This column is overdue. Lloyd Biggle, Jr., was an important writer, very well respected in the SF, Fantasy and Mystery genres and indeed, was a power in the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), serving on the board of trustees and as its first secretary-treasurer. He had a great deal of interest in preserving culture and spearheaded the move to preserve the oral history of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.

He was also a Ph.D. in musicology and after WWII (in which he was wounded severely), taught for a number of years at the University of Michigan. From his wide knowledge of music, art and culture in general, he wrote a number of books that focus on culture in the far future. [Footnote 1]

I was fortune to have one of my mother’s friends hand me a copy of one of his books, The Watchers of the Dark, when I was about thirteen and I read it in one sitting. I made it a point to keep an eye out for his books, especially any that involved the very interesting universe he created. It was a rewarding habit over the years.

I’ll skip over the Jan Darzek/Dark series for now to focus on the general books that focused on Biggle’s Galactic Cultural Survey. He broke new ground with them because no one up until Biggle actually considered how the cultural aspects of a society, comprised of hundreds of alien species, would work. These stories hypothesized that culture would have an immense impact upon any such civilization. He even explored how a love of beauty could be used to overthrow a stagnant and brutal society. Biggle felt sure that culture would shape the lives and well-being of all people, regardless of the species. [Footnote 2]

The Still, Small Voices of Trumpets examined the role of music in society as well as art; the result was thoughtful and fascinating. A second novel, The Light that Never Was, examined painting and sculpture as galactic influences, and managed a polite nod to what was currently occurring in the US during the 60’s and 70’s. I’m referring to Beatlemania if you’re wondering and the frenetic adulation of rock stars. (You want something deeper? Try the entire Oceana/Africa tourist-trinket phenomenon, and the packaging of island resorts. [Footnote 3]

Biggle could do this largely because his aliens were believable and range from almost human to completely alien; the reader quickly gets absorbed into the concepts and before long, finds him or herself, looking for another Lloyd L. Biggle, Jr. book.

DAW published a large number of his works over the years and the covers of his DAW paperbacks were eye-catching and clearly showed that the artist had read the book, which all too-often isn’t the case. I think the DAW books probably influenced more aspiring readers than any other series and Biggle was typical of the best DAW had to offer. Orson Scott Card, for example, claimed Biggle as an important influence during his youth.

The Jan Darzek series crosses genre lines; they’re both mysteries and science fiction. Biggle does a superb job of juggling the needs of the two genres. The series also benefits from the continuity of well-crafted characters beyond the lead Darzek character, both human and alien, demonstrating how a series of book can be written with minimal overlap. Most series books really require most people to read the individual novels in sequence and that’s not true of the Darzek/Dark series. My wife, Susan, for example, generally feels much more comfortable starting a series with book one rather than skipping around, and she ended up reading them in no particular order, enjoying them singly much to her surprise.

Here’s a list of the Jan Darzek novels in order:

Collecting Biggle is not exactly hard, I’m glad to say, though you certainly will never make much money selling copies of his book. He’s one of the fortunate writers whose work was decently distributed and, apparently, fairly well cared for by the people who bought them. I think the most expensive copy of a Biggle book I’ve heard of is about $500, and very nice, decent copies are available for most of his novels and short story collections for less than $150. I wish I could say that the dust jackets of the hard backs were as good as the DAW paperbacks, but sadly, I can’t recall any of his books that had what I’d consider to be an eye-catching dust jacket. That’s odd as well, since the books sold fairly well and regularly go in and out of print.

If I had to recommend two of Biggle’s books to read, to start off with, I think I’d pick Monument and The Still, Small Voices of Trumpets. Do yourself a favor and hunt them up. You’ll be glad you did.

Trivia Question: As any experienced reader is aware, movies are made from novels all the time, with highly variable results, both in quality of the movie itself and faithfulness to the original book. The best, recent examples of success in movie adaptation would be The Lord of the Ring series. However, there was one wildly popular movie of the 60’s where the novel was written after the movie, partly to make up for the ambiguity of the movie itself. [Warning – I’m biased. I loath the movie and the book in question]. What movie/book am I talking about? Hint: Think Sri Lanka. The answer will be next time, of course.

Footnote 1: He served in the European Theater and I’ve always wondered if his experiences in WWII ever included any of the salvage of the thousands of cultural objects – sculpture, paintings, etc. – that occurred during the last days of the war and immediately following it. It certainly could have been a factor in his fierce belief in the preservation of culture.

Footnote 2: Again, Biggle’s experiences in WWII appear to have been a factor in his writing. Compare the basic brutality of the Nazi regime and the perverted love of “Art” that Hitler espoused. Take a look at the long laundry list of proscribed art that Goering confiscated and kept for himself – secretly.