, and, in the seven years that followed, sold a further 2 million words – 23 novels and six short-story collections, along with further published work not immediately collected. At the end he felt he had succeeded too well and chose to retire, saying: “There is almost no room left for the kind of work which I try to do.”
Those few years had seen Malzberg write some of the most ambitious, challenging and profound, yet pessimistic and not traditionally "crowd-pleasing" novels. His breakthrough came with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winner Beyond Apollo (1972) – an ironic win as it was a novel that Campbell would have loathed. Malzberg described it as “dystopian, anti-NASA, anti-space [or at least the hype with which space exploration was sold to the public-TM], enormously cynical about technology”. While it divided fans and critics, the award opened doors to publishers. Malzberg’s literary ambitions intersected with those of the sf "new wave", and his fascination with paranoid astronauts, the John F. Kennedy assassination and “what if?” alternate lives of historical figures (Emily Dickinson is a successful poet in her lifetime, Sigmund Freud ventures into outer space) led to him being spoken of in the same breath as JG Ballard, Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison.
Malzberg was born in New York, the son of Michael, a salesman with a lumber company, and his wife, Celia (nee Feinberg). He was educated locally in Brooklyn public schools and then at Syracuse University. Leaving with a degree in sociology in 1960, Malzberg joined the New York City Department of Welfare as an investigator, and also worked as a reimbursement agent at the New York State Department of Mental Health.
He had long wanted to be a writer and made his first attempts aged seven. In 1951 he discovered science fiction magazines, and received his first rejection slip from Amazing Stories aged 11. He favoured the unique, frequently satirical voices in Horace Gold’s Galaxy magazine over Campbell’s tech-driven (if often also mystical) Astounding, especially such writers as Alfred Bester, Walter M Miller, Frederik Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley and Theodore Sturgeon.
At high school, though, Malzberg decided he wanted to be a contemporary/mimetic writer, inspired most directly by Norman Mailer, J. D. Salinger, John Updike and James Agee. With the offer of two writing fellowships, he returned to Syracuse University in 1964-65 but despite the chance of a further year, “drowning in rejection”, and in debt to the New York State Loan Fund, he joined the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (SMLA).
His job there involved reading and reporting on up to 50 manuscripts a week from fee-paying newcomers for a cut of the enclosed cheque. So adept was he that he was taking home over $200 a week by the time he was fired in 1967 (“for reasons never made clear”). He became, briefly, managing editor of the men’s magazine Escapade (there accepting Ms. Jody Scott's first novel Down Will Come Baby and editing it to novella length to fit in the magazine) and, later, the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and the fantasy/sf magazine Fantastic – but was again fired after arguing with the publisher (most directly, over the cover illustration he'd accepted for a Fritz Leiber story). By then he was selling his own fiction.
Malzberg had aimed high, hoping to write like Mailer but emulate the success of Philip Roth and win the National Book award by the age of 26. Indifferent editors turned down more than 100 of his stories, and Malzberg was already 26 when he sold "The Bed" (as Nathan Herbert, 1966) to Wildcat magazine, a tenth-rate Playboy knockoff.
He struggled on until, finally, "We’re Coming Through the Window" (1967), a comic time-travel tale, sold to Galaxy, under the byline "K. M. O’Donnell" (in tribute to Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore, a married couple, who wrote impressive and innovative fiction of varying sorts, in collaboration and separately, under their own names and using varying pseudonyms such as "Lawrence O'Donnell"; another loose inspiration might've been the old comic song "They're Coming through the Window"). A breakthrough came with the novella "Final War" (1968), the story of a soldier trapped in an endless, meaningless war.
While working at SMLA he had written a novel, which was published as Love Doll under the name Mel Johnson in 1967, and was followed by two dozen more softcore porn books until the market collapsed. He returned to science fiction novels, beginning with The Falling Astronauts (1971), and including Revelations (1972), Herovit’s World (1973), In the Enclosure (1973), Tactics of Conquest (1974), The Destruction of the Temple (1974), On a Planet Alien (1974), Guernica Night (1975) and Galaxies (1975).
He also wrote a series of increasingly subversive "men's adventure" novels (the Lone Wolf series as Mike Barry), novelisations (Phase IV, Kung Fu) and adult novels (as Lee W. Mason).
Although he announced his retirement in 1976, he continued to write fiction, including thrillers and crime stories with Bill Pronzini and, solo, one final science fiction novel, The Remaking of Sigmund Freud (1985). In addition there were many short stories, the best to be found in In the Stone House (2000), Shiva and Other Stories (2001), The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg (2013) and Collecting Myself (2024).
He also compiled anthologies and collections, often championing neglected authors such as Mark Clifton and F. L. Wallace, writing reviews, columns (including Dialogues with Mike Resnick, collected as The Business of Science Fiction, 2010) and essays, many collected in The Engines of the Night (1982; expanded as Breakfast in the Ruins, 2007) and The Bend at the End of the Road (2018).
Malzberg is survived by his wife, Joyce Zelnick, whom he married in 1964, and their daughters, Stephanie and Erika.
2 comments:
Thanks for posting this.
Thank you, Jack.
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