Randall Garrett

Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure sf, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet.

Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books—the novel Too Many Magicians and two short story collections—set in an alternate world where a joint British-French empire has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is himself partially modelled on Sherlock Holmes), elements that often appear in his shorter works. Michael Kurland would continue to write Lord Darcy stories.

Randall Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of the High Tower" (a pun on "garret"). The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett in conjunction with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips) was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

Garrett suffered an attack of encephalitis in the early 1980s and was not able to write after that; he spent the last years of his life in a coma.

In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series.

He was also ordained in the Old Catholic Church.

Selected Bibliography

Series

Lord Darcy

• Too Many Magicians (1979, magazine serialization 1966)
• Murder and Magic (1979, collection of 1964-1973 stories)
• Lord Darcy Investigates (1981, collection of 1974-1979 stories)
• Lord Darcy (2002) (contains the contents of the three books above plus 2 uncollected stories, with minor editing to remove repetitions of the backstory)

with Robert Silverberg, as Robert Randall

• The Shrouded Planet (1957)
• The Dawning Light (1959)

with Laurence M. Janifer, as Mark Phillips

• Brain Twister (1962)
• The Impossibles (novel) (1963)
• Supermind (novel) (1963)

The Gandalara Cycle with Vicki Ann Heydron

• The Steel of Raithskar (1981)
• The Glass of Dyskornis (1982)
• The Bronze of Eddarta (1983)
• The Well of Darkness (1983)
• The Search for Ka (1984)
• Return to Eddarta (1984)
• The Gandalara Cycle I (omnibus) (1986)
• The River Wall (1986)

Novels

• Pagan Passions (1959) (with Laurence Janifer as "Larry M. Harris")
• Unwise Child (1962)
• Anything You Can Do (1963) (as Darrel T. Langart)

Collections

• Takeoff! (1980)
• The Best of Randall Garrett (1982) (edited by Robert Silverberg)
• Takeoff Too! (1987)

Return from Randall Garrett to Biographies

Image borrowed from fantasticfiction.co.uk