Budrys's "Snail's Pace" was the cover story in the October 1953 issue ofDynamic Science Fiction.Budrys's novelette "Shadow on the Stars" was cover-featured on the November 1954 issue ofFantastic Universe.Budrys's short story "Cage of a Thousand Wings" was the cover feature in the penultimate issue ofPlanet Stories in 1955.Budrys's novelette "The Strangers" was the cover story for the June 1955 issue ofIf.Budrys's novelette "Why Should I Stop?" was featured on the cover of the February 1956 issue ofScience Fiction Quarterly.Budrys wrote "Resurrection on Fifth Avenue" forFantastic under his pseudonym "Gordon Jaulyn".
Incorporating his family's experience, Budrys's fiction depicts isolated and damaged people and themes of identity, survival and legacy. He taught himself English at the age of six by readingRobinson Crusoe. FromFlash Gordon comic strips, Budrys readH. G. Wells'sThe Time Machine;Astounding Science Fiction caused him at the age of 11 to want to become a science fiction writer.[2] His first published science fiction story was "The High Purpose", which appeared inAstounding in 1952.
In 1952, Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers asGnome Press andGalaxy Science Fiction. Some of Budrys's science fiction in the 1950s was published under the pen name "John A. Sentry", a reconfigured Anglification of his Lithuanian name. Among his other pseudonyms in the SF magazines of the 1950s and elsewhere, several revived as bylines for vignettes in his magazineTomorrow Speculative Fiction, is "William Scarff". Budrys also wrote several stories under the names "Ivan Janvier" or "Paul Janvier", and used "Alger Rome" in his collaborations withJerome Bixby.
Budrys also worked as a publicist; in a famouspublicity stunt, he erected a giant pickle on the proposed site of theChicago Picasso during the time the newly arriving sculpture was embroiled in controversy.[6]
Some Will Not Die (1961) (an expanded and restored version ofFalse Night)
The Iron Thorn (1967) (as serialized inIf; revised and published in book form asThe Amsirs and the Iron Thorn). On a bleak forbidding planet, humans hunt Amsirs – flightless humanoid birds – and vice versa. After one young hunter makes his first kill, he is initiated into the society's secrets. Still, he figures there are secrets the human race has forgotten altogether, and begins to hunt for answers.
"The End of Summer" (1954) inAstounding Science Fiction; also published in the short story anthologyPenguin Science Fiction (edited byBrian Aldiss, 1961).
84.2 Minutes of Algis Budrys (1995), Unifont (Budrys's own company). Released on cassette, this featured Budrys reading his short stories "The Price", "The Distant Sound of Engines", "Never Meet Again", and "Explosions!".
Tomorrow Speculative Fiction (1993–2000); initially edited by Budrys and published byPulphouse Publishing, with its second issue it was published and edited by Budrys with assistance fromKandis Elliott under the Unifont rubric. It ceased publication as a paper and ink magazine and became a webzine late in the decade. Nine of the 24 print issues contained a story by Budrys, almost always under one of his pseudonyms.
