Burdick, Eugene L
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1918-1965) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Log the Man Dead" in Argosy for May 1953, and who was the author of several extremely popular novels, both alone and in collaboration. Of his Near Future sf novels, the best-known remains Fail-Safe (13-27 October 1962 Saturday Evening Post; 1962) with Harvey Wheeler, which depicts a US attack in error on the USSR, and the horrifying tit-for-tat (the destruction of New York City) which the US President is forced to offer; the book was filmed as Fail Safe (1964). Sarkhan (1965; vt The Deceptive American 1977) places the Communist takeover of an abject South-East Asian state into the very Near Future. The 480: A Novel of Politics (1964), set in the early twenty-first century, envisions a malign collaboration between an increasingly corporation-dominated America and Computer technology. Sarkhan (1965; vt The Deceptive American 1977) with William J Lederer is a Near Future tale set in the fictional South-East Asian state of Sarkhan featured in the earlier, nonfantastic The Ugly American (1958), also with Lederer, and now subject to Communist takeover. [JC]
Eugene Leonard Burdick
born Sheldon, Iowa: 12 December 1918
died Los Angeles, California: 26 July 1965
works
- Fail-Safe (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962) with Harvey Wheeler [first appeared 13-27 October 1962 Saturday Evening Post: hb/uncredited]
- Sarkhan (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965) with William J Lederer [hb/]
- The Deceptive American (New York: W W Norton, 1977) [vt of the above: hb/]
- The 480: A Novel of Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) [hb/Diane and Leo Dillon]
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