Barry Malzberg obituary
In 1965, Barry N Malzberg, who has died aged 85, decided that the career he sought as a literary writer was closed to him – the magazines were impenetrable, the control of editors at publishing houses absolute – and that science fiction, which he had read in his youth, was the path he would pursue into writing.
He made his first sale in sci-fi in 1967 under the name KM O’Donnell, and, in the seven years that followed, sold a further 2 million words – 23 novels and six short-story collections. At the end he felt he had succeeded too well and chose to retire, saying: “There is almost no room left for the kind of work which I try to do.”
Those few years had seen Malzberg write some of the most ambitious, challenging and profound yet pessimistic and isolating novels. His breakthrough came with the John W Campbell Memorial award-winner Beyond Apollo (1972) – an ironic win as it was a novel that Campbell would have loathed. Malzberg described it as “dystopian, anti-Nasa, anti-space, enormously cynical about technology”. While it divided fans and critics, the award opened doors to publishers.
Malzberg’s literary ambitions intersected with those of the sci-fi new wave, and his fascination with paranoid astronauts, the John F Kennedy assassination and “what if?” alternate lives of historical figures (Emily Dickinson is a successful poet in her lifetime, Sigmund Freud is in space) mean he is spoken of in the same breath as JG Ballard, Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison.
Malzberg was born in New York, the son of Michael, a salesman with a lumber company, and his wife, Celia (nee Feinberg). He was educated locally in Brooklyn and then at Syracuse University. Leaving with a degree in sociology in 1960, Malzberg joined the New York City Department of Welfare as an investigator, and also worked as a reimbursement agent at the New York State Department of Mental Health.
He had long wanted to be a writer and made his first attempts aged seven. In 1951 he discovered science fiction magazines, and received his first rejection slip from Amazing Stories aged 11. He favoured the unique voices in Horace Gold’s Galaxy magazine over Campbell’s tech-driven Astounding, especially such writers as Alfred Bester, Walter M Miller, Frederik Pohl, CM Kornbluth, Robert Sheckley and Theodore Sturgeon.
At high school, though, Malzberg decided he wanted to be a mainstream writer, a synthesis of Norman Mailer, JD Salinger, John Updike and James Agee. With the offer of two writing fellowships, he returned to Syracuse University in 1964-65 but despite the chance of a further year, “drowning in rejection”, and in debt to the New York State Loan Fund, he joined the Scott Meredith Literary Agency (SMLA).
His job there involved reading and reporting on up to 50 manuscripts a week from fee-paying newcomers for a cut of the enclosed cheque. So adept was he that he was taking home over $200 a week by the time he was fired in 1967 (“for reasons never made clear”). He became, briefly, managing editor of the men’s magazine Escapade and the science fiction magazines Amazing Stories and Fantastic – but was again fired after arguing with the publisher. By then he was selling his own fiction.
Malzberg had aimed high, hoping to write like Mailer but emulate the success of Philip Roth and win the National Book award by the age of 26. Indifferent editors turned down more than 100 of his stories, and Malzberg was already 26 when he sold The Bed (as Nathan Herbert, 1966) to Wildcat magazine, a tenth-rate Playboy knockoff.
He struggled on until, finally, We’re Coming Through the Window (1967), a comic time-travel tale, sold to Galaxy, under the byline KM O’Donnell. A breakthrough came with Final War (1968), the story of a soldier trapped in an endless, meaningless war.
While working at SMLA he had written a novel, which was published as Love Doll under the name Mel Johnson in 1967, and was followed by two dozen more softcore porn books until the market collapsed. He returned to science fiction novels, beginning with The Falling Astronauts (1971), and including Revelations (1972), Herovit’s World (1973), In the Enclosure (1973), Tactics of Conquest (1974), The Destruction of the Temple (1974), On a Planet Alien (1974), Guernica Night (1975) and Galaxies (1975).
He also wrote adventure novels (the Lone Wolf series as Mike Barry), novelisations (Phase IV, Kung Fu) and adult novels (as Lee W Mason).
Although he announced his retirement in 1976, he continued to write fiction, including thrillers and crime stories with Bill Pronzini and, solo, one final science fiction novel, The Remaking of Sigmund Freud (1985). In addition there were many short stories, the best to be found in In the Stone House (2000), Shiva and Other Stories (2001), The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg (2013) and Collecting Myself (2024).
He also compiled anthologies and collections, often championing neglected authors such as Mark Clifton and FL Wallace, writing reviews, columns (including Dialogues with Mike Resnick, collected as The Business of Science Fiction, 2010) and essays, many collected in The Engines of the Night (1982; expanded as Breakfast in the Ruins, 2007) and The Bend at the End of the Road (2018).
Malzberg is survived by his wife, Joyce Zelnick, whom he married in 1964, and their daughters, Stephanie and Erika.
• Barry Nathaniel Malzberg, author and editor, born 24 July 1939; died 19 December 2024
