Frank Malcolm Robinson (August 9, 1926 – June 30, 2014) was an American science fiction andtechno-thriller writer. He was a speechwriter for gay politicianHarvey Milk and Milk's designated successor in the event of his death but declined to be appointed to or run for office.[1]
Born inChicago, Illinois.[2] Robinson was the son of a check forger.[3] He started out in his teens working as a copy boy forInternational News Service and then became an office boy forZiff Davis.[3] He was drafted into theNavy forWorld War II, and when his tour was over attendedBeloit College, where he majored inphysics, graduating in 1950. He could find no work as a writer, so he ended up back in the Navy and serving inKorea, where he kept writing and reading, as well as publishing inAstounding magazine.
After the Navy, he attended graduate school in journalism, then worked for a Chicago-based Sunday supplement. Soon he switched toScience Digest, where he worked from 1956 to 1959. From there, he moved into men's magazines:Rogue (1959–65) andCavalier (1965–66). In 1969,Playboy asked him to take over thePlayboy Advisor column. He remained there, without revealing that he was gay, until 1973, when he left to write full-time.
He collaborated on several other works with Scortia, includingThe Prometheus Crisis,The Nightmare Factor, andBlow-Out. More recent works includeThe Dark Beyond the Stars (1991), and an updated version ofThe Power (2000), which closely followedWaiting (1999), a novel with similar themes toThe Power. His novel[needs update] is a medical thriller about organ theft calledThe Donor.[7]
In the 1970s, Robinson started seriously collecting the vintage pulp-fiction magazines that he had grown up reading. The collection spawned a book on the history of the pulps as seen through their vivid cover art:Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines (with co-author Lawrence Davidson).[8] He attended numerous pulp conventions and in 2000 won the Lamont Award for lifetime achievement at Pulpcon.[9]
