Randall Garrett

Phillip, Gordon Randall David Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was a science fiction and fantasy author from the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, he contributed to Astounding and other science fiction periodicals. He taught Robert Silverberg how to market enormous amounts of action-adventure science fiction and worked with him on two novels about Earthmen upsetting a peaceful agrarian civilisation on an extraterrestrial planet. Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books...See more

Phillip, Gordon Randall David Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was a science fiction and fantasy author from the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, he contributed to Astounding and other science fiction periodicals. He taught Robert Silverberg how to market enormous amounts of action-adventure science fiction and worked with him on two novels about Earthmen upsetting a peaceful agrarian civilisation on an extraterrestrial planet. Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books, which include the novel Too Many Magicians and two short story collections set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are full of jokes, puns, and references (specially to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is fashioned after Sherlock Holmes), with elements reappear frequently in the detective's lesser works. Michael Kurland went on to write two more Lord Darcy novels. Garrett used several pen names, including David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, and Gerald Vance. As "Randall of Hightower" (a pun on "garret"), he was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. See less