Edgar Pangborn
Encyclopedia
Edgar Pangborn was an American
mystery, historical, and science fiction
author.
on February 25, 1909, to Harry Levi Pangborn, an attorney and dictionary editor, and Georgia Wood Pangborn, a noted writer of supernatural fiction. Along with his older sister Mary, Edgar was homeschooled until 1919 and then educated at Brooklyn Friends School
. He began music studies at Harvard University
in 1924, when he was still only 15 years old, and left in 1926 without graduating. After that he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music
, but did not graduate from that school, either. On leaving he publicly abandoned music, shifting his creative focus to writing. His first novel, a mystery called A-100: A Mystery Story, was published under the pseudonym "Bruce Harrison" in 1930. It was not an auspicious or notably successful debut, and showed none of the emotional or stylistic characteristics that became the hallmark of his later work.
Over the next 20 years he wrote numerous stories for the pulp detective and mystery magazines, always under pseudonyms. He also spent three years (1939–1942) farming in rural Maine, and three years (1942–1945) doing his World War II
military service in the Pacific with the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
It was not until the early 1950s that Edgar "suddenly appeared" within the science fiction and mystery fields, publishing a string of high-quality, high-profile stories under his own name in prominent magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction
, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
. His work helped to firmly establish a new "humanist" school of science fiction, and inspired a subsequent generation of writers, including Peter S. Beagle
and Ursula K. Le Guin
, who has credited Pangborn and Theodore Sturgeon
with convincing her that it was possible to write worthwhile, humanly emotional stories within science fiction and fantasy.
In the 1960s Pangborn also began painting semi-professionally in oils, and exhibited portraits, nudes, and landscape paintings at local and regional art shows.
He continued to write in all genres until he died in Bearsville, New York
on February 1, 1976.
Twenty-seven years later, in 2003, he was named winner of that year's Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.
, Harper's Monthly
, Woman's Home Companion
, and others. His father, Harry Levi Pangborn, worked as an editor of Webster's Dictionary
. Words and literature were a part of the Pangborn household from the very beginning. As children, Edgar and his sister Mary carried on the tradition by writing an extensive series of fanciful, handwritten storybooks, often collaborating on these with each other and also their mother.
For the first 20 years of Edgar's writing career, which started when he was 21, Edgar wrote what he referred to as "literary hackwork" for the pulp magazines. His serious work began in 1951, with the publication of his first science fiction story, "Angel's Egg", in Galaxy Science Fiction
. The story of a race of tiny winged beings who come to Earth to help mankind, as told by a kindly biologist, it is considered a classic of the field, and has been translated into six languages and reprinted more than twenty times. By 1954 Edgar was well-known and his second science fiction novel, A Mirror for Observers won the International Fantasy Award
. This book is told from the point of view of a "Salvayan" (Martian
) observer on Earth, who struggles with another Martian over the fate of a gifted young man. Galaxy
reviewer Groff Conklin
described Mirror as a "beautiful and moving book . . . told in little details which make the tragedy all the more impressive."
From there Edgar continued writing in science fiction and in other genres as well, including the historical novel Wilderness of Spring and the contemporary courtroom drama The Trial of Callista Blake. In 1954 Pangborn wrote The Music Master of Babylon, a story set in the ruins of post-apocalypse New York and clearly related to Stephen Vincent Benét
's "By the Waters of Babylon
" of 1937, already a classic.
Edgar's best-known book, the Hugo-nominated Davy
of 1964, is set in a much later part time of that post-apocalyptic future, a picaresque bildungsroman
set in a repressive theocratic
society which developed out of the ruins of the destroyed old world. This post-apocalyptic world eventually became the backdrop for most of Edgar's stories, including his Hugo-nominated "Longtooth", his Nebula finalist "Mount Charity", and his last novel, The Company of Glory.
Because of his educational background and early interests, Edgar's works often deal with musical themes: in both Davy and A Mirror For Observers music plays a crucial role. Edgar's works are also known for being humane and poignant in a way that nevertheless allows for some dark themes and raunchy humor.
In his introduction to Edgar's posthumous story collection Still I Persist In Wondering, Spider Robinson
observed: "[Pangborn] said again and again in his books that love is not a condition or an event or even a state of mind—that love is a country, which we are sometimes privileged to visit."
The scores are now being converted to digital notation files that will allow MIDI playback, so they can finally be heard.
During the last years of Mary's own life, Peter S. Beagle served as one of her trustees, and when Mary died in February 2003 she bequeathed the entire Pangborn estate to him, including all of Edgar's literary work. Over 50 boxes of manuscripts and papers were moved out to California for sorting, filing, digitizing, and cross-correlating with the papers in the permanent Edgar Pangborn collection at Boston University
.
The final planned result is a series of definitive hardcover editions that will bring all of Edgar's works back into print in the form he intended; and, in addition, release some long-rumored manuscripts for the first time.
In 2001, Old Earth Books published an authorized reissue of Edgar's first science fiction novel, West of the Sun. In 2004, forgetting that their contract had lapsed, Old Earth Books followed that up with unauthorized hardcover releases of Davy and A Mirror For Observers. This error has since been corrected. When the existing inventory sells out these editions will not be reprinted.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mystery, historical, and 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...
author.
Life
Edgar Pangborn was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on February 25, 1909, to Harry Levi Pangborn, an attorney and dictionary editor, and Georgia Wood Pangborn, a noted writer of supernatural fiction. Along with his older sister Mary, Edgar was homeschooled until 1919 and then educated at Brooklyn Friends School
Brooklyn Friends School
Brooklyn Friends School is a Quaker school in New York City. Brooklyn Friends School is an independent, college preparatory Quaker school serving a culturally diverse educational community of approximately 700 students, ages 20 months through 12th grade.-History:Founded in 1867 by the Religious...
. He began music studies at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1924, when he was still only 15 years old, and left in 1926 without graduating. After that he studied at the New England Conservatory of Music
New England Conservatory of Music
The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, is the oldest independent school of music in the United States.The conservatory is home each year to 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies along with 1400 more in its Preparatory School as well as the School of...
, but did not graduate from that school, either. On leaving he publicly abandoned music, shifting his creative focus to writing. His first novel, a mystery called A-100: A Mystery Story, was published under the pseudonym "Bruce Harrison" in 1930. It was not an auspicious or notably successful debut, and showed none of the emotional or stylistic characteristics that became the hallmark of his later work.
Over the next 20 years he wrote numerous stories for the pulp detective and mystery magazines, always under pseudonyms. He also spent three years (1939–1942) farming in rural Maine, and three years (1942–1945) doing his 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...
military service in the Pacific with the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
It was not until the early 1950s that Edgar "suddenly appeared" within the science fiction and mystery fields, publishing a string of high-quality, high-profile stories under his own name in prominent magazines like Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy 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...
, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a digest-size American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in 1949 by Mystery House and then by Fantasy House. Both were subsidiaries of Lawrence Spivak's Mercury Publications, which took over as publisher in 1958. Spilogale, Inc...
, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
. His work helped to firmly establish a new "humanist" school of science fiction, and inspired a subsequent generation of writers, including Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. His most notable works include the novels The Last Unicorn, A Fine and Private Place and Tamsin, and the award-winning story "Two Hearts".-Career:Beagle won early recognition from The Scholastic Art &...
and Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...
, who has credited Pangborn and Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon
Theodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction author.His most famous novel is More Than Human .-Biography:...
with convincing her that it was possible to write worthwhile, humanly emotional stories within science fiction and fantasy.
In the 1960s Pangborn also began painting semi-professionally in oils, and exhibited portraits, nudes, and landscape paintings at local and regional art shows.
He continued to write in all genres until he died in Bearsville, New York
Bearsville, New York
Bearsville is a hamlet in Ulster County, New York, USA. Bearsville is in the town of Woodstock, New York and is located along New York State Route 212, within Catskill State Park and just to the west of the hamlet of Woodstock. The highest known temperature in Bearsville was 101°F, which...
on February 1, 1976.
Twenty-seven years later, in 2003, he was named winner of that year's Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award.
Writing
Mr. Pangborn came from a writing family. His mother, Georgia Wood Pangborn, was a noted writer of ghost stories that appeared regularly in such popular mainstream periodicals as Scribner's MagazineScribner's Magazine
Scribner's Magazine was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. Scribner's Magazine was the second magazine out of the "Scribner's" firm, after the publication of Scribner's Monthly...
, Harper's Monthly
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion was an American monthly publication, published from 1873 to 1957. It was highly successful, climbing to a circulation peak of more than four million during the 1930s and 1940s....
, and others. His father, Harry Levi Pangborn, worked as an editor of Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
. Words and literature were a part of the Pangborn household from the very beginning. As children, Edgar and his sister Mary carried on the tradition by writing an extensive series of fanciful, handwritten storybooks, often collaborating on these with each other and also their mother.
For the first 20 years of Edgar's writing career, which started when he was 21, Edgar wrote what he referred to as "literary hackwork" for the pulp magazines. His serious work began in 1951, with the publication of his first science fiction story, "Angel's Egg", in Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy 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...
. The story of a race of tiny winged beings who come to Earth to help mankind, as told by a kindly biologist, it is considered a classic of the field, and has been translated into six languages and reprinted more than twenty times. By 1954 Edgar was well-known and his second science fiction novel, A Mirror for Observers won the International Fantasy Award
International Fantasy Award
The International Fantasy Award was an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy book and, in 1951-1953, the best non-fiction book of interest to science fiction and fantasy readers. The IFA was given by an international panel of prominent fans and professionals in 1951-1955 and...
. This book is told from the point of view of a "Salvayan" (Martian
Martian
As an adjective, the term martian is used to describe anything pertaining to the planet Mars.However, a Martian is more usually a hypothetical or fictional native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Historically, life on Mars has often been hypothesized, although there is currently no solid evidence of...
) observer on Earth, who struggles with another Martian over the fate of a gifted young man. Galaxy
Galaxy Science Fiction
Galaxy 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...
reviewer Groff Conklin
Groff Conklin
Edward Groff Conklin was a leading science fiction anthologist. He edited 40 anthologies of science fiction, one of mystery stories , wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects as well as a published poet...
described Mirror as a "beautiful and moving book . . . told in little details which make the tragedy all the more impressive."
From there Edgar continued writing in science fiction and in other genres as well, including the historical novel Wilderness of Spring and the contemporary courtroom drama The Trial of Callista Blake. In 1954 Pangborn wrote The Music Master of Babylon, a story set in the ruins of post-apocalypse New York and clearly related to Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...
's "By the Waters of Babylon
By the Waters of Babylon
"By the Waters of Babylon" is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen Vincent Benét first published July 31, 1937, in The Saturday Evening Post as "The Place of the Gods"...
" of 1937, already a classic.
Edgar's best-known book, the Hugo-nominated Davy
Davy (novel)
Davy is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Edgar Pangborn, nominated for the 1965 Hugo Award. It is set in the Northeastern United States some centuries after an atomic war ended high-technology civilization, with some scenes on an unnamed Atlantic island.The novel is a...
of 1964, is set in a much later part time of that post-apocalyptic future, a picaresque bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
set in a repressive theocratic
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
society which developed out of the ruins of the destroyed old world. This post-apocalyptic world eventually became the backdrop for most of Edgar's stories, including his Hugo-nominated "Longtooth", his Nebula finalist "Mount Charity", and his last novel, The Company of Glory.
Because of his educational background and early interests, Edgar's works often deal with musical themes: in both Davy and A Mirror For Observers music plays a crucial role. Edgar's works are also known for being humane and poignant in a way that nevertheless allows for some dark themes and raunchy humor.
In his introduction to Edgar's posthumous story collection Still I Persist In Wondering, Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson
Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction author.- Biography :Born in the Bronx, New York City, Robinson attended Catholic high school, spending his junior year in a seminary, followed by two years in a Catholic college, and five years at the State...
observed: "[Pangborn] said again and again in his books that love is not a condition or an event or even a state of mind—that love is a country, which we are sometimes privileged to visit."
Music
Edgar never discussed his early musical training in detail with anyone in the science fiction, fantasy, or mystery fields. It was known that he studied the piano and violin, but that was all. In 2003, however, a large stack of handwritten music manuscripts were discovered in the attic of the Bearsville house in which Edgar died. These manuscripts included original string quartets, sonatas, nocturnes, and other orchestral forms written by Edgar during his music conservatory days.The scores are now being converted to digital notation files that will allow MIDI playback, so they can finally be heard.
The Rediscovery of Edgar Pangborn
Throughout his life, Edgar Pangborn maintained extensive correspondences with other writers, and he became particularly close to the American fantasy author Peter S. Beagle. After Edgar's death that connection was maintained by Edgar's sole heir, his older sister Mary.During the last years of Mary's own life, Peter S. Beagle served as one of her trustees, and when Mary died in February 2003 she bequeathed the entire Pangborn estate to him, including all of Edgar's literary work. Over 50 boxes of manuscripts and papers were moved out to California for sorting, filing, digitizing, and cross-correlating with the papers in the permanent Edgar Pangborn collection at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
.
The final planned result is a series of definitive hardcover editions that will bring all of Edgar's works back into print in the form he intended; and, in addition, release some long-rumored manuscripts for the first time.
In 2001, Old Earth Books published an authorized reissue of Edgar's first science fiction novel, West of the Sun. In 2004, forgetting that their contract had lapsed, Old Earth Books followed that up with unauthorized hardcover releases of Davy and A Mirror For Observers. This error has since been corrected. When the existing inventory sells out these editions will not be reprinted.
Science fiction (Davy series)
- The Music Master of Babylon (1954 story)
- DavyDavy (novel)Davy is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Edgar Pangborn, nominated for the 1965 Hugo Award. It is set in the Northeastern United States some centuries after an atomic war ended high-technology civilization, with some scenes on an unnamed Atlantic island.The novel is a...
(1964) - The Judgment of Eve (1966)
- The World is a Sphere (1973 story)
- The Company of Glory (1975)
- Longtooth
- Mount Charity
- Still I Persist in Wondering (1978) (collection)
Science fiction (stand alone)
- West of the Sun (1953)
- A Mirror for Observers (1954)
- Good Neighbors and Other Strangers (1972) (collection)
External links
- Past Masters: Still I Persist In Wondering by Bud Webster at Galactic Central