Hayford Peirce - Biography

Biography

Peirce was raised in a family of wealthy timber-land owners who were both cultivated and eccentric. His father, a recognized authority on Byzantine art, wrote several books on the subject in French. His mother was a would-be playwright and summer playhouse owner. His uncle, Waldo Peirce, was a prominent American painter and bohemian character. Peirce attended, with no great distinction, Exeter, Stanford, and Harvard. At age 22 he married a Tahitian girl and moved to Tahiti, where he lived for the next 23 years. At various times he was a part owner, and sometimes accountant, for a mother-of-pearl button factory, a garden center, a 1-hour laundry, and an import business.

Peirce began writing in 1974, with the sale of a science-fiction short story to Analog. "Unlimited Warfare" is typical of the fairly short, somewhat sardonic, black-humored stories that he wrote for a number of years. It takes an unlikely premise—England wages an undeclared war upon France by destroying its vineyards, while France retaliates and ultimately wins the war by destroying the world's tea supply—and treats it with an apparently deadpan yet whimsical manner. The writing is clear and direct, modeled on that of his favorite author, Evelyn Waugh, with occasional jaunty overtones of P.G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler.