Wilber, Rick
Entry updated 20 March 2023. Tagged: Author, Editor.
Working name of US academic and author Richard Arnold Wilber (1948- ), who began to publish work of genre interest with "Horatio Hornblower and the Songs of Innocence" in Chrysalis 6 (anth 1980) edited by Roy Torgeson, and many of whose short stories have been assembled as Where Garagiola Waits and Other Baseball Stories (coll 1999), To Leuchars (coll 2001) and Rambunctious: Nine Tales of Determination (coll 2020). This last volume contains some powerfully elegiac tales with autobiographical elements; the uncollected "Helmet" (December 1991 Aboriginal Science Fiction) interestingly invokes the bicameral-mind theories of Julian Jaynes. Much of this work deals in one mode or another with Baseball [Wilber wrote that entry for this encyclopedia], more often than not in Fantasy terms, though Rum Point: A Baseball Novel (2010) only edges upon the fantastic. Wilber has written several novelettes and novellas featuring a Multiverse version of baseball player and World War Two spy Morris "Moe" Berg. Wilber's father was a Major League Baseball player and coach and a minor-league manager. Wilber is the father of a son with Down syndrome and frequently includes characters with Down syndrome in his fiction, most recently in the novella, "The Death of the Hind" (2023 Asimov's), a collaboration with Kevin J Anderson.
Wilber's first novel, The Cold Road (2003), an exercise in Fantastika incorporating some slender sf elements, deals with a woman whose ability to experience the last moments of dead persons is presented Equipoisally as an obeah empowerment that seems measurable. The S'hudonni sequence whose first novel-length tale is Alien Morning (2016) is on the other hand set in the Near Future; the protagonist, enabled through his skills in manipulating reality levels (see Media Landscape; Virtual Reality) in a Game-World context, is involved in First Contact with an Alien civilization apparently willing to share its high Technology, though misunderstandings and hidden motives and other conflicting interstellar civilizations make the visit increasingly resemble an Invasion. The sequel, Alien Day (2021), progressively focuses on sibling rivalries between two human brothers and two alien brothers, with Earth's colonized future hanging in the balance. Related stories are assembled in To Leuchars (coll 2001).
Wilber won a Sidewise Award for his story "Something Real" (April 2012 Asimov's). [JC]
Richard Arnold Wilber
born St Louis, Missouri: 4 September 1948
works
series
S'hudonni
- To Leuchars (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2001) [coll: S'hudonni: pb/Joe Haldeman]
- Alien Morning (New York: Tor, 2016) [S'hudonni: hb/Stephan Martinière]
- Alien Day (New York: Tor, 2021) [S'hudonni: hb/]
individual titles
- The Cold Road (New York: Tor/Forge Books, 2003) [hb/David Grove]
- Rum Point: A Baseball Novel (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2010) [pb/Shutterstock]
collections
- Where Garagiola Waits and Other Baseball Stories (Tampa, Florida: University of Tampa Press, 1999) [coll: hb/Rick Wilber]
- Rambunctious: Nine Tales of Determination (Monument, Colorado: WordFire, 2020) [coll: hb/]
- The Moe Berg Episodes (Boston, Massachusetts: New Word City, 2020) [col: pb/]
works as editor
- Subtropical Speculations: An Anthology of Florida Science Fiction (Pineapple Press, 1991) with Richard Mathews [anth: pb/Larry Kresek]
- Future Media (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2010) [anth: pb/Josh Beatman]
- Field of Fantasies: Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural (San Francisco, California: Night Shade Books, 2014) [anth: Baseball: pb/uncredited]
- Making History: Classic Alternate History Stories (Boston, Massachusetts, New Word City, 2019) [anth: ebook: na/]
- The Wandering Warriors (Monument, Colorado: WordFire, 2020) with Alan Smale [anth: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry