Barry Malzberg
| Barry N. Malzberg | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 24, 1939 New York City |
| Pen name | Nathan Herbert, K. M. O'Donnell, |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | United States |
| Genre | Recursive science fiction |
Barry Nathaniel Malzberg (born July 24, 1939) is an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.
Malzberg graduated from Syracuse University in 1960. He worked as an investigator for the New York City Department of Welfare in 1961–1962 and 1963-1964. In 1963, he was employed as a reimbursement agent for the New York State Department of Mental Health. He married Joyce Zelnick in 1964.
Malzberg initially sought to establish himself as a playwright as well as a prose-fiction writer. In 1964, he returned to Syracuse University for graduate study in creative writing. Although he was awarded a Schubert Foundation Playwriting Fellowship (1964-1965) and the Cornelia Ward Creative Writing Fellowship (1965), he was unable to sell his work to any of the literary magazines of the era. Resolving not to be an "unpublished assistant professor of English," he left the program in 1965 to pursue a career as a freelance writer and agent for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Malzberg would intermittently continue with SMLA through the next several decades, being one of its last caretakers.
His first published story was “The Bed” under the pseudonym “Nathan Herbert” in the men’s magazine Wildcat. His first science fiction story (“We're Coming Through the Window”) was published in the August 1967 issue of Galaxy. Malzberg frequently repurposed existing stories for his science fiction sales. He first found commercial and critical success with publication of his surreal novelette "Final War" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction under the name K. M. O'Donnell in 1968.
He had been writing erotic novels using the pseudonym “Mel Johnson” but began writing erotic novels under his under his own name in 1968 for Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press. Many of his science short stories and novels in the late 1960s were published under the pseudonym "K. M. O'Donnell", derived from the surnames of Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and their joint pseudonym "Lawrence O'Donnell."
He was an editor at Escapade, a men’s magazine in early 1968. In the latter half of 1968 he edited Amazing Stories and Fantastic science fiction and fantasy-fiction magazines. He was the editor of the Science Writers of America Bulletin in 1969 until he was asked to resign because of a critical editorial he wrote about the NASA space program.
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