(1952- ) US publisher, editor and book reviewer who founded the energetic sf news and reviews journal Thrust in 1973, renaming it Quantum with #36 (1990), and remaining its editor and (from #5) its publisher until the double issue #43/44, when he voluntarily terminated the journal by merging it with Science Fiction Eye. The magazine earned Fratz five Hugo nominations in the Fanzine and Semiprozine category from 1980 to 1991. He wrote articles about sf, many under the column title "The Alienated Critic", as well as conducting author interviews and producing numerous sf/fantasy books reviews, mostly published in Thrust/Quantum. The final issue of that magazine contained a major autobiographical piece covering his beginnings in Comics and science fiction fandom in the 1960s and 1970s to his decision to cease publication.
Fratz also wrote numerous book reviews for other venues during that period and afterwards, including Washington Post Book World, Fantasy Review, and Science Fiction Eye, and entries for numerous academic reference books. In the 1990s he wrote book reviews for Science Fiction Age, and in the 2000s reviewed primarily for Science Fiction Weekly (on the then Sci-Fi Channel web site), continuing to write reviews and articles for the site when it was renamed Sci-Fi Wire and then Blastr. In the 2010s, his primary venues for book reviews and interviews have been SF Site and The New York Review of Science Fiction. [JC/DDF]
Donald Douglas Fratz
born Oakland, Maryland: 18 November 1952
died
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