Budrys's "Snail's Pace" was the cover story in the October 1953 issue of Dynamic Science Fiction.Budrys's novelette "Shadow on the Stars" was cover-featured on the November 1954 issue of Fantastic Universe.Budrys's short story "Cage of a Thousand Wings" was the cover feature in the penultimate issue of Planet Stories in 1955.Budrys's novelette "The Strangers" was the cover story for the June 1955 issue of If.Budrys's novelette "Why Should I Stop?" was featured on the cover of the February 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly.Budrys wrote "Resurrection on Fifth Avenue" for Fantastic under his pseudonym "Gordon Jaulyn".
Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys (January 9, 1931 – June 9, 2008) was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen namesFrank Mason, Alger Rome in collaboration with Jerome Bixby, John A. Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier. In 1960, he authored Rogue Moon, a novel.[1]
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 reading Robinson Crusoe. From Flash Gordon comic strips, Budrys read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine; Astounding Science Fiction caused him at the age of 11 to want to become a science fiction writer.[3] His first published science fiction story was "The High Purpose", which appeared in Astounding in 1952.
In 1952, Budrys worked as editor and manager for such science fiction publishers as Gnome Press and Galaxy 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 magazine Tomorrow 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 with Jerome Bixby.
Having published about 100 stories and a half-dozen novels, with a wife and children to support, after 1960 Budrys wrote less fiction and worked in publishing, editing, and advertising. He became better known as among science fiction's best critics than as writer,[3] reviewing forGalaxy Science Fiction[5] and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a book editor for Playboy, a longtime teacher at the Clarion Writers Workshop, and an organizer and judge for the Writers of the Future awards.
Budrys also worked as a publicist; in a famous publicity stunt, he erected a giant pickle on the proposed site of the Chicago Picasso during the time the newly arriving sculpture was embroiled in controversy.[6]
Some Will Not Die (1961) (an expanded and restored version of False Night)
The Iron Thorn (1967) (as serialized in If; revised and published in book form as The 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's 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) in Astounding Science Fiction; also published in the short story anthology Penguin Science Fiction (edited by Brian Aldiss, 1961).
"Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" in Galaxy, December 1961
"For Love" (originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1962) – appears in The Seventh Galaxy Reader edited by Frederik Pohl (Doubleday Science Fiction, 1964).
" Die, Shadow!" in If, May 1963.
"Be Merry" (1966) published in If, December 1966, Vol. 16, No. 12, Issue 109.
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 by Pulphouse Publishing, with its second issue it was published and edited by Budrys with assistance from Kandis 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.
^Zeldes, Leah A. (July 26, 2010). "The Picasso put Chicago in a pickle". Dining Chicago. Chicago's Restaurant & Entertainment Guide, Inc. Archived from the original on November 27, 2011. Retrieved August 1, 2010.
