Robert E Vardeman
It just might be that I was destined (doomed?) to write science fiction because I was born down the street from the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas. Then again, it could be a Cub Scout project when I was eight years old. I had to read a book. An entire book.

My mother bought the first three Tom Swift Jr books for $1—the series was getting started and this was a clever way to lure readers. Tom Swift and his Flying Lab was reluctantly started. Tom Swift and his Jetmarine and Tom Swift and his Rocketship were vacuumed up by a mind wanting to be filled with such outrageous, wonderful adventures. I started haunting the book section of a downtown department store where a new volume appeared every six months. Robots and diving seacopters and caves filled with nuclear fire—they all were just what I wanted to read.

In El Paso, the Carnegie grant libraries were pretty spectacular. I read the kiddie sf section, worked over to the Hardy Boys and wanted more. The librarian understood my mother’s tastes did not run to Asimov and Heinlein, but she had to check them out for me since they were in the adult section and I was only eleven. The librarian gave me an adult card with the proviso that I not check out anything but sf. Don’t throw me in that briar patch!

I worked through it all, from A to Z enduring some horrendously, gloriously bad novels. And it didn’t matter. I wanted more. Ace Doubles gave you two books for 35 cents. Spectacular. Even if the price was high. By the time I got to Doc Smith’s Lensman series, I was willing to pay some monumental price per book— even 50 cents! The hardcovers were far beyond my meager resources. Three dollars each. I began to feel an addiction—to collecting.

One of the few times I remember my dad buying me anything on the spur of the moment was when I saw a copy of Analog magazine—50 cents. I must have looked pathetic because he sprang the two quarters for it, probably because it had reviews of the Edgar Rice Burroughs books and he had read them as a kid. ERB? I started reading those echoes from an earlier time. And I found a source for the original Tom Swift books.

I graduated from college with a degree in physics and went to work in solid state physics research. Got my masters in materials engineering. Was accepted at UC Berkeley to start PhD work in ceramic engineering. I had a few months between quitting Sandia National Laboratories and going to UCB.

George W Proctor and I were fanzine fans and had struck up a long distance friendship. I drove to College Station with him and his wife when I was asked to be a guest of honor at Aggiecon (I’d been nominated for a fan writing Hugo). We really hit it off and Geo became my best friend, was best man at my wedding, was always at the cutting edge of computer stuff and had a straight-forward view on the world that was always refreshing amid so much BS everywhere else. During the hiatus between work and school, he badgered me into coauthoring a short story with him. It sold. I did up a proposal for a fantasy. It sold. I had a second novel proposal submitted. It was sf and it sold to another publisher. The crossroads had been reached. Do the books or go to college, probably for another 3 or 4 years.

Sandacts of Rhyl was my first published sf, but I had sold three others by this time which never saw the light of day for various reasons. I did more fantasy, including the Cenotaph Road books, then Geo and I began writing the Swords of Raemllyn series. We sold nine, of which six were published in the US and all nine in the UK. These books are slowly making their way back into the Legends list until all nine are available, the final three in the US for the first time. It is my great sorrow Geo never saw any of the iTunes titles since he died unexpectedly in August, 2008.

I branched out and did a passel of the Nick Carter: Killmaster series (along with such notables as Martin Cruz Smith, David Hagberg/Sean Flannery, and Robert Randisi). My agent got me a shot at a western series in 1984. To date I have written 99 titles, including the last four “Giant” novels in the series. I sold more westerns, this time under my pen name of Karl Lassiter. The most recent one titled Drifter is due out in two weeks, as I write this (2-12-09).

But the fantasy and sf have always been my love. And Tom Swift. I worked with Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter Harriet Adams and did a title in the Tom Swift III series. And then I did two more titles in the Tom Swift IV series. And I could have done a lot better than any (except for Robot Olympics) in the Tom Swift V series. But I didn’t. These was all done in-house. I know. I asked. Well, okay, I begged and groveled, to no avail.

I’ve written mysteries (Resonance of Blood will be a Legends offering soon) and high tech thrillers, some nonfiction and I edited a magazine for a year before the recession killed off all ad revenue (and my salary). I also teach writing (currently have around 200 students), love reading mysteries and nonfiction scientific stuff, and have a fountain of ideas that will bubble until I type my last.

Most intriguing to me at the moment are a couple of the sf series I started for Legends. Collider is an alternate world series about the Large Hadron Collider (will the black holes it will generate really last 100 seconds? OMG!) And the other is a far future series that started with Burn the Sky and continues with On Wings of Plague. Stories for this keep elbowing their way to the front of my work queue. Another about a nihilist, a black hole and parties where the big kick is to infect yourself with strange diseases is building from an idea into a synopsis. It won’t be long until this becomes a new story.

About the only other thing I haven’t mentioned, but which is mandatory for writers, is that I have two cats, Isotope and X-ray. Check out my “To Cat, A Thief” story in the recently published anthology Catopolis.

And look for more novels, mystery, sf and fantasy, as well as short stories at Legends!