Chad Oliver

Chad Oliver
Chad Oliver c, 1953
Born	30 March 1928 Cincinnati, Ohio
Died	9 August 1993 Austin, Texas
Occupation	Writer, Anthropologist, Professor
Nationality	American
Period	1940s-1980s
Genre	Science fiction, Western

Symmes Chadwick Oliver (30 March 1928 – 9 August 1993) was an American science fiction and Western writer. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father was a surgeon and his mother a nurse. When he was young he suffered from rheumatic fever and as a result spent some time as an invalid, a time during which he became interested in science fiction. However he spent most of his life in Austin, Texas where he was twice chairman of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Texas at Austin. He was also one of the founders of the Turkey City Writer's Workshop. He first attended the University in 1946 as a student and, apart from a brief sojourn to UCLA to obtain his PhD, he remained there in some capacity until his death, 47 years later.

He first had a story published in 1950. His science fiction is generally classified as anthropological science fiction because he often used insights from his professional work to inform his fictional writing.

Bibliography

Novels

• Mists of Dawn (1952)
• Shadows in the Sun (1954)
• The Winds of Time (1956)
• Unearthly Neighbors (1960, revised in 1984)
• The Wolf is My Brother (1967)
• The Shores of Another Sea (1971)
• Giants in the Dust (1976)
• Broken Eagle (1989)
• The Cannibal Owl (1994)

Collections

• Another Kind (1955)
• The Edge of Forever (1971)
• A Star Above and Other Stories (2003)
• Far from This Earth and Other Stories (2003)

Selected Short Fiction

• "Transfusion" (1959)
• "Blood's a Rover" in Robert Silverberg (ed). Deep Space, 1976. (Not to be confused with a proposed novel of the same title by Harlan Ellison). Presumably the titles of both were taken from the poem titled "Reveille" by A. E. Housman:

"Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad; when the journey's over
There'll be time enough for sleep."

• THE SHORE OF TOMORROW Full-Length Novelet [1953] Appeared in the notable science fiction pulp magazine, Startling Stories March, 1953

External links

• Chad Oliver at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• A comprehensive bibliography of Chad Oliver, including two interviews.
• Biographical entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction