Career
He is best known for the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella Enemy Mine, which was subsequently made into an identically titled movie and a novelization in collaboration with David Gerrold. The story tells of an encounter between a human and an alien soldier, whose races are in a state of war. They are marooned together in space and have to come to grips with the universal problem of facing and accepting xenophobia. A greatly expanded version of the original novella as well as two novels completing the trilogy, The Tomorrow Testament and The Last Enemy are gathered with additional materials into The Enemy Papers.
The original novella, in part, helped Longyear to win the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer for 1980. He is the only writer to win the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Campbell in the same year. (Contrast the other SF "triple crown" winner: William Gibson with the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Award in 1984.)
He also wrote the Circus World and Infinity Hold series, several stand-alone novels, numerous short stories, and two books for the Alien Nation novelisation series. His trilogy "Infinity Hold," "Kill All the Lawyers," and "Keep the Law," was released in 2002 in a single paperback volume titled Infinity Hold 3 by the Author's Guild in a Backinprint.com edition. His recent Jaggers & Shad mystery stories, featuring two detectives in the Artificial Beings Crimes Division (Devon Office) are set mostly in Exeter and the surrounding Devon countryside and villages. The first of the tales, "The Good Kill" won the Analog AnLab award for Best Novella in 2006 and "Murder In Parliament Street" won the same award for 2007.
The Circus World series chronicles the path taken by a space-going circus troupe whose spaceship crashes, marooning them on a deserted planet with no contact with the outside world.
The Infinity Hold series poses, then answers the question of what type of society would arise from a mob of violent convicts dumped on a new planet with no police or government.
Saint Mary Blue is a thoughtful novel about the course of treatment of a man who has substance abuse and mental health issues, while resident in a treatment facility. While a work of fiction, it very accurately depicts different types of patients and a variety of behaviors.
Read more about this topic: Barry B. Longyear
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)