About The Gray Planet

The Gray Planet

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when I was a boy in Malin, Oregon, population 568, my mother took me to the city library (yes, Malin had a city library!) each week. Although she tried to get me to read mysteries, which were her favorites, my first choice was always science fiction.

One of the books the Malin Library had was Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet by Blake Savage. With a rocket ship on the cover it was irresistible and was the first book I checked out, carefully signing my name on the card. I was nine years old.

I loved the book. Rip Foster mounted rocket engines on an asteroid and flew it somewhere. Of course there were evil people trying to foil his plans (whatever they were), but Rip Foster prevailed.

I also went through all of Isaac Asimov’s Lucky Starr books and many of Robert A. Heinlein’s juveniles. This was my introduction to libraries and books. Like many things from my life as a boy in Malin, libraries and books have stuck with me and made my life better.

These book instilled in me a love of words. I wrote my first science fiction short story “Off to Jupiter” on my mother’s portable typewriter. I pored over the keyboard with two fingers and pecked away until I had almost three pages of single-spaced type. I was eleven years old. In high school, I wrote science fiction short stories that I submitted to the science fiction magazines—Analog, Worlds of If, and Galaxy. All of them were rejected with form letters.

In college I took a short story writing class, my favorite class of my long college career. In the 1970s, while working as a mental health counselor and later, as a part-time medical secretary, I tried seriously to become a professional writer. I wrote more than forty stories, including one complete novel and three partial novels. I sold one story professionally “The Synergy Sculpture”. The story was sold in late 1975 and published by Harper and Row in the hardcover anthology Orbit 20, edited by Damon Knight, in 1978. I was a professional writer and a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

But then the rest of my life happened and my writing stopped for more than twenty years. In 2011, I self-published Farm Boy, my story of growing up in Malin, Oregon. In 2015, preparing for retirement, I began writing fiction again. Since then I have written four novels, two science fiction and two general fiction, and a handful of short stories. I have also written the second installment of my life story, which chronicles my attempt to be a professional writer.

This blog is about the books I read and the stories I write. My tastes are more eclectic now than they were as a boy of 10, but sometimes a science fiction novel can still “blow my circuits” as the writer Mel Gilden explained to me in the 70s. I’ll let you know when that happens. I’ll also let you know when I try to read a book I just can’t finish, when stories move me or when books change my life.

Every time I post something here, I’ll remember reading The Gray Planet. That was more than sixty years ago, but I still remember how it felt to be wide-eyed and breathless as I was swept away on an adventure in space.