卢修斯·谢泼德

卢修斯·谢泼德（英语：Lucius Shepard，1943年8月21日—2014年3月18日），是一个美国作家，他绝大多数作品都是科幻小说和科学小说。著名作品包括有《美洲虎猎手》、《战争时期的生活》、《地球尽头》等。

2014年3月18日，他因病死于波特兰，享年70岁。

职业生涯

谢泼德是弗吉尼亚州林奇堡人，他于 1943 年出生在那里。他的第一部短篇小说于1983年出版，他的第一部小说《绿眼睛》于1984年出版。

卢修斯·谢泼德 （Lucius Shepard） 在1985 年，获得了约翰·坎贝尔奖最佳新作家奖，随后在 1987 年凭借他的故事“R&R”获得了星云奖最佳中篇小说奖。

Lucius Shepard (August 21, 1943 – March 18, 2014) was an American writer. Classified as a science fiction and fantasy writer, he often leaned into other genres, such as magical realism.

Career

Shepard was a native of Lynchburg, Virginia, where he was born in 1943. His first short stories appeared in 1983, and his first novel, Green Eyes, appeared in 1984. At the time, he was considered part of the cyberpunk movement. Shepard came to writing late, having first enjoyed a varied career, including a stint playing rock and roll in the Midwest and extensive travel throughout Europe and Asia. Algis Budrys, reviewing Green Eyes, praised Shepard's "ease of narrative style that comes only from a profound love and respect for the language and the literatures that have graced it."

Lucius Shepard won several awards for his science fiction: in 1985 he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, followed in 1987 with a Nebula Award for Best Novella for his story "R&R". This story later became part of his 1987 novel Life During Wartime, which won the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis in 1990. His novella "Barnacle Bill the Spacer" won a Hugo Award in 1993. His poem "White Trains" won the Rhysling Award in 1988. Two early collections of short stories won the World Fantasy Award for best collection: The Jaguar Hunter in 1988 and The Ends of the Earth Collection in 1992. His novella "Vacancy" won a Shirley Jackson Award in 2008.

Lucius Shepard resided in Portland, Oregon.

Themes and evolution

Shepard embraced many different themes throughout his career. In his early work, he wrote extensively about Central America. This included clearly science-fictional stories about near future high-tech jungle war (such as "R&R" and "Salvador"), as well as stories that seemed more in line with magic realism. Many of these, such as "Black Coral" (which concerns an American living on an island off of Honduras) and "The Jaguar Hunter" (the story of a man whose wife's debt forces him to hunt a mythical black jaguar, which his people consider sacred), explore cultural clashes. Shepard traveled extensively in Central America and lived there for a time.

Shepard stopped writing fiction for much of the 1990s. He returned near the end of that decade, producing such works as the novella Radiant Green Star, which won a Locus Award for Best Novella in 2001. Though he still wrote Central American fiction, Shepard's interest seemed to be moving north: he published two short novels, "A Handbook of American Prayer" and "Viator", both set in North America. On that same note, he published many works where culture and geography were secondary (his novella "Jailwise" is a prime example), preferring to focus on wider questions such as the role of justice in society.

Much of Shepard's later work was nonfiction. He researched the Freight Train Riders of America and spent time riding the rails, writing both fiction and nonfiction based on those experiences. He was also a regular movie reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and electricstory.com. His reviews are marked by general contempt for the current state of American film.

According to fellow author James Patrick Kelly, Shepard was an avid sports fan who often used dramatic sports moments as inspiration to write.

In the summer of 2008, Shepard moved to Neuchatel, Switzerland in order to work on several screenplays. He served on the jury of the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) with the American director Joe Dante.

He died in March 2014 at the age of 70 of complications from a stroke.