In Memoriam: Sterling Lanier
Jane Jewell, Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has received word of the death of Sterling Lanier on Thursday, June 28th at the age of 79.
Sterling Edmund Lanier worked as both a writer and editor in the science fiction field beginning in the early 1960s; he was published extensively in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, especially with his "Brigadier Ffellowes" club stories. As an editor, he worked for Chilton for various periods in the ’60s, and, most famously, was responsible for the book publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune in 1965. Starting in the 1970s, he worked mostly on a freelance basis, as a sculptor, jeweler, and writer.
His best-known novel is his second, Hiero’s Journey (1973), an adventure story set in a far-future world long after a nuclear war. Its sequel, The Unforsaken Hiero (1983), was nearly as popular with SF readers. Speculation about a possible third Hiero book continued, but Lanier had no new publications, or substantial contact with the SF field, since the mid-80s.
He had spent recent years in Florida with his wife, Ann.
You’d need to have a very long memory to remember the heyday of the original Planet Stories magazine, since it closed down in 1955. It was a pulp magazine – in both senses of the word “pulp.” But the name has lingered ever since, whispered at last call at convention bars to describe a certain kind of Science Fiction story – one where the science isn’t too complicated, and never gets in the way of the plot. One where the women are gorgeous and scantily clad, where the men are strongly-thewed (and often also scantily clad), and where the villains are black-hearted scoundrels out to rule their worlds. One where the blasters are hot, the ships have fins, and countless alien worlds are just waiting for the right blonde-haired American boy to become their new warlord. You know: the fun stuff.
