Oltion, Jerry B
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1957- ) US author who began publishing sf in November 1982 with "Much Ado About Nothing" for Analog, the journal which published a high proportion of the twenty-five or so stories he wrote in the 1980s, many of which appear in Love Songs of a Mad Scientist: The Collected Stories of Jerry Oltion Volume One (coll 1993). He has remained a prolific short-story writer, but no second volume has appeared; With Stars in Their Eyes (coll 2003) with Adam-Troy Castro contains only three stories by each author plus a collaboration, though the twenty stories assembled in Twenty Questions (coll 2004) are a good sampling, mostly from his mature career. Perhaps the most important tale not assembled is "Abandon in Place" (December 1996 F&SF), which won a Nebula for best novella.
Oltion's first novel, Frame of Reference (1987), is a Pocket-Universe tale whose human protagonists discover, while growing up and falling in love, that the starship they live in is actually a simulacrum hidden Underground and that the Aliens on the surface of the Earth deserve a strict comeuppance, which they soon get. Oltion then published two Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens Ties [see Checklist below] before beginning his most interesting work – the Cheap Hyperdrive sequence comprising Abandon in Place (much shorter version December 1996 F&SF; 2000), The Getaway Special (2001) and Anywhere But Here (2005), three Space Opera adventures connected by the introduction of a cheap, downloadable hyperdrive (see Faster Than Light); a touch of Satire is introduced through the security-obsessed American government's attempts to ban so uncontrollable a form of Transportation. [JC]
see also: Buck Rogers XXVC; Seiun Award.
Jerry Brian Oltion
born Sheridon, Wyoming: 22 September 1957
works
series
Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens
- Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens #4: Alliance (New York: Ace Books, 1990) [tie to the Shared World series: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: pb/Paul Rivoche]
- Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens #6: Humanity (New York: Ace Books, 1990) [tie to the Shared World series: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: pb/Paul Rivoche]
Star Trek
- Star Trek: Twilight's End (New York: Pocket Books, 1996) [tie to the Star Trek universe: Star Trek: pb/]
- Star Trek: Mudd in your Eye (New York: Pocket Books, 1997) [tie to the Star Trek universe: Star Trek: pb/Dru Blair]
- Star Trek: Captain's Table, Book Six: Where Sea Meets Sky (New York: Pocket Books, 1998) [tie to the Star Trek universe: Star Trek: Captain's Table: pb/]
- Star Trek: The New Earth, Book 4: The Flaming Arrow (New York: Pocket Books, 2000) with Kathy Oltion [tie to the Star Trek universe: Star Trek: The New Earth: pb/]
Cheap Hyperdrive
- Abandon in Place (New York: Tor, 2000) [much shorter version appeared December 1996 F&SF: Cheap Hyperdrive: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
- The Getaway Special (New York: Tor, 2001) [Cheap Hyperdrive: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
- Anywhere But Here (New York: Tor, 2005) [Cheap Hyperdrive: hb/Vincent Di Fate]
individual titles
- Frame of Reference (New York: Popular Library/Questar, 1987) [pb/Wayne Barlowe]
- Hard Crash: Unreal, No 1 (New York: Pocket Books, 1998) as by Ryan Hughes [tie to the computer game Unreal: pb/]
- Paradise Passed (Wilsonville, Oregon: Wheatland Press, 2004) [pb/Frank Wu]
collections and stories
- Love Songs of a Mad Scientist: The Collected Stories of Jerry Oltion Volume One (Eugene, Oregon: Hypatia Press, 1993) [coll: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Gigantic Three in One Complete History of the Universe (Washington, District of Columbia: Paper Moon Press, 1994) with Alan Bard [coll: chap: pb/nonpictorial]
- The Love Song of Laura Morrison (Woodinville, Washington: Paper Moon Press, 1994) [story: chap: single story from Love Songs of a Mad Scientist above: pb/nonpictorial]
- With Stars in Their Eyes (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Wildside Press, 2003) with Adam-Troy Castro [coll: three stories each: pb/]
- Twenty Questions (Wilsonville, Oregon: Wheatland Press, 2003) [coll: pb/]
nonfiction
- Professionalism (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1991) [nonfiction: chap: in the publisher's Pulphouse Writer's Chapbook series: pb/nonpictorial]
works as editor
- Buried Treasures: An Anthology of Unpublished Pulphouse Stories (Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1996) [anth: hb/Dan Berggren]
links
previous versions of this entry