Randall Garrett

Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a contributor to "Astounding" and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about men from Earth disrupting a peaceful agrarian civilization on an alien planet.
Biography and writing career.
Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books — the novel "Too Many Magicians" and two short story collections — set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is modeled on Sherlock Holmes), elements often appearing in the shorter works about the detective. Michael Kurland wrote two additional Lord Darcy novels.
Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of Hightower" (a pun on "garret"). The short novel "Brain Twister", written by Garrett with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips), was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.
An inveterate punster (defining a pun as "the odor given off by a decaying mind"), he was a favorite guest at science fiction conventions and friend to many fans, especially in Southern California. According to various anecdotes in a tribute volume, Garrett was cherished by his friends, who often repeated anecdotes of his behavior, but horrified many women, to whom he routinely introduced himself with obscene propositions. He introduced himself to Marion Zimmer Bradley with the Latin sentence "Coito ergo sum,"(sic) which she didn't understand until it was explained to her some time later as an obscenity, and at another time to a pregnant Anne McCaffrey with "sly innuendoes" which horrified her. Philip José Farmer recounted an anecdote where Garrett was punched by his then-wife for having a pair of someone else's lace underpants in his pocket, and later ran naked through a hotel after being caught having sex with another woman in the wrong room. Frank Herbert said "You could follow his movements around this creative Anachronists' picnic by the squeals of the women whose bottoms he had just pinched." Isaac Asimov referred to Garrett's offending Judith Merril enough, she emptied an ashtray over his and Garrett's heads.
Garrett was married to fellow author Vicki Ann Heydron who largely wrote the "Gandalara Cycle" fantasy series credited to both spouses.
In 1999, Randall Garrett was post-humuosly awarded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series. He was also ordained in the Old Catholic Church. Glen Cook's private detective character Garrett P.I. is named in honor of Garrett.
Health.
In the summer of 1979, Garrett contracted a viral infection which led to meningitis, and/or encephalitis.
In "The Best of Randall Garrett", a combined anthology and festschrift which was published in January of 1982, editor Robert Silverberg (a personal friend of Garrett's) stated that although the infection "for a time threatened [Garrett's] life and for a much longer time has made it impossible for him to work", Garrett was "fighting his way back to full recovery" — and, indeed, when Algis Budrys reviewed the anthology in the August 1982 issue of "the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction", he stated that he had been told that "when last seen, Garrett was seated at a dinner table, cheerfully ignoring the assembled company and attempting to remember the words to a dirty song"; however, in October 1982, Dave Langford reported that the Hugo Award ceremony at that year's Worldcon had included an announcement that Garrett "had permanently lost his memory". By 1986, the "about the authors" text in the novel "The River Wall", credited to Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, described Garrett as having suffered "serious and permanent injury", and in 2011, Langford and Brian M. Stableford's entry on Garrett in "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" summarized him as having been "hospitalized from 1981 until his death" in 1987.
Bibliography.
Gandalara Cycle.
By Garrett and his wife Vicki Ann Heydron; written by Heydron from a draft of the first volume and an outline of the series by Garrett.
Nidorian series.
With Robert Silverberg, as Robert Randall.
Psi-Power series.
With Laurence M. Janifer, as Mark Phillips.
Short stories.
 
Poem series.
Parodies Tossed.
"Parodies Tossed" was a feature of Columbia Publications' "Science Fiction Stories" and "Future Science Fiction".
Poems.
The collection "Takeoff Too" included a poem, which the editor titled "The Egyptian Diamond", which was erroneously credited to Garrett. It was actually written by Jack Bennett and originally published under the title "Ben Ali the Egyptian". Parts of "Ben Ali the Egyptian" "were" quoted in Garrett's short story "The Foreign Hand Tie."