Swierczynski, Duane
Entry updated 15 September 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1972- ) US journalist, Comics writer and author, who began to publish work of genre interest with "Life during Death" in Dark Planet for 6 July 1998. He has almost exclusively concentrated on nonfiction, mostly on criminals and criminality, a focus that dominates his fiction, including the Charlie Hardie sequence beginning with Fun and Games (2011) [none of this listed below]. Between 2007 and 2017 he was active in comics, most of his work being for Marvel Comics.
Swierczynski is of sf interest primarily for his first novel, the surreal Secret Dead Men (2005), in which a man's brain contains what he calls a Brain Hotel which houses in individual "rooms" a large number of "stolen souls", almost but perhaps not quite Brains in Boxes (see also Great and Small); elements of a riff on Charlie Kaufman's Being John Malkovich (1999) may be surmised. The gonzo premise of Severance Package (2007), that a boss will simply kill off his unwanted employees rather than fire them, edges the tale into Fantastika; Expiration Date (2010) is a Time Travel tale whose protagonist is trapped in his own lousy past. [JC]
Duane Louis Swierczynski
born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 22 February 1972
works (highly selected)
- Secret Dead Men (Holicong, Pennsylvania: Point Blank, 2005) [hb/J T Lindroos]
- Severance Package (New York: Minotaur, 2008) [hb/]
- Expiration Date (New York: Minotaur, 2010) [hb/]
links
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