Richard Wilson
Richard Wilson was an American author born on September 23, 1920, in Huntington Station, New York. His early education included attendance at Brooklyn College, and he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and Air Force during World War II. After the war, he pursued a career in journalism, working as a reporter for Reuters and other news agencies before transitioning to fiction writing.
Wilson's literary career is characterized by two distinct phases. Initially, he gained recognition as a satirist, with works that humorously critiqued human behavior, such as his debut novel, "The Girls from Planet Five" (1955), which juxtaposes a matriarchal society against an alien invasion. In his later years, Wilson's writing took a darker turn, exploring themes of solitude and despair, exemplified by the Nebula-winning story "Mother to the World" (1968). His storytelling often blended whimsy with profound emotional depth, as seen in tales like "The Story Writer" (1979).
Wilson's personal life included three marriages and the raising of one son and a stepdaughter. He passed away in 1987, and his literary contributions are preserved at the Bird Library at Syracuse University.
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Richard Wilson
- Born: September 23, 1920
- Birthplace: Huntington Station, New York
- Died: March 29, 1987
- Place of death: Syracuse, New York
Biography
Richard Wilson was born in Huntington Station, New York, on September 23, 1920. He went to Brooklyn College from 1935 until 1936, and then served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the air force during World War II. After leaving the military, he went to the University of Chicago and subsequently was a reporter with Reuters and other news agencies. He was married three times and had one son and a stepdaughter. His married Jessica Gould in 1941, and the two divorced in 1944. He married his second wife, Doris Owens, in 1950, and they divorced in 1967. His final marriage, to Frances Daniels in 1967, ended in divorce in 1982. He had one son and one stepdaughter.
His fiction career falls neatly into two parts. In the first, he was a satirist in the style of science-fiction writer Robert Sheckley, cuttingly mocking humanity’s foibles. For instance, in his first novel, The Girls from Planet Five (1955), he fuses the idea of the matriarchy with that of an alien invasion. While the patriarchs of Texas are fighting tooth and toenail against the increasing feminization of their society, their lives are disrupted by the arrival of aliens who are in actuality beautiful women. Texans can only rail against their future marginalization in a universe filled with strong women. Thirty Day Wonder (1960) dropped scrupulously law-abiding aliens into human society and let the absurdity begin.
In the later half of his career, Wilson produced darker and more tender stories. Several of his later works explored what happened to the last man on earth, including the Nebula-winning short story “Mother to the World” (1968), in which a mentally disabled young woman helps the survivor of the end of the world cope with the horrors he has witnessed. Yet there are also whimsical stories, such as “The Story Writer” (1979), about an old pulp writer who now sits in a flea market, jotting off stories for passersby. When he discovers himself written into a story, his adventures begin. Wilson died in 1987, and his papers were deposited in the Bird Library at Syracuse University in upstate New York.