迪安·雷·孔茨

迪安·雷·孔茨（英语：Dean Ray Koontz，1945年7月9日—），美国宾州艾佛雷人，著名悬疑小说作家。孔茨曾经担任过英文教师，1969年后始全身投入写作，《滚石杂志》曾称赞他为“美国最受欢迎的悬疑小说家”。作品超过三十余部，共已卖出一千九百余万本，已翻译成中文于华人地区发行的包括唯一生还者、记忆突变及恶夜横行之恐怖基地。迪安·孔茨这个名字已成为美国悬疑小说的品牌示范，尤其他更赢得“惊悚小说王子”之一时美誉。

Dean Ray Koontz (born July 9, 1945) is an American author. His novels are billed as suspense thrillers, but frequently incorporate elements of horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Many of his books have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list, with fourteen hardcovers and sixteen paperbacks reaching the number-one position. Koontz wrote under a number of pen names earlier in his career, including "David Axton", "Deanna Dwyer", "K. R. Dwyer", "Leigh Nichols", "Brian Coffey" and "Joe Cocker". He has published over 105 novels and a number of novellas and collections of short stories, and has sold over 500 million copies of his work. He has been acknowledged as "America's most popular suspense novelist" by Rolling Stone and as one of today's most celebrated and successful writers.

Early life

Koontz was born on July 9, 1945, in Everett, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence (née Logue) and Raymond Koontz. He has said that he was regularly beaten and abused by his alcoholic father, which influenced his later writing, as also did the courage of his physically diminutive mother in standing up to her husband. He was raised in Bedford, Pennsylvania and graduated from Bedford High School in 1963. While attending Shippensburg State College, Koontz married his high school girlfriend Gerda Ann Cerra in 1966.

In his senior year of college, he won a fiction competition sponsored by Atlantic Monthly magazine. After graduation in 1967, he went to work as an English teacher at Mechanicsburg High School in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. In the 1960s, Koontz worked for the Appalachian Poverty Program, a federally funded initiative designed to help poor children. In a 1996 interview with Reason magazine, he said that while the program sounded "very noble and wonderful, ... [i]n reality, it was a dumping ground for violent children ... and most of the funding ended up 'disappearing somewhere.'" This experience greatly shaped Koontz's political outlook. In his book, The Dean Koontz Companion, he recalled that he

... realized that most of these programs are not meant to help anyone, merely to control people and make them dependent. I was forced to reconsider everything I'd once believed. I developed a profound distrust of government regardless of the philosophy of the people in power. I remained a liberal on civil-rights issues, became a conservative on defense, and a semi-libertarian on all other matters.

Career

In his spare time, Koontz wrote his first novel, Star Quest, which was published in 1968. Koontz went on to write over a dozen science fiction novels. Seeing the Catholic faith as a contrast to the chaos in his family, Koontz converted in college because faith provided existential answers for life; he admired Catholicism's "intellectual rigor", saying it permitted a view of life that saw mystery and wonder in all things. He says he sees Catholicism as English writer and Catholic convert G. K. Chesterton did: that it encourages a "joy about the gift of life". Koontz says that spirituality has always been part of his books, as are grace and our struggle as fallen souls, but he "never get[s] on a soapbox".