I don’t know much about Chad Oliver. Without looking up his information online, I simply recall this: In the 1990s, when I lived in Austin, Texas, some of the authors I knew, or knew about, or read (Bruce Sterlin, Lewis Shiner, Neal Barrett, Jr., Howard Waldrop) would name-drop Oliver. I don’t think I ever found any of his books in bookstores, although I think I saw one or two of them at SF conventions in Austin. A glance online shows that he died in 1993 (at the young age of 65), so I never met him. He was twice chairman of the department of anthropology of the University of Texas, where I got my undergrad degree (English and History) in 1995. I never took any anthropology courses, however, and I’ve never read any of his stories. An interesting tidbit that I just learned is that he “supported the Guadalupe River Chapter of Trout Unlimited and the cold water fishery downstream from Canyon Dam,” where once I fished and caught some trout. If only for that reason, I’ve become a huge fan of Chad Oliver. Then again, there are his books…
Unearthly Neighbors was first published in 1960. It was revised and published in 1984 as a “Classics of Modern Science Fiction” by Crown Publishers in New York. Recently I picked up a copy of this book at Book Gallery in Phoenix, for what seemed a high price of $20, but it’s the first Oliver book I’ve seen in forever. It has an introduction by George Zebrowski, and a foreword by Isaac Asimov, both now also dead (Asimov in 1992 and Zebrowski in 2024). The book is volume 8 in this series. I wonder if I’ll ever come across any of the other seven (or if there were additional books beyond this one).
