DonaldMoffitt.com

 
DONALD MOFFITT was born in Boston on July 20, 1931, and lived in Manhattan for a number of years working as a public relations executive, industrial filmmaker, and ghostwriter before moving to rural Maine with his wife, Ann.  In the late 1980’s and 1990’s, having previously published fiction under an assortment of pen names, Moffitt began writing and publishing the acclaimed science fiction novels for which he is best known –– high-speed, high-tech stories sought by dedicated fans of hard-SF adventure.

 

Moffitt has been praised as a visionary novelist whose cosmic scope is immense ––

an “amazingly prescient” writer who anticipated Operation Immortality two decades before it was launched and invented the idea of music sampling on a Moog computer years before music sampling became everyday practice. His admirers include Arthur C. Clarke, who after reading THE JUPITER THEFT wrote editor Judy-Lynne Del Rey to say he found Moffitt’s imagination “astonishing” and his scientific accuracy that of a “professional scientist.”

 

LOCUS, calling the GENESIS saga “enthralling, mind-boggling, magnificent!” said, “How can anyone top it?  It rivals anything that Larry Niven imagined in RINGWORLD, or Arthur C. Clarke depicted in RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA, and went on to call it “Science fiction in the grand tradition…a magical mystery tour.”

 

Of A GATHERING OF STARS (which plays billiards with black holes to move entire solar systems) LOCUS said, “A really audacious idea.”

 

Of JOVIAN, Greg Bear said, “Fans of Larry Niven, Peter Hamilton, and Arthur C. Clarke will find more than ample excitement in Moffitt’s novels –– they’re packed with ideas and the true spirit of high-tech adventure.”          

 

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION describes Moffitt as an author of “numerate, physics-oriented, fast-moving hard-sf adventures…a competence with mythopoeically large scales and calculations…the focus of the tales…is firmly on the wide-scale action and the physics.”

 

IBOOKS, launching JOVIAN –– “an event in the science fiction community” –– said of Moffitt, “His writing combines scientific knowledge, wonderful, almost cinematic characters, and the kind of action/adventure that appeals to fans of STAR WARS and STAR TREK, but is much more of a first-rate novel than a media tie-in.”

 

ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT applauded Moffitt’s sense of wonder, predicting that although fashions in science fiction change, his GENESIS QUEST novels would become permanent classics.

 

BEFORE IT ALL BEGAN:

In the 1950’s –– twilight of the pulps and Playboy imitators –– Moffitt published approximately 100 short stories under 15 or more pen names (Wilson MacDonald, James D’Indy, and an assortment of others), in magazines like Man’s Action, Wildcat, Gent, and Monsieur, while editing trade magazines by day.

 

Writing as PAUL KENYON:

In the early 70’s, using the pen name Paul Kenyon, Moffitt published eight BARONESS novels –– a pulp series featuring a female superspy in the James Bond tradition. These have been translated into several languages and continue to have a strong cult following.

 

Writing as VICTOR SONDHEIM:

In the 1980’s, using the pen name Victor Sondheim, Moffitt published the epic historical novel INHERITORS OF THE STORM, a saga of America between the World Wars.

 

 

Writing as PAUL KING:

In the 1990’s, using the pen name Paul King, Moffitt published THE DREAMERS and THE VOYAGERS, vivid novels of the voyages of discovery and conquest by early European explorers of the New World. 

 

 

LATE FICTION:

Don continued writing stories and novels under his own name until his death on December 10, 2014.  His late work included both time travel and historical mysteries published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Children of the Comet, a science fiction novel completed only weeks before his death, was posthumously published in 2015, and is available from Open Road Integrated Media.