埃里克·弗兰克·拉塞尔

埃里克·弗兰克·拉塞尔（Eric Frank Russell，1905年1月6日—1978年2月28日）是一位英国作家，他最为人所熟知的成就集中在科幻小说和短篇故事领域。他的许多作品最初是在美国发行的，主要刊登于约翰·W·坎贝尔主编的《惊奇超级科学故事》以及其他一些纸浆杂志上。拉塞尔也曾为《诡丽幻谭》撰写恐怖小说，并针对福特现象发表非虚构文章。

截至1955年，他的多篇故事曾以笔名发表，已知的至少包括邓肯·H·芒罗（Duncan H. Munro）和尼尔·王尔德（Niall(e) Wilde）。

Eric Frank Russell (January 6, 1905 – February 28, 1978) was a British writer best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. Up to 1955 several of his stories were published under pseudonyms, including Duncan H. Munro and Niall(e) Wilde.

Biography

Russell was born in 1905 near Sandhurst in Berkshire, where his father was an instructor at the Royal Military College. Russell became a fan of science fiction and in 1934, while living near Liverpool, he saw a letter in Amazing Stories from Leslie J. Johnson, another reader from the same area. Russell met with Johnson, who encouraged him to embark on a writing career. Together, the two men wrote a novella, "Seeker of Tomorrow", that was published by F. Orlin Tremaine in the July 1937 number of Astounding Stories. Both Russell and Johnson became members of the British Interplanetary Society.

There are two incompatible accounts of Russell's military service during World War II. The official, well-documented version is that he served with the Royal Air Force, with whom he saw active service in Europe as a member of a Mobile Signals Unit. However, in the introduction to the 1986 Del Rey Books edition of Russell's novel Wasp, Jack L. Chalker states that Russell was too old for active service, and instead worked for Military Intelligence in London, where he "spent the war dreaming up nasty tricks to play against the Germans and Japanese", including Operation Mincemeat. Russell's biographer John L. Ingham states however that "there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in his R.A.F. record to show that he was anything more than a wireless mechanic and radio operator".

Into Your Tent, a thorough and detailed biography of Russell by John L. Ingham, was published in 2010 by Plantech (UK).

Writing career

Russell's first novel was Sinister Barrier, cover story for the inaugural, May 1939 issue of Unknown—Astounding's sister magazine devoted to fantasy. It is explicitly a Fortean tale, based on Charles Fort's famous speculation "I think we're property", Russell explains in the foreword. An often-repeated legend has it that Campbell, on receiving the manuscript for Sinister Barrier, created Unknown primarily as a vehicle for the short novel (pp. 9–94). There is no real evidence for this, despite a statement to that effect in the first volume of Isaac Asimov's autobiography, In Memory Yet Green.

His second novel, Dreadful Sanctuary (serialized in Astounding during 1948) is an early example of conspiracy fiction, in which a paranoid delusion of global proportions is perpetuated by a small but powerful secret society.

Russell took up writing full-time in the late 1940s. He became an active member of British science fiction fandom and the British representative of the Fortean Society. He won the first annual Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1955 recognizing his humorous "Allamagoosa" as the year's best science fiction.

In 1970, Russell was paid £4689 by the Beatles' company Apple Corps for the motion picture rights to his novel Wasp, the contract being signed on behalf of Apple by Ringo Starr. The film was never made, but it remained one of the most lucrative deals Russell ever made.

Russell also wrote a large number of shorter works, many of which have been reprinted in collections such as Deep Space (1954), Six Worlds Yonder (1958), Far Stars (1961), Dark Tides (1962) and Somewhere a Voice (1965).

Russell wrote numerous non-fiction essays on Fortean themes, some of which were collected in a compendium of Forteana entitled Great World Mysteries (1957). His second non-fiction book was The Rabble Rousers (1963), a sardonic look at human folly including the Dreyfus affair and the Florida land boom. He also wrote Lern Yerself Scouse: The ABZ of Scouse (1966) under the pseudonym "Linacre Lane".