Peck, Richard
Entry updated 13 May 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1934-2018) US author of children's and Young Adult fiction, including some Fantastika. The Blossom Culp series of supernatural fantasies deals with ghosts [for Ghosts and Ghost Stories see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] and opens with The Ghost Belonged to Me (1975), set in 1913, in which a ghost warns of impending Disaster; this novel was filmed as Child of Glass (1978) directed by John Erman. Of more direct sf interest is Voices After Midnight (1989), whose three young protagonists repeatedly undergo Timeslips from contemporary New York to the city in 1888, with romantic complications and the threat of that year's deadly blizzard. The sf Lost in Cyberspace (1995) features Time Travel via schoolboy Computer shenanigans (though not in fact Cyberspace), with ensuing complications as historical characters impinge on the present day; the sequel is The Great Interactive Dream Machine (1996). Three Quarters Dead (2010) is another ghost/suspense tale, whose main emphasis is on teenage social relations. Animal fantasies [again see links below] include Secrets at Sea (2011), where a Wainscot Society of talking Mice follows its human host-family on an ocean voyage from the USA to Europe, and The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail (2013), a tale in similar vein set in Victorian London.
Peck won the Newbery Medal for his Depression-era historical novel A Year Down Yonder (2000). He should not be confused with the US sf author and critic Richard E Peck. [DRL]
Richard Wayne Peck
born Decatur, Illinois: 10 April 1934
died New York: 24 May 2018
works (selected)
series
Blossom Culp
- The Ghost Belonged to Me (New York: Viking Press, 1975) [Blossom Culp: hb/]
- Ghosts I Have Been (New York: Viking Press, 1977) [Blossom Culp: hb/]
- The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (New York: Delacorte Press, 1983) [Blossom Culp: hb/]
- Ghosts I Have Been / The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (New York: Puffin, 2002) [omni of the above two: Blossom Culp: pb/]
- Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death (New York: Delacorte Press, 1986) [Blossom Culp: hb/]
Lost in Cyberspace
- Lost in Cyberspace (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1995) [Lost in Cyberspace: hb/Broeck Steadman]
- The Great Interactive Dream Machine (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 1996) [Lost in Cyberspace: hb/Broeck Steadman]
individual titles
- Three Quarters Dead (New York: Dial Books, 2010) [hb/]
- Secrets at Sea (New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2011) [hb/]
- The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail (New York: Dial Books, 2013) [hb/]
links
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Animal Fantasy; Ghosts; Ghost Stories.
previous versions of this entry