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Homer Nearing

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Homer C. Nearing Jr (April 15, 1915 – May 29, 2004) was an American professor and author of mathematically themed short fiction, often under the byline "H. Nearing Jr.".[1]

Fiction and poetry

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Nearing is best known for his humorous Professor Cleanth Penn Ransom series[2] published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the early 1950s,[3] with the protagonist being a surreal head of the mathematics department at Uh-Uh University.[4] One of Nearing's Professor Ransom short stories "The Maladjusted Classroom" was reprinted in the 1954 edition of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction[5] while "The Cerebrative Psittacoid" was reprinted in Best SF, edited by Edmund Crispin.[6][7] His story "The Mathematical Voodoo," about a teacher struggling to teach math to students,[8] was reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica, a 1958 anthology on mathematical topics compiled by Clifton Fadiman.[9] A sequel featuring Professor Ransom entitled "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" was published in Fadiman's sequel anthology "The Mathematical Magpie".

Seven of the Professor Ransom stories from F&SF were also reprinted alongside four new stories[2][10] in The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom, released in 1954 by Doubleday.[11][12][13][14] The collection functioned as a "consistently funny"[15] fix-up novel about the attempts by a pair of professors to create a union between science and the arts[13] by experimenting with different strange devices.[16] The book was reprinted in paperback in 1969 by Curtis Books and rereleased in 2015 by Singularity&Co, with a new review in Amazing Stories calling the stories "delightfully whimsical."[17]

Nearing also published poetry in The New Yorker.[14][18]

Academic career

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In addition to writing fiction, Nearing was a published expert on historical English poetry and on British traditions concerning Julius Caesar. He was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and as an undergraduate competed on the university's varsity swimming team,[14] earning a letter in 1934, 1935, and 1936.[19] After earning bachelor's and master's degrees,[14] he completed his doctorate there in 1944, with the dissertation English Historical Poetry, 1599-1641.[20]

After working as a schoolteacher at Perkiomen School and the Episcopal Academy and as a manager at a shipbuilding company, he became a professor of English at Pennsylvania Military College,[14] which became Widener University in 1972. The Homer C. Nearing, Jr. Distinguished Professorship at Widener University is named for him.[21]

Personal life

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Nearing married Alice Eleanor Jones, who like Nearing earned a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1944 and wrote speculative fiction. They had two children.[22]

Bibliography

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  • English Historical Poetry, 1599–1641 (1945)
  • The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom (Doubleday, 1954, 217 pp.) Dust jacket design by Edward Gorey.

References

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  1. ^ "Obituary for H(omer) Nearing, Jr." Locus Magazine, June 2006, issue 545, page 82.
  2. ^ a b Anatomy of Wonder 4: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction edited by Neil Barron, R.R. Bowker, 1995, page 181.
  3. ^ Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, 3rd edition, by James Gunn, McFarland 2018, page 199
  4. ^ Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia by Brian Stableford, Taylor & Francis, 2006, page 287.
  5. ^ The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Third series, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, Doubleday and Company, 1954, page 134.
  6. ^ Best SF edited by Edmund Crispin, Faber and Faber, 1962, page 214.
  7. ^ "Something To Read" by Kenneth F. Slater, Nebula Science Fiction No. 12., April 1955.
  8. ^ "Review: The Mathematical Voodoo by H. Nearing, Jr.," The Guide to Supernatural Fiction by Everett F. Bleiler, Kent State University Press, 1983, page 68.
  9. ^ "Review of Fantasia Mathematica" by Allen Stenger, Mathematical Association of America, published 01/22/2019.
  10. ^ The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Third series, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, Doubleday and Company, 1954, page 152.
  11. ^ Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature edited by Douglas Menville and Mary A. Burgess, Wildside Press, 1979, page 382.
  12. ^ The Best Science-fiction Stories and Novels edited by Everett Franklin Bleiler and Thaddeus Eugene Dikty, Advent: Publishers, 1955, page 536.
  13. ^ a b The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z edited by Peter Nicholls, Granada, 1979, page 421.
  14. ^ a b c d e "Nearing's first book published". The Dome. Vol. 8, no. 5. April 9, 1954. p. 1.
  15. ^ The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z edited by Peter Nicholls, Granada, 1979, page 299.
  16. ^ Publishers Weekly, volume 165, page 1376, 1954.
  17. ^ "Scide Splitters: The Sinister Researches of C. P. Ransom by H. Nearing, Jr." by David Kilman, Amazing Stories, Sept. 16, 2015.
  18. ^ An Index to Literature in The New Yorker: Volumes XVI-XXX, 1940-1955 by Robert Owen Johnson, Scarecrow Press, 1969, page 26.
  19. ^ "All-Time Penn Men's Swimming Letterwinners". Men's Swimming & Diving. Penn Athletics. June 10, 2005. Retrieved December 27, 2021.
  20. ^ Catalog entry for English Historical Poetry, 1599-1641 in the Pennsylvania State University library, accessed 2021-12-27
  21. ^ Reyes, Jessica (May 19, 2020). "Distinguished Professorship will Support Undergraduate Research in English". Widener Newsroom. Widener University. Retrieved December 27, 2021.
  22. ^ Jones's biography from Yaszek, Lisa, ed. (2018). The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin. Library of America. ISBN 9781598535853.
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