Reamy, Tom
Entry updated 10 July 2023. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US author, movie projectionist and graphic designer Thomas Earl Reamy (1935-1977); early involved in Fandom, he won a Hugo in 1967 and 1969 for his Fanzine Trumpet, afterwards publishing Nickelodeon, and participating in Shayol. He began publishing with "Twilla" for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in September 1974 and, by late 1977 when he died of a heart attack, had become a writer of potential stature in the field, having just won the 1976 John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer (though in fact most of his work must be thought of as fantasy). The tales assembled in San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories (coll 1979) – the title novelette "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" (August 1975 F&SF) won a 1976 Nebula – were notable for the threatening sweetness of their probing of unconscious material, often sexual, though they often ended at a point of healing uplift, occasionally sentimentalized. In his novel Blind Voices (1978), which shared a common background with "Twilla" and "San Diego Lightfoot Sue", a small Kansas town around 1930 is visited by a travelling circus full of freaks and creatures of legend. The homage to Charles G Finney, Theodore Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury is clearly deliberate; a final explanation of the circus creatures in terms of Genetic Engineering provides no more than an sf pretext, the book reading as elegiac fantasy. [JC]
see also: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Telekinesis.
Thomas Earl Reamy
born Woodson, Texas: 23 January 1935
died Independence, Missouri: 4 November 1977
works
- "Sting" in Six Science Fiction Plays (New York: Washington Square Press, 1976) edited by Roger Elwood [plays: anth: pb/Ed Soyka]
- Blind Voices (New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1978) [hb/David Plourde]
collections
- San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories (Kansas City, Missouri: Earthlight Publishers, 1979) [hb/Diane and Leo Dillon]
- Under the Hollywood Sign: The Collected Stories of Tom Reamy (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2023) [coll: hb/Matt Mahurin]
works as editor
- MidAmericCon Program Book (Kansas City, Missouri: MidAmeriCon, 1976) [anth: hb/George Barr]
links
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