Ray Faraday Nelson
| Full Name: |
Radell
Faraday
Nelson |
| Born: |
October 3, 1931
Schenectady, New York, USA |
| Died: |
November 30, 2022
Napa, California, USA |
| Occupation: |
Writer, Cartoonist |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Links: |
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Biography
Radell Faraday Nelson was an American science fiction author and cartoonist most notable for his 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", which was later used by John Carpenter as the basis for his 1988 film They Live.
Nelson was born October 3, 1931, in Schenectady, New York, the son of Walter Hughes Nelson and Marie Reed. He has one younger brother, Trevor Reed Nelson. Ray became an active member of science fiction fandom while still a teenager at Cadillac High School in Cadillac, Michigan. After graduation, he attended the University of Chicago (studying theology), then spent four years studying in Paris, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, and other Beat Generation icons. In Paris, he worked with Michael Moorcock smuggling then-banned Henry Miller books out of France. While there, he also met Norwegian Kirsten Enge, who became his third wife on October 4, 1957. Their only child, Walter Trygve Nelson, was born September 21, 1958, in Paris. He had previously been married to Lisa Mulligan on December 13, 1955, and subsequently to fellow fan Perdita Lilly, subject of his first book, the 23-page poetry collection Perdita: Songs of Love, Sex and Self Pity, who would later marry John Boardman. He was married to published poet and professor Dr. Helene Knox, a Fulbright scholar.
Nelson began his career writing and creating cartoons for science fiction fanzines. Later Nelson wrote many professionally published short stories including "Turn Off the Sky" and "Nightfall on the Dead Sea". His best-known story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (November 1963). Ray Nelson and artist Bill Wray adapted the story as their comic "Nada" published in the comic book anthology Alien Encounters (No. 6, April 1986), and director John Carpenter adapted it as his film They Live (1988).
Nelson collaborated with Philip K. Dick on the 1967 alien invasion novel The Ganymede Takeover. Nelson was friends with Dick starting in childhood, and in a documentary about Dick, Nelson says that the only times that Dick tried LSD were the two times that he gave it to him. That biographical documentary about Dick, in which Nelson is a featured interviewee, is The Penultimate Truth About Philip K. Dick produced in 2007.
In the early 1970s, Nelson ran a writers' workshop at the First Unitarian Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of his students was Anne Rice. He was a lifetime member of the California Writers Club.
Works in the WWEnd Database
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