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Schweitzer, Darrell

Entry updated 4 December 2023. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.

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(1952-    ) US critic, editor, bookseller and author who was early active in sf Fandom, publishing some amateur fiction, though his first professional story of genre interest was "Come to Mother" for Weirdbook #4 in 1971, but who has spent his energies very variously for many years, coming initially to notice with a series of critical studies [they are broken down in the Checklist below] including Lovecraft in the Cinema (1975 chap), The Dream Quest of H.P. Lovecraft (1978 chap), Conan's World and Robert E. Howard (1979 chap), On Writing Science Fiction (The Editors Strike Back!) (1981) with John M Ford and George H Scithers, Constructing Scientifiction & Fantasy (1982 chap) with John Ashmead and Scithers, Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany (1989), and several instalments of the ongoing Reader sequence of critical essays on individual authors, including The Neil Gaiman Reader (anth 2006). During this period he also served as editorial assistant at Asimov's 1977-1982 and at Amazing 1982-1986. With John Betancourt and Scithers he then restarted Weird Tales in 1987 with #290, being variously involved afterwards, their last issue being released for February-March 2007. This run of magazines has also been listed as a sequence of Anthologies, but its editors do not deem it an anthology series, and it is not therefore listed as a whole in the Checklist below (selected titles sometimes referred to as anthologies are, however, given). Also with Scithers, he edited two anthologies of Club Stories: Tales from the Spaceport Bar (anth 1987) and Another Round at the Spaceport Bar (anth 1989).

Schweitzer is not essentially an sf writer [the Checklist below is highly selected]; some of his work tends to a grimly brisk Science-Fantasy diction, including We Are All Legends (coll of linked stories 1981); the Goddess sequence comprising The Shattered Goddess (1982) and Tom O'Bedlam's Night Out, and Other Strange Excursions (coll 1985), and set in a fantasy version of the far future; The Meaning of Life (coll 1988 chap), which assembles a few sf stories; The White Isle (1975 Weirdbook #9; exp April-June 1980 Fantastic; rev 1990) and Living with the Dead: (The Tale of Old Corpsenberg) (2008 chap). The merits of this work are clear enough; but Schweitzer is not an author much interested in Equipoisal exploitations of genre-mixing, and they are not therefore discussed here. [JC]

Darrell Charles Schweitzer

born Woodbury, New Jersey: 27 August 1952

works (fiction is highly selected)

series

Goddess

individual titles

collections

nonfiction

works as editor

series

Spaceport Bar

Weird Tales (quasi-journals sometimes listed as anthologies; so listed here for convenience)

individual titles as editor

nonfiction works as editor

series

Discovering

SF Voices

Speaking of Horror

Speaking of the Fantastic

Reader

individual titles

links

previous versions of this entry



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