Randall Garrett

(December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987)

Gordon Randall Phillip David “Randy” Garrett, an SF and fantasy author, was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other prozines in the 1950s and 1960s. His "Lord Darcy" series was very popular. His novel in that series, Too Many Magicians, was nominated for the 1967 Best Novel Hugo. He was also nominated for the 1978 Best Short Story Hugo and the 1960 Best Novel Hugo. He used many pennames, among them Darryl T. Langart and Jonathan Blake Mackenzie, and was part of Robert Randall.

He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet. In the mid-1950s, Garrett, Silverberg and Harlan Ellison all lived in the same New York boarding house at 611 W. 114th St. In The Best of Randall Garrett (1982), Silverberg described him as “plump, boisterous, untidy, a hard drinker and heavy smoker who rarely surfaced by daylight and who did his best work, when he could bring himself to work at all, between midnight and dawn.”

He was a frequent congoer. He attended Midwestcon 1 and several others, including, notoriously, Midwestcon 4 in 1953. An infamous philanderer known for being crude in his approaches to women, he was married three times. The adultery that doubtless led to the final breakup of his already rocky marriage to Beverly Garrett became a public spectacle at Indian Lake.

Garrett later moved to Texas and California and became an ordained minister. He suffered an attack of encephalitis in the summer of 1979 and was not able to write after that; he spent the last eight years of his life in a coma. The books he is credited with as co-author during that period are generally thought to be the work of his collaborator and third wife, Vicki Ann Heydron.

• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
• Bibliography at ISFDB.

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 1970 -- toastmaster at SFCon 70, 1960 Best Novel Hugo nominee
• 1967 -- 1967 Best Novel Hugo nominee
• 1969 -- FUNcon II
• 1973 -- Equicon '73
• 1974 -- Invisible Little Man Award
• 1978 -- 1978 Best Short Story Hugo nominee
• 1982 -- Pat Terry Award for Humour in SF
• 1999 -- Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award (posthumous)

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Person

1927—1987

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