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Mike Resnick
| Full Name: |
Michael
Diamond
Resnick |
| Born: |
March 5, 1942
Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Died: |
January 9, 2020 |
| Occupation: |
Writer |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Links: |
|
Biography
Locus, the trade journal of science fiction, keeps a list of the winners of major science fiction awards on its web page. In the short fiction category, Mike Resnick is currently the leading award winner, living or dead, in the all-time standings. When novels are added, he is 4th on the all-time list, ahead of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick.
Mike was born on March 5, 1942. He sold his first article in 1957, his first short story in 1959, and his first book in 1962.
He attended the University of Chicago from 1959 through 1961, won 3 letters on the fencing team, and met and married Carol. Their daughter, Laura, was born in 1962, and has since become a writer herself, winning 2 awards for her romance novels and the 1993 Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer.
Mike and Carol discovered science fiction fandom in 1962, attended their first Worldcon in 1963, and 100+ science fiction books into his career, Mike still considers himself a fan and frequently contributes articles to fanzines. He and Carol appeared in five Worldcon masquerades in the 1970s in costumes that she created, and won four of them.
Mike labored anonymously but profitably from 1964 through 1976, selling more than 200 novels, 300 short stories and 2,000 articles, almost all of them under pseudonyms, most of them in the "adult" field. He edited 7 different tabloid newspapers and a pair of men's magazines, as well.
In 1968 Mike and Carol became serious breeders and exhibitors of collies, a pursuit they continued through 1981. (Mike is still an AKC-licensed collie judge.) During that time they bred and/or exhibited 23 champion collies, and were the country's leading breeders and exhibitors during various years along the way.
This led them to purchase the Briarwood Pet Motel in Cincinnati in 1976. It was the country's second-largest luxury boarding and grooming establishment, and they worked full-time at it for the next few years. By 1980 the kennel was being run by a staff of 21, and Mike was free to return to his first love, science fiction, albeit at a far slower pace that his previous writing. They sold the kennel in 1993.
Mike's first novel in this "second career" was The Soul Eater, which was followed shortly by Birthright: the Book of Man, Walpurgis III, the 4-book Tales of the Galactic Midway series, The Branch, the 4-book Tales of the Velvet Comet series, and Adventures, all from Signet. His breakthrough novel was the international bestseller Santiago, published by Tor in 1986. Tor has since published Stalking the Unicorn, The Dark Lady, Ivory, Second Contact, Paradise, Purgatory, Inferno, the Double Bwana/Bully!, and the collection Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun?. His most recent Tor releases were A Miracle of Rare Design, A Hunger in the Soul, The Outpost, and The Return of Santiago.
Even at his reduced rate, Mike was too prolific for one publisher, and in the 1990s Ace published Soothsayer, Oracle and Prophet, Questar published Lucifer Jones, Bantam brought out the Locus bestselling trilogy of The Widowmaker, The Widowmaker Reborn, and The Widowmaker Unleashed, and del Rey published Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia and Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Power. His most recent releases include A Gathering of Widowmakers for Meisha Merlin, Dragon America for Phobos, Lady With an Alien, A Club in Montmartre and The World Behind the Door for Watson-Guptill, The Other Teddy Roosevelts. Kilimanjaro, and Hazards for Subterranean, and Starship: Mutiny, Starship: Pirate, Starship: Mercenary, Starship: Rebel, Starship: Flagship, Stalking the Vampire, Stalking the Dragon and New Dreams for Old for Pyr, and Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks for Golden Gryphon.He has most recently delivered Blasphemy to Golden Gryphon and The Buntline Special to Pyr, and is currently working on The Gods of Sagittarius, collaboration with New York Times bestseller Eric Flint for Baen Books.
Beginning with Shaggy B.E.M. Stories in 1988, Mike has also become an anthology editor (and was nominated for a Best Editor Hugo as a freelance anthologist in 1994 and 1995). His list of anthologies totals more than 40, and includes Alternate Presidents, Alternate Kennedys, Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, Dinosaur Fantastic, Down These Dark Spaceways, Christmas Ghosts, Alien Crimes, New Voices in Science Fiction, and Stars (co-edited with superstar singer Janis Ian).
Mike has always supported the "specialty press", and has numerous books and collections out in limited editions from such diverse publishers as Phantasia Press, Axolotl Press, Misfit Press, Pulphouse Publishing, Wildside Press, Dark Regions Press, NESFA Press, WSFA Press, Obscura Press, Farthest Star, and others.
Mike was never interested in writing short stories early in his career, producing only 7 between 1976 and 1986. Then something clicked, and he has written and sold close to 250 stories since 1986, and now spends more time on short fiction than on novels. The writing that has brought him the most acclaim thus far in his career is the "Kirinyaga" series, which, with 66 major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction. In 2005 and 2006 he was the science fiction editor for Benbella Books, and in 2007 through 2010 he was the Executive Editor of Jim Baen's Universe.
He has been a prolific writer of non-fiction as well. He wrote a 4-part series, "Forgotten Treasures", to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, produced 59 installments of the how-to column, "Ask Bwana" for Speculations, has (with Barry Malzberg) produced 49 installments of "The Resnick/Malzberg Dialogues" to date for the SFWA Bulletin, wrote a bi-weekly column for the late, lamented GalaxyOnline.com, and until its demise in April, 2010 wrote editorials and columns for Jim Baen's Universe.
Carol has always been Mike's uncredited collaborator on his science fiction, but in the past few years they have sold two movie scripts -- Santiago and The Widowmaker, both based on Mike's books -- and Carol is listed as his collaborator on those.
Readers of Mike's works are aware of his fascination with Africa, and the many uses to which he has put it in his science fiction. Mike and Carol have taken numerous safaris, visiting Kenya (4 times), Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Botswana, and Uganda. Mike edited the Library of African Adventure series for St. Martin's Press, and is currently editing The Resnick Library of African Adventure, and, with Carol as co-editor, The Resnick Library of Worldwide Adventure, for Alexander Books.
Since 1989, Mike has won five Hugo Awards (for "Kirinyaga", "The Manamouki", "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge", "The 43 Antarean Dynasties", and "Travels With My Cats:), a Nebula Award (for "Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge"), and has been nominated for 34 Hugos (a record for a writer), 11 Nebulas, and a Clarke (British). He has also won a Seiun-sho (the Japanese Hugo), a Prix Tour Eiffel (French), 2 Prix Ozones (French), 10 HOmer Awards, an Alexander Award, a Golden Pagoda Award, a Hayakawa SF Award (Japanese), a Locus Award, 3 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish Hugo), a Futura Award (Croatian), an El Melocoton Mechanico (Spanish), 2 Sfinks Awards (Polish), a Fantastyka Award (Polish), a Xatafi-Cyberdark Award (Spanish), and has topped the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll six times and the Asimov's Readers Poll five times. In 1993 he was awarded the Skylark Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science Fiction, and in 2001 and 2004 he was named Fictionwise.com's Author of the Year in open competition with Dan Brown, Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, Louis L'Amour, Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.
His work has been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Finnish, Chinese, Danish, Slovakian, Portugese, Greek, Catalan, and Croatian.
In 2000 he was the subject of Fiona Kelleghan's massive Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work. A second expanded edition is currently in preparation.
Bio courtesy of the author. Bio pic by Laura Domitz. Visit Mike Resnick online at www.mikeresnick.com.
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