Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Dr. Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (April 17, 1923 - September 12, 2002), was a musician, author, and internationally known oral historian.

Related Topics:
April 17 - 1923 - September 12 - 2002 - Historian

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He was born in Waterloo, Iowa. During WWII he served as Communications Sergeant in a rifle company of the 102nd Infantry Division, and was wounded in action, twice. He received a shrapnel wound in his leg, near the Elbe River at the end of the war, which left him disabled for life.

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After the war, Dr. Biggle resumed his education. He received an A.B. Degree with High Distinction from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and M.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. Dr. Biggle taught at the University of Michigan and at Eastern Michigan University in the 1950s. He began writing professionally in 1955, and became a full-time writer with the publication of his novel, All the Colors of Darkness, in 1963, a profession that he followed until his death.

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Both Dr. Biggle's science fiction and mystery stories have received international acclaim. He was celebrated in science fiction circles as the author whointroduced aesthetics into a literature known for its scientific and technological complications. His stories frequently used musical and artistic themes. Such notables as songwriter Jimmy Webb and novelist Orson Scott Card have written of the tremendous impact that his early story, The Tunesmith had on them in their youths. It literally changed the course of their lives. The Tunesmith was recently chosen for an anthology of stories to be entitled, Masterpiece: The Century's Best Science Fiction. Among his enduring science fiction creations were the Interplanetary Relations Bureau and the Cultural Survey, both featured in novels and magazine stories.

Related Topics:
Jimmy Webb - Orson Scott Card

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In the mystery field, his Grandfather Rastin stories appeared for many years in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. He loved writing historical fiction set in late Victorian and Edwardian England. He began the new memoirs of Sherlock Holmes from the papers of Edward Porter Jones, His Late Assistant who began his association with Holmes as a "Baker Street Irregular", The Quallsford Inheritance and The Glendower Conspiracy featuring Jones and Holmes. These were followed by a series of stories featured in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine starring his Victorian sleuth, Lady Sara Varnley. He also wrote the Pletcher and Lambert mystery novels.

Related Topics:
Ellery Queen - Sherlock Holmes - Alfred Hitchcock

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He published two-dozen books as well as magazine stories and articles beyond count. His most recent novel was The Chronocide Mission. He was writing almost to the moment of his death. "I can write them faster than the magazines can publish them," he once said, with the result that even though his writing has been stilled, his publications will continue until his backlog of stories is exhausted.

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Dr. Biggle was the founding Secretary Treasurer of Science Fiction Writers of America and served as Chairman of its trustees for many years. In the 1970s, he founded the Science Fiction Oral History Association, which built archives containing hundreds of cassette tapes of science fiction notables making speeches and discussing aspects of their craft. He numbered many of these science fiction notables among his friends, and his article in the July/August 2002 Analog Magazine, "Isaac Asimov Remembered," was based in part on his personal recollections of that towering celebrity.

Related Topics:
Science Fiction Writers of America - Isaac Asimov

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He was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans, and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

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He died after a twenty-year battle with leukemia and cancer.

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