Richard A. Lupoff - Background

Background

Born February 21, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, Lupoff began his writing career in science fiction fandom in the 1950s, working on a number of science fiction fanzines including Xero, which he edited in the early 1960s with his wife Pat and Bhob Stewart. It received the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1963. The roster of contributors included such names as Dan Adkins, James Blish, Lin Carter, Avram Davidson, L. Sprague de Camp, Roger Ebert (then 19 years of age), Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Eddie Jones, Roy G. Krenkel, Frederik Pohl and Bob Tucker. In 2004, a hardcover anthology, The Best of Xero, coedited with Pat Lupoff and featuring a nostalgic introduction by Ebert, was published by Tachyon Publications. It was in turn nominated for the Hugo Award.

Lupoff also wrote reviews for the fanzine Algol, and he was an editor of Edgar Rice Burroughs for Canaveral Press. In a memoir for Omni On-Line, he recalled the chain of events that led him to write his 1965 biography of Burroughs (reprinted in 2005 by the University of Nebraska Press' Bison Books):

In 1963, I was working for IBM in the Time/Life Building at 50th Street and Sixth Avenue. Pat and I had long since moved to Manhattan and had a wonderful apartment on East 73rd Street. I had a second job, moonlighting as an editor for Canaveral Press at 63 Fourth Avenue. Working for Canaveral, I found myself acting as Edgar Rice Burroughs' posthumous editor. After assembling a couple of volumes of Burroughs' previously uncollected short stories and preparing several of his unpublished novels for release, I was asked by the owners of the company, Jack Biblo and Jack Tannen, to write a book about him. That was the genesis of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, my first book.

Before becoming a full-time writer in 1970 he worked in the computer industry, including for IBM.