Barry B. Longyear

{{Short description|American speculative fiction writer (born 1942)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Barry B. Longyear

| image = Barry B. Longyear.jpg

| caption = Longyear in 2009

| birth_name = Barry Brookes Longyear

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1942|5|12}}

| birth_place = Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.

| death_date =

| death_place =

| occupation =

| period = 1990–present

| genre = Science fiction
Mystery fiction
Fantasy fiction

| notableworks = {{unbulleted list |Enemy Mine (1979)|Sea of Glass (1987)|Circus World (1980)}}| spouse =

| awards = Hugo Award, Prometheus Award, Nebula, John W. Campbell Award, Analog}}

Barry Brookes Longyear (born May 12, 1942{{cite web |url=http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Barry_B._Longyear |title=Summary Bibliography: Barry B. Longyear |publisher=Internet Speculative Fiction Database |access-date=February 13, 2016}}) is an American author who resides in New Sharon, Maine.{{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111205454/http://www.hazelden.org/OA_HTML/hazAuthor.jsp?author_id=331&item=1278 |url-status=dead |title=Barry Longyear |url=http://www.hazelden.org/OA_HTML/hazAuthor.jsp?author_id=331&item=1278 |publisher=Hazelden Publishing |archive-date=November 11, 2017}}

Career

Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Longyear is known best for the Hugo- and Nebula Award–winning novella Enemy Mine (1979, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine), which was subsequently made into an identically titled movie (1985) and a novelization in collaboration with David Gerrold. The story is of an encounter between a human and an alien soldier, whose races are at war. They are marooned together in space and have to come to overcome their mutual distrust in order to cooperate and survive. A greatly expanded version of the original novella as well as two novels completing the trilogy, The Tomorrow Testament and The Last Enemy, are gathered with additional materials into The Enemy Papers.

The novella helped Longyear to win the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1980. He was the only writer to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards during the same year until this was matched by Rebecca Roanhorse in 2018.

He also wrote the series Circus World and Infinity Hold, several stand-alone novels, numerous short stories, and two books for the Alien Nation novelization series. His trilogy "Infinity Hold", "Kill All the Lawyers", and "Keep the Law", was released during 2002 in a single paperback volume titled Infinity Hold 3 by the Author's Guild in a Backinprint.com edition. His recent Jaggers & Shad mystery stories, featuring two detectives in the Artificial Beings Crimes Division (Devon Office), are set mostly in Exeter and the surrounding Devon countryside and villages. The first of the tales, The Good Kill won the Analog AnLab award for Best Novella in 2006 and Murder in Parliament Street won the same award for 2007. The Hook won the 2021 Prometheus Award.

The series Circus World chronicles the adventures of a space-going circus troupe whose spaceship crashes, marooning them on a deserted planet without contact with the outside world.

The series Infinity Hold concerns a society developing from a group of violent convicts dumped on a new planet without police or government.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}

Saint Mary Blue centers around the course of treatment for a man with substance abuse and mental health problems, while resident in a treatment facility.

The God Box is a stand-alone secondary world fantasy novel in which the protagonist finds himself the keeper of a small wooden box that provides cryptic guidance from the gods.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}}

Longyear has also written a mystery series, The Hangman's Son trilogy (2011) and Rope Paper Scissors (2013), all featuring Joe Torio.

Published works

= Stand-alone novels =

Sea of Glass (1987) {{ISBN|978-0595189656}}
Naked Came the Robot (1988) {{ISBN|978-0595200689}}
The God Box (1989) {{ISBN|978-0595121151}}
The Homecoming (1989) {{ISBN|978-0802768636}}
Jaggers & Shad: ABC Is for Artificial Beings Crimes (2010) {{ISBN|978-0615469560}}
THe Candle Man (2024) {{ISBN|979-8320483320}}

=Enemy Mine series=

"Enemy Mine" (Asimov's Science Fiction, Sep 1979; 1980 Hugo, Nebula & Locus winner) {{ISBN|978-0595309764}}
The Tomorrow Testament (1983) {{ISBN|978-0595189663}}
The Last Enemy (1997) {{ISBN|978-0595348756}}

==Omnibus==

The Enemy Papers, also containing additional material (1998) {{ISBN|1-56865-949-0}}

=Infinity Hold series=

Infinity Hold 1989 {{ISBN|978-0595092741}}
Infinity Hold\3 2002 (Containing Infinity Hold, Kill All the Lawyers, and Keep the Law)

=Circus World series=

Circus World (1980) {{ISBN|978-0595189670}}
City of Baraboo (1980) {{ISBN|978-0595121205}}
Elephant Song (1981) {{ISBN|978-0595121182}}

=Joe Torio mysteries=

The Hangman's Son (2011) {{ISBN|978-0615483818}}
Just Enough Rope (2012) {{ISBN|978-0615484129}}
Rope (Book 1 of Rope Paper Scissors, 2013) {{ISBN|978-0615883854}}
Paper (Book 2 of Rope Paper Scissors, 2013) {{ISBN|978-0615886725}}
Scissors (Book 3 of Rope Paper Scissors, 2013) {{ISBN|978-0615886749}}

=The War Whisperer=

The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo (2019)
The War Whisperer: Book 2: Black (2019)
The War Whisperer: Book 3: Misty (2019)
The War Whisperer: Book 4: The RAT (2020)
The War Whisperer: Book 5: The Hook (2020)
The War Whisperer: Book 6: The Notice (2020) (Prometheus Award winner)
The War Whisperer: Book 7: Changes (2020)

=Recovery works=

Saint Mary Blue (novel set in a treatment facility), SteelDragon Press, 1988 {{ISBN|978-0595138852}}
Yesterday's Tomorrow: Recovery Meditations for Hard Cases, Hazelden, 1997 {{ISBN|978-1568381602}}
"The Monopoly Man" (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2009)

==[[Alien Nation (novel series)|''Alien Nation'' tie-in novels]]==

The Change (1994)
Slag Like Me (994)

=Nonfiction=

Science Fiction Writer's Workshop-I {{ISBN|978-0595225538}}
The Write Stuff Online Writing Seminar
Alien Runes: Building and Using Your Personal Oracle (2020) {{ISBN|979-8678307828}}
Vade Mecum for Alien Runes (2020) {{ISBN|979-8678353610}}

=Short story collections =

"The Tryouts" (Asimov's Science Fiction, 1978)
Manifest Destiny (including "Enemy Mine" and others set in the same future history) {{ISBN|978-0425045305}}
It Came from Schenectady {{ISBN|978-0595201723}}
Dark Corners (2022) {{ISBN|978-0615471723}}
The Fireteller Tales (2024) {{ISBN|979-8326072917}}