Barry N. Malzberg

Barry Nathaniel Malzberg (born 1939) is an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy; initially in his post-graduate work he sought to establish himself as a playwright as well as prose-fiction writer. He first found commercial and critical success with publication of his surreal novelette "Final War" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the name K. M. O'Donnell in 1968. By then, he had begun working for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, in 1965, and would intermittently continue with SMLA through the next several decades, being one of its last caretakers.

Related Topics:
1939 - American - Science fiction - Fantasy - Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction - 1968 - Scott Meredith Literary Agency - 1965

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Malzberg's writing style is highly distinctive, with frequently long, elaborate though carefully constructed sentences and under-use of commas, conveying an uneasy impression of the narrator's careful, conventional thought masking increasing desperation. Most of his science fiction books are short, present-tense narratives concerned exclusively with the consciousness of a single obsessive character. His themes, particularly in the novels Beyond Apollo (1972) and The Falling Astronauts (1971) about the US space exploration programme, include the dehumanisation effects of bureaucracy and technology. In novels like Galaxies (1975) and Herovit's World (1973), Malzberg uses metafiction techniques to subject the heroic conventions and literary limitations of space opera to biting satire.

Related Topics:
Space exploration - Dehumanisation - Bureaucracy - Technology - Metafiction - Heroic - Space opera - Satire

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His editorial career has included stints at a men's-magazine publisher, and as editor of fiction magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic in 1968, as well as anthologies such as Final Stage (with Edward L. Ferman) and several with Bill Pronzini, among others. He has been an enormously prolific writer, particularly in the early 1970s, in a variety of fields, most often in crime fiction and fantastic fiction, with notable, ambitious work published in other fields, as well, under his own name, as O'Donnell, and as Mike Barry and under other pseudonyms. He has also often written in collaboration with Pronzini, Kathe Koja, and others. He wrote the novelization of the Saul Bass-directed 1974 film Phase IV.

Related Topics:
Fiction magazines - Amazing Stories - Fantastic - 1968 - Edward L. Ferman - Bill Pronzini - 1970s - Crime fiction - Fantastic fiction - Kathe Koja - Saul Bass - Phase IV

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A devotee of classical music, he is also a violinist, and performed in the premiere performance of work by Somtow Sucharitkul; he has also been nominated several times for the Hugo Award, and won the Locus Award for his collection of historical and critical essays, The Engines of the Night (1982).

Related Topics:
Somtow Sucharitkul - Hugo Award - Locus

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