Ричард Карлтон Мередит: Американдық ғылыми-қияли жазушының өмірі мен шығармалары

American novelist

Richard Carlton Meredith (October 21, 1937 – March 8, 1979), was an American writer, illustrator and graphic designer, best known as the author of science fiction short stories and novels including We All Died at Breakaway Station and The Timeliner Trilogy.

Meredith was born on October 21, 1937, in Alderson, West Virginia, United States, the first son of Joseph and LaVon Meredith. The family moved several times before eventually settling in St. Albans, West Virginia late in 1942 or early in 1943, where his father, a pipe fitter by trade, found employment as a technician in a chemical plant involved in the development and production of synthetic rubber. The family remained there until 1956, during which time Meredith's sister Sandra was born.

Meredith's parents moved to Pensacola, Florida in 1956 in pursuit of improved economic and financial opportunities. Meredith followed soon after and, disillusioned at the lack of jobs available to him (he had not finished college), he decided to enlist in the U. S. Army. There he received extensive training in microwave radio theory and practice before becoming a microwave systems technician and later an instructor in microwave radio theory and the electronics aspects of aircraft navigation and communication. This experience might have influenced the plot of his later novel We All Died at Breakaway Station, which is focused on the communications technology of a future space culture and on the extreme sacrifice made by a space navy's technicians in order to maintain interstellar communications and let a vital message get through. Meredith married his high school sweetheart during this period, but the marriage did not last long and ended in divorce. but it was almost certainly between 1960 and 1962, the earliest reported being an American Civil War based story ("The Renegades") in the April 1962 issue of Sir Knight magazine. After the birth of his daughter, Meredith began to write with the intention of selling stories to the science fiction magazines. Numerous rejection slips followed until he was taken on by the Scott Meredith Literary Agency and then began to get short stories accepted for publication.

"Choice of Weapons" appeared in the March 1966 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow and more stories were published over the next two years as Meredith refined his writing style. Meredith's novella We All Died at Breakaway Station was published in the January and March 1969 issues of Amazing Stories. This appears to have drawn the attention of Ballantine Books, because later in the year they published Meredith's first novels: The Sky is Filled with Ships and a revised and expanded version of We All Died at Breakaway Station.

1970 brought change in Meredith's life. He returned to education, first at Pensacola Junior College and later at the University of West Florida where he studied for a degree in English. Prior to his death, St. Martin's Press had accepted Meredith's novel The Awakening for publication. The book, issued in June 1979, was a departure from Meredith's usual fare: it was a ghost story. The narrative runs along two timelines, one set during the American Civil War, while the other is set in 1970s Virginia, where the lead character shares a surprising number of parallels with Meredith himself. Meredith's science fiction novels were reprinted by Hamlyn/Arrow Books between 1985 and 1988, but have since fallen out of print. Filmmaker Robert H. Gwinn has announced plans to reprint the books as part of a promotional campaign supporting a film adaption of The Timeliner Trilogy.

"The Renegades" (Sir Knight, April 1962, v.3, n.4)
"The Slugs" (Knight, November 1962, v.3, n.10)
"Choice of Weapons" (Worlds of Tomorrow, March 1966, v.3, n.6, #18)
"To the War is Gone" (Worlds of Tomorrow, November 1966, v.4, n.2, #21)
"The Fifth Columbiad" (Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967, v.4, n.3, #22)
"The Longest Voyage" (Fantastic, September 1967, v.17, n.1)
"We All Died at Breakaway Station" (Amazing, January & March 1969, v.42, n.5 & 6, serial; an expanded version was subsequently published by Ballantine Books)
"Hired Man" (If, February 1970, v.20, n.2, #14)
"Earthcoming" (The Future Is Now, ed. William F. Nolan, 1970, Sherbourne Press, Los Angeles)
"Time of the Sending" (If, November–December 1971, v.21, n.2, #157)
"Cold the Stars are, Cold the Earth" (Amazing, August 1978, v.51, n.4)

"An Autobiographical Sketch; August 6, 1975" (Starship, Summer 1979, v.16, n.3, #35)