Eric Frank Russell

Eric Frank Russell (January 6, 1905 - February 28, 1978) was a British author best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales, and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. A few of his stories were published under pseudonyms, of which "Duncan H. Munro" was used most often.

Biography

Russell was born in 1905 near Sandhurst in Berkshire, where his father was an instructor at the Royal Military Academy.^[1][2] Russell became a fan of science fiction, and in 1934 while living near Liverpool he saw a letter in Amazing Stories written by Leslie J. Johnson, another reader from the same area.^[3] Russell met up with Johnson, who encouraged him to embark on a writing career. Together, the two men wrote the novella "Seeker of Tomorrow" which was published in Astounding in July 1937. Both Russell and Johnson became members of the British Interplanetary Society.^[2]

Russell's first novel was Sinister Barrier, published in the first issue of Astounding's short-lived sister magazine Unknown (March 1939). This is an explicitly Fortean tale based (as Russell explains in the novel's foreword) on Charles Fort's famous speculation "I think we're property". An often-repeated legend has it that Campbell, on receiving the manuscript for Sinister Barrier, created Unknown primarily as a vehicle for the short novel. There is no real evidence for this, in spite of a statement to that effect in the first volume of Isaac Asimov's autobiography, In Memory Yet Green.^[2]

His second novel, Dreadful Sanctuary (serialized in Astounding during 1948) is an early example of conspiracy fiction, in which a paranoid delusion of global proportions is perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society.^[4]

There are two different and mutually incompatible accounts of Russell's military service during World War II.^[2] The official, well-documented version is that he served with the Royal Air Force, with whom he saw active service in Europe as a member of a Mobile Signals Unit. However, in the introduction to the 1986 Del Rey Books edition of Russell's novel Wasp, Jack L. Chalker states that Russell was too old for active service, and instead worked for Military Intelligence in London, where he "spent the war dreaming up nasty tricks to play against the Germans and Japanese", including Operation Mincemeat. Russell's biographer John L. Ingham states however that "there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in his R.A.F. Record to show that he was anything more than a wireless mechanic and radio operator".^[2]

Russell took up writing full-time in the late 1940s. He became an active member of British science fiction fandom and the British representative of the Fortean Society. He won the first Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1955 for his humorous short story "Allamagoosa".

Russell was awarded a posthumous Prometheus Hall of Fame award in 1985 for his novel The Great Explosion, and in 2000 he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Into Your Tent, a thorough and detailed biography of Russell by John L. Ingham, was published in 2010 by Plantech (UK).^[2]

Sinister Barrier in Unknown.

Writings

Russell's full-length fiction includes the following:

• Sinister Barrier (1939)
• Dreadful Sanctuary (1948)
• Sentinels from Space (1953), based on the earlier magazine story The Star Watchers (1951)
• Three to Conquer (1956), based on the earlier magazine serial Call Him Dead (1955)
• Men, Martians and Machines (1955), containing four related novellas
• Wasp (1958)
• Next of Kin (1959), published earlier as The Space Willies (1958)
• The Great Explosion (1962)
• With a Strange Device (1964), also published as The Mindwarpers.

Russell also wrote a large number of shorter works, many of which have been reprinted in collections such as Deep Space (1954), Six Worlds Yonder (1958), Far Stars (1961), Dark Tides (1962) and Somewhere a Voice (1965). His short story "Allamagoosa" (1955), which was essentially a science-fictional retelling of a traditional tall story called "The Shovewood", won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.^[2]

Russell wrote numerous non-fiction essays on Fortean themes, some of which were collected in a compendium of Forteana entitled Great World Mysteries (1957). His second non-fiction book was The Rabble Rousers (1963), a sardonic look at human folly including the Dreyfus affair and the Florida land boom. He also wrote Lern Yerself Scouse: The ABZ of Scouse (1966) under the pseudonym "Linacre Lane".^[2]

Two omnibus collections of Russell's science fiction are available from NESFA Press: Major Ingredients (2000), containing 30 of his short stories, and Entities (2001) containing five novels. John Pelan's Midnight House published Darker Tides, a collection of Russell's horror and weird fiction, in 2006.

The 1995 novel Design for Great-Day, published as by Alan Dean Foster and Eric Frank Russell, is an expansion by Foster of a 1953 short story of the same name by Russell.

Writing style and themes

Russell had an easy-going, colloquial writing style that was influenced in part by American "hard-boiled" detective fiction of the kind popularized by Black Mask magazine.^[5] Although British, Russell wrote predominantly for an American audience, and was often assumed to be American by readers.^[3]

Much of Russell's science fiction is based on what might be described as "Fortean" themes, with Sinister Barrier and Dreadful Sanctuary being the most notable examples.^[4] Another common theme is that of the single resourceful human pitted against a ponderous alien bureaucracy -- this is the basis for the novels Wasp and Next of Kin, as well as several shorter works.

Russell is sometimes categorized as a humorous writer, and Brian Aldiss describes him as John W. Campbell's "licensed jester".^[6] However, Russell's humour generally has a satirical edge, often aimed at authority and bureaucracy in its various forms. On other occasions, for example in the short stories "Somewhere a Voice" and "The Army Comes to Venus", his work has a deeper and more serious tone, in which the spiritual aspects of humanity's endeavours and aspirations shine through.

Cultural influences

Russell's short story "Jay Score" (1941) is unusual amongst the pulp fiction of its time in presenting a black character, the ship's doctor, without any racial stereotyping. Indeed, this story and its sequels (collected in Men, Martians and Machines) may be considered an early example of the science fiction sub-genre in which a spaceship is crewed by a multi-ethnic, mixed human/non-human, complement (cf. the much later Star Trek).

Russell also appears to have originated the colloquialism "myob" for "Mind your own business", which appears frequently in the novella "...And Then There Were None" (Astounding, June 1951) and in the novel The Great Explosion based upon it.

In 1970, Russell was paid £4689 by the Beatles's company Apple Corps for the motion picture rights to his novel Wasp, the contract being signed on behalf of Apple by Ringo Starr. The film was never made, but it remained one of the most lucrative deals Russell ever made.^[2]

See also

• Study in Still Life
• Tower of Hanoi

References

1. ^ "Handlist of the Eric Frank Russell Collection 1937-1984". http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/0501efr.html. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Ingham, John L. (2010). Into Your Tent: The Life, Work and Family Background of Eric Frank Russell. Plantech (U.K.). ISBN 978-0956457-60-8. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Ashley, Michael (1975). The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Volume 2. Henry Regnery Company. ISBN 0-8092-8002-7. 
4. ^ ^{a b} David Langford (1996). "SF Books of the Damned". Originally published in Fortean Times. http://www.ansible.co.uk/writing/damned.html. 
5. ^ Carr, Terry (1979). Classic Science Fiction: The First Golden Age. Robson Books. ISBN 0-86051-070-0. 
6. ^ Aldiss, Brian W. (1973). Billion Year Spree. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-76555-8. 

Further reading

• Jacob Edwards (2010). "Overlooked : the non-fiction of Eric Frank Russell". Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine 45: 74–77. 

External links

• And then there were none, 1951. Anarchy in action - a model of an anarchistic or free society in science-fiction form.
• Eric Frank Russell at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Review of Major Ingredients
• "Shadow Man" fan site by Narrelle Harris
• Past Masters: Let Me Be Frank, or Welcome to the Allamagoosa Russell-Palooza by Bud Webster, at Galactic Central

Persondata
Name	Russell, Eric Frank
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	January 6, 1905
Place of birth
Date of death	February 28, 1978
Place of death