Ray Russell
Ray Russell (1924-1999) was an American writer and editor, known for his contributions to the genres of horror and science fiction. Born in Chicago, he developed an early interest in these genres through pulp magazines. After serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, Russell studied music and theater, which influenced his literary work. He began his writing career with a sale to Esquire in 1953 and later became an influential figure at Playboy magazine, where he served as associate and executive editor and helped elevate fantasy and science fiction within mainstream literature.
His best-known short story, "Sardonicus," exemplifies his gothic style, exploring themes of guilt and the supernatural, and was adapted into a film. In addition to short stories, Russell authored novels that often delved into macabre subjects, with works like *The Case Against Satan* foreshadowing later horror classics. Throughout his career, he received recognition for his work, including the Sri Chimnoy Poetry Award in 1977. Russell's legacy endures through his extensive body of work, which continues to influence the horror and fantasy genres.
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Ray Russell
Writer
- Born: September 4, 1924
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: March 15, 1999
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
Biography
Raymond Robert Russell was born on September 4, 1924, in Chicago, Illinois. As a child he discovered science fiction and fantasy through pulp magazines, which he read regularly. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946, and upon returning from active duty enrolled at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, studying there from 1947 to 1948. He also attended the Goodman Memorial Theater from 1949 to 1951. He married in 1950 and he and his wife, Ada, had three children. Russell composed some music for piano and performed in summer stock theater productions. These experiences laid the foundation for a number of his short stories which featured musical themes and actor characters.
Russell contributed fiction, poetry, and essays to the Paris Review and other prestigious literary magazines. His first fiction sale, “The Lesser Sin,” was to Esquire in 1953. Within a year he was working at Playboy magazine, where he served as associate and executive editor from 1954 to 1960, and then as consulting editor for many years after. Russell’s literary inclinations and his preference for fantasy and science fiction helped shape the contents of the magazine. Many leading genre writers of the postwar years, including Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and Charles Beaumont, appeared regularly in its pages during his tenure, and their association with the magazine and the roster of prestigious mainstream writers it published helped give fantasy and science fiction a respectability with a general readership that it might not otherwise have enjoyed at that time. While at Playboy, Russell served as the unnamed editor of more than forty anthologies of fiction distilled from the magazine, including The Playboy Book of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1966) and The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural (1967).
His own stories appeared sporadically in science-fiction digests such as Imagination and Fantastic in 1955. He wrote his best-known work of short fiction, “Sardonicus” (1961), in conscious emulation of classic gothic fiction. A period piece about a man so smitten with guilt over robbing his own father’s grave that it causes his grotesque facial deformity, it showed an astute grasp of the classic gothic’s juggling of the psychological and supernatural. The story anchored Russell’s first collection, Sardonicus, and Other Stories (1961), and Russell wrote the script for director William Castle’s film adaptation of the story, Mr. Sardonicus, released in 1961.
“Sardonicus” set the tone for much of Russell’s writing thereafter, including the old-fashioned gothic tales “Sagittarius” (1962) and “Sanguinarius” (1967), which he would combine in collections Unholy Trinity (1967) and Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Tales of Ray Russell (1985). He worked on screenplays for The Premature Burial (1962), X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), and several other horror films. Although he was best known as a writer of short fiction and published more than a hundred stories in his lifetime, he also wrote novels. His first, The Case Against Satan (1962), anticipated William Peter Blatty’s best-seller The Exorcist (1971)in its account of a child’s demonic possession. His novels Incubus (1976) and Absolute Power (1992) were also on macabre themes, while Princess Pamela (1979) was a historical romance with fantasy overtones. In 1977, Russell won the Sri Chimnoy Poetry Award. He died on March 15, 1999, at a nursing home in Los Angeles, California, from complications following a series of strokes.