Alan E. Nourse
Encyclopedia
Alan Edward Nourse was an American
science fiction
(SF) author and physician
. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine
and science. His SF works generally focused on medicine and/or psionics
.
, Iowa
. He attended high school in Long Island, New York
. He served in the U.S. Navy
after World War II
. He earned a Bachelor of Science
degree in 1951 from Rutgers University
, New Brunswick, New Jersey
. He married Ann Morton on June 11, 1952 in Lynden
, New Jersey
. He received a Doctor of Medicine
(M.D.) degree in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania
. He served his one year internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington. He practiced medicine in North Bend, Washington
from 1958 to 1963 and also pursued his writing career.
He had helped pay for his medical education by writing science fiction for magazines. http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/nourse_alane.html After retiring from medicine, he continued writing. His regular column in Good Housekeeping
magazine earned him the nickname "Family Doctor".
He was a friend of fellow author Avram Davidson
. Robert A. Heinlein
dedicated his 1964 novel Farnham's Freehold
to Nourse. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday
to Nourse's wife Ann.
His novel The Bladerunner
lent its name to the Blade Runner
movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick
's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation
author William S. Burroughs
commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella
, Blade Runner (a movie)
.
His novel Star Surgeon has been recorded as a public domain audio book at LibriVox
His pen name
s included "Al Edwards" and "Doctor X".
He died on July 19, 1992 in Thorp, Washington
.
Some confusion arose among science fiction readers who knew that Andre Norton
used the pen name "Andrew North" at about the same time. They mistakenly assumed "Alan Nourse" to be another Norton pen name.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
(SF) author and physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
. He wrote both juvenile and adult science fiction, as well as nonfiction works about medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and science. His SF works generally focused on medicine and/or psionics
Psionics
Psionics refers to the practice, study, or psychic ability of using the mind to induce paranormal phenomena. Examples of this include telepathy, telekinesis, and other workings of the outside world through the psyche.-History and terminology:...
.
Biography
Alan Nourse was born August 11, 1928 to Benjamin and Grace (Ogg) Nourse in Des MoinesDes Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the US state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small portion of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857...
, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
. He attended high school in Long Island, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. He served in the U.S. Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He earned a Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
degree in 1951 from Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, New Brunswick, New Jersey
New Brunswick, New Jersey
New Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...
. He married Ann Morton on June 11, 1952 in Lynden
Linden, New Jersey
- Local government :, the Mayor of Linden is . The former longtime Mayor of Linden is 82-year-old John T. Gregorio, who served as mayor of Linden for 30, nonconsecutive years and was repeatedly tagged with scandal during his mayoral career, including one felony conviction, later pardoned, which...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. He received a Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
(M.D.) degree in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
. He served his one year internship at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington. He practiced medicine in North Bend, Washington
North Bend, Washington
North Bend is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The town was made famous by David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks Since the Weyerhaeuser sawmill closed, North Bend has become an upscale bedroom community for the Eastside of Seattle, Washington, with property values more than...
from 1958 to 1963 and also pursued his writing career.
He had helped pay for his medical education by writing science fiction for magazines. http://www.booksnbytes.com/authors/nourse_alane.html After retiring from medicine, he continued writing. His regular column in Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping is a women's magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal," popularly known as the...
magazine earned him the nickname "Family Doctor".
He was a friend of fellow author Avram Davidson
Avram Davidson
Avram Davidson was an American writer of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and crime fiction, as well as the author of many stories that do not fit into a genre niche...
. Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...
dedicated his 1964 novel Farnham's Freehold
Farnham's Freehold
Farnham's Freehold is a science fiction novel set in the near future by Robert A. Heinlein. A serialised version, edited by Frederik Pohl, appeared in Worlds of If magazine . The complete version was published in novel form by G.P...
to Nourse. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday
Friday (novel)
Friday is a 1982 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is the story of a female "artificial person," the titular character, genetically engineered to be stronger, faster, smarter, and generally better than normal humans...
to Nourse's wife Ann.
His novel The Bladerunner
The Bladerunner
The novel The Bladerunner is a 1974 science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse.-Plot:The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs "blades" for Doc as part of an illegal black market for medical services...
lent its name to the Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...
movie, but no other aspects of its plot or characters, which were taken from Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick first published in 1968. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter of androids, while the secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-normal intelligence who befriends some of the...
In the late 1970s an attempt to adapt The Bladerunner for the screen was made, with Beat Generation
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
author William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
commissioned to write a story treatment; no film was ever developed but the story treatment was later published as the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
, Blade Runner (a movie)
Blade Runner (a movie)
Blade Runner is a science fiction novella by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, first published in 1979. The novella began as a story treatment for a proposed film adaptation of The Bladerunner, a novel by Alan E. Nourse...
.
His novel Star Surgeon has been recorded as a public domain audio book at LibriVox
LibriVox
LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
His pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
s included "Al Edwards" and "Doctor X".
He died on July 19, 1992 in Thorp, Washington
Thorp, Washington
Thorp is an unincorporated town and census-designated place in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 240 at the 2010 census...
.
Some confusion arose among science fiction readers who knew that Andre Norton
Andre Norton
Andre Alice Norton, née Alice Mary Norton was an American science fiction and fantasy author under the noms de plume Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston...
used the pen name "Andrew North" at about the same time. They mistakenly assumed "Alan Nourse" to be another Norton pen name.
Short stories
- "Brightside Crossing" (published in the January 1956 issue of GalaxyGalaxy Science FictionGalaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L...
magazine) - "Mirror, Mirror" (1967)
Novelettes
- "High Threshold" (published in the March 1951 issue of AstoundingAnalog Science Fiction and FactAnalog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...
) - "The Universe Between" (published in the September 1951 issue of AstoundingAnalog Science Fiction and FactAnalog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...
)
Novels
- Trouble on Titan (1954)
- A Man Obsessed (1955)
- Rocket to Limbo (1957)
- Scavengers in Space (1958)
- The Invaders are Coming! (1959, with co-author J. A. Meyer)
- Star Surgeon (1959)
- Raiders from the Rings (1962)
- "The Universe Between" (1965, a fix-upFix-upA fix-up is a novel created from short stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material—such as a frame story—is written for the new novel. The term was coined by the science fiction...
of "High Threshold" and "The Universe Between" ) - The Mercy Men (1968, revised version of A Man Obsessed)
- The BladerunnerThe BladerunnerThe novel The Bladerunner is a 1974 science fiction novel by Alan E. Nourse.-Plot:The novel's protagonist is Billy Gimp, a man with a club foot who runs "blades" for Doc as part of an illegal black market for medical services...
(1974) - The Fourth Horseman (1983)
Collections
- Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction StoriesTiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction StoriesTiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction Stories is the first collection of short works by Alan E. Nourse, issued in hardcover by publisher Donald McKay in 1961. It was reprinted in paperback by MacFadden Books in 1964 and 1968...
(1961) - The Counterfeit ManThe Counterfeit ManThe Counterfeit Man is a collection of science fiction short stories by Alan E. Nourse, published in 1963 by Scholastic. Several of the stories have a medical or psychological theme:* The Counterfeit Man - title story...
(1963) - Psi-High and Others (1967)
- Rx for Tomorrow (1971)
- Short Works of Alan Edward Nourse (2008, reprint of seven of the stories from The Counterfeit Man)
Nonfiction Books
- Nine Planets (1960, revised edition 1970)
- So You Want to Be a Nurse (1961)
- The Body (Life Science LibraryLife Science LibraryThe Life Science Library was a popular series of hardbound books published by Time-Life between 1963 and 1967. Each of the 26 volumes explored a major topic of the natural sciences. They were intended for, and written at a level appropriate to, an educated lay readership...
) (1965, revised edition 1981) - Intern (1965, under the pseudonymPseudonymA pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Doctor X) - Universe, Earth and Atom: The Story of Physics (1969)
- Venus and Mercury: a First Book (1972)
- The Backyard Astronomer (1973)
- The Giant Planets: a First Book (1974, revised edition 1982)
- The Asteroids: a First Book (1975)
- Viruses: a First Book (1976, revised edition 1982)
- Hormones: an Impact Book (1979)
- Herpes: an Impact Book (1985)
- AIDS: an Impact Book (1986)
- The Elk Hunt (1986)
- Teen Guide to Safe Sex (1990)
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases (1992)
- The Virus Invaders: a Venture Book (1992)
External links
- Alan E Nourse at Fantastic Fiction