Randall Garrett
Randall Garrett, born December 16, 1927, died December 31, 1987, was a prolific writer for Astounding and other science fiction magazines in the 1950s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure sf, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet. He 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 British-French empire (the Angevin Empire) 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 (one character has an uncle from Man), elements that often appear in his shorter works. Garrett suffered an attack of encephalitis in the early Eighties and was not able to write after that.
Selected Works
Novels
- Unwise Child (1962)
- Anything You Can Do (1963) (as Darrel T. Langart)
- Too Many Magicians (1967)
with Robert Silverberg, as Robert Randall
- The Shrouded Planet (1957)
- The Dawning Light (1959)
with Laurence M. Janifer, as Mark Phillips
- Brain Twister (1962)
- The Impossibles (1963)
- Supermind (1963)
Collections
- Takeoff (1980)
- The Best of Randall Garrett (1982) (edited by Robert Silverberg)
- Takeoff Too (1987)
- Lord Darcy (2002) (all the Darcy stories, with minor editing to remove repetitions of the backstory)
