 | This article'slead sectionmay be too short to adequatelysummarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead toprovide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article.(December 2024) |
Barry N. Malzberg | |
|---|---|
| Born | Barry Nathaniel Malzberg (1939-07-24)July 24, 1939 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | December 19, 2024(2024-12-19) (aged 85) Saddle River, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Pen name | Nathan Herbert, K. M. O'Donnell |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Syracuse University |
| Genre | Recursive science fiction |
Barry Nathaniel Malzberg (July 24, 1939 – December 19, 2024) was an American writer and editor, most often ofscience fiction andfantasy.
Malzberg originated from aJewish family and graduated fromSyracuse University in 1960. He worked as an investigator for the New York City Department of Welfare in 1961–1962 and 1963–1964. In 1963, he was employed as a reimbursement agent for the New York State Department of Mental Health. He married Joyce Zelnick in 1964.[citation needed]
 | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(August 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Malzberg initially sought to establish himself as aplaywright as well as a prose-fiction writer. In 1964, he returned to Syracuse University for graduate study increative writing. Although he was awarded a Schubert Foundation Playwriting Fellowship (1964-1965) and the Cornelia Ward Creative Writing Fellowship (1965), he was unable to sell his work to any of the literary magazines of the era.[1] Resolving not to be an "unpublished assistant professor of English,"[2] he left the program in 1965 to pursue a career as a freelance writer and agent for theScott Meredith Literary Agency. Malzberg would intermittently continue with SMLA through the next several decades, being one of its last caretakers.[original research?]
His first published story was "The Bed" under the pseudonym "Nathan Herbert" in the men's magazineWildcat.[3] His first science fiction story ("We're Coming Through the Window") was published in the August 1967 issue ofGalaxy. Malzberg frequently repurposed existing stories for his science fiction sales. He first found commercial and critical success with publication of his surreal novelette "Final War" inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the name "K. M. O'Donnell" in 1968.
He had been writing erotic novels using the pseudonym "Mel Johnson" but began writing erotic novels under his own name in 1968 forMaurice Girodias'sOlympia Press.[4] Many of his science short stories and novels in the late 1960s were published under the pseudonym "K. M. O'Donnell", derived from the surnames of Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and their joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell."[5]
He was an editor atEscapade, a men's magazine, in early 1968. In the latter half of 1968 he editedAmazing Stories andFantastic science fiction and fantasy-fiction magazines.[6] He was the editor of the Science Fiction Writers of America Bulletin in 1969 until he was asked to resign because of a critical editorial he wrote about the NASA space program.[7]
Malzberg's writing style is distinctive, frequently employing long, elaborate sentences with few commas. Most of his science fiction books are short, present-tense narratives concerned exclusively with the consciousness of a single obsessive character. His themes, particularly in the novelsBeyond Apollo (1972) andThe Falling Astronauts (1971) about the USspace exploration programme, include thedehumanisation effects ofbureaucracy andtechnology; his treatment of these themes sometimes exhibits strong resemblances toFranz Kafka, accompanied byunreliable narrator techniques. In novels likeGalaxies (1975) andHerovit's World (1973), Malzberg usesmetafiction techniques to subject theheroic conventions and literary limitations ofspace opera to bitingsatire.
He edited anthologies such asFinal Stage (withEdward L. Ferman), also several in collaboration withBill Pronzini and others. In interviews and memoirs he detailed how many of his novels have been written within weeks or even days: for example, at the beginning of 1973 he was commissioned to write the series of novels "The Lone Wolf", ten of which he completed by October 1973.[8] Aside from fantastic fiction, he was a prolific writer ofcrime fiction and other genres, under his own name, as O'Donnell, and as Mike Barry and under other pseudonyms. He also often wrote in collaboration with Pronzini,Kathe Koja, and others. He wrote the novelization of theSaul Bass-directed 1974 filmPhase IV. At the end of 1975 he made numerous public statements that he was retiring from science fiction.[9]
He was also nominated several times for theHugo Award (including for the stories "In the Stone House" and "Understanding Entropy"[10]), and won theLocus Award for his collection of historical and critical essays,The Engines of the Night (1982).[citation needed]
Malzberg's work has been widely praised by critics, while being attacked by proponents ofhard science fiction for its pessimistic, anti-Campbellian tenor. Thedystopian andmetafictional elements of Malzberg's work led to a parody byPaul Di Filippo, whose first published story, "Falling Expectations", was a parody of Malzberg.Theodore Sturgeon said of Malzberg in 1973, "I look forward eagerly to his byline, snatch joyfully at it when I see it and he has never let me down."[11] Writing inThe Paris Review, critic J.D. Daniels said of Malzberg: "Malzberg’s books, in their tortured self-awareness, are primarily aboutwriting: its technical difficulties and moral pitfalls, its potential to cheapen or calcify, its temptation to fraudulence or ventriloquism, the insisted-on inadequacy of language as an excuse for not being a less recursive or less involuted writer, and so on."[12]
For years, Malzberg collaborated with friend and fellow science fiction writerMike Resnick on a series of more than 50 advice columns for writers in theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's quarterly magazineSFWA Bulletin. They have been collected asThe Business of Science Fiction.
Malzberg was a regular contributor to theSFWA Bulletin published by theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In 2013, articles he wrote for theBulletin withMike Resnick triggered a controversy aboutsexism among members of the association. Female authors strongly objected to comments by Resnick and Malzberg such as references to "lady editors" and "lady writers" who were "beauty pageant beautiful" or a "knock out."Bulletin editorJean Rabe resigned her post in the course of the controversy.[13]
He had been a resident ofTeaneck, New Jersey, for many years.
Stark House Press has reissued more than forty of Malzberg'snovels and short story collections, along with two new short story collections: "Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg" (edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard) and "Collaborative Capers" (edited by Robert Friedman).
Malzberg died inSaddle River, New Jersey, on December 19, 2024, at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife and daughters.[14][15] Malzberg had been suffering from a series of medical problems, culminating in pneumonia and a bacterial infection.[16] An obituary titled "Novelist on a Deadline: Barry Malzberg, 1939–2024," and stating that Malzberg wrote "quickly and brilliantly in a variety of genres," appeared in the December 23, 2024 issue ofThe Nation.[17]
