Photo: George Katechis [CC BY-SA 1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

With over 50 books to his credit, Richard “Dick” A. Lupoff first rose to fame as the co-editor (with his wife Pat) of the Hugo Award winning sci-fi fanzine Xero, which helped to usher in comic book fandom and featured many astonishing established and up-and-coming contributors including Dan Adkins, ATom, Otto Binder, James Blish, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, Avram Davidson, Roger Ebert, Harlan Ellison, Ron Goulart, Larry Ivie, Roy Krenkel, Fred Pohl, Bill Schelly, Robert Shea, Steve Stiles, Roy Thomas, Don Thompson, Maggie Thompson, Bob Tucker, Donald Westlake, Ted White, Paul Williams, and Don Wollheim. Pieces of the zine, which ran for only 10 issues form 1960-1963, were collected in three Lupoff co-edited volumes:  All In Color For a Dime (1970 w Don Thompson), The Comic Book Book (1973 w Thompson), and THE BEST OF XERO (2004 w Pat Lupoff).

In 1963, Lupoff served as the reprint editor at Canaveral Press for the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This lead to his first solo project, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965) and established Lupoff as an expert on ERB. He later wrote Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Martian Vision (1976).

He has written over 30 novels. Among his best known areOne Million Centuries (1967), Into The Aether (1974), Space War Blues (1978), Buck Rogers In The 25th Century (1978, As by Addison E. Steele),  Circumpolar! (1984), Lovecraft’s Book (1985), The Comic Book Killer (1988), Sun’s End (1984),  Countersolar! (1987), The Black Tower (1988), The Emerald Cat Killer (2012), and Rookie Blues (2012).

Lupoff’s many short stories have been collected into several books including The Ova Hamlet Papers (1979), Hyperprism / The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick (1993), Claremont Tales (2001), Terrors (2005), Deep Space (2009), Dreamer’s Dozen (2015). and The Doom That Came to Dunwich (2017). His tale “12:01 PM” was adapted as the film 12:01.

All of us at Tachyon wish the extraordinary Dick a healthy and happy birthday. May his A’s manage to give him some joy in ‘19.

For more about THE BEST OF XERO, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Larry Ivie