Paul O. Williams, RIP
Locus reports that Paul O. Williams has passed. Seems like many of the authors I read as a teen are leaving us. He’s best known for The Pelbar Cycle, which is a seven book post-apocalyptic series that can be somewhat hard to get into, but was still kind of mindblowing for me when I was a kid. It’s rather obscure now, but well worth reading. They are set in a clearly recognizable America well after some sort of nuclear holocaust, and are remarkable for their characters and the emphasis on describing cultures and rebuilding, rather than destructive aftermath.
Start with The Breaking of Northwall, and work your way through all seven. Heck, I remember building a Lode Runner level based on The Fall of the Shell…
He apparently only wrote one more SF book (though many of poetry), which I now have on order.
One Response to “Paul O. Williams, RIP”
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The Gorboduc Vandal, or something like that. That was a good book, read it on the way back from Disneyland a long time ago. Paul O. Williams was also a Philip K. Dick archivist and scholar.
I once had a chance to tell Williams how much I loved his work, when we sat at the same table during a Baycon (Silicon Valley-area SF convention) back in the 80s.
Sorry to hear of his passing.