Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1923–2002) was an American science fiction and mystery writer, born in Waterloo, Iowa. Wounded twice while serving as a communications sergeant in Europe during the Second World War, he earned a doctorate in musicology from the University of Michigan and taught music before turning to full-time writing in 1955. He became known for bringing aesthetic and artistic concerns into science fiction, most influentially in his 1957 story "The Tunesmith," and built his reputation on the Jan Darzek novels and the Cultural Survey books exploring first-contact and interstellar bureaucracy, including Monument and The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets. He also wrote mystery fiction, among it the Grandfather Rastin stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Biggle was a founding secretary-treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America and later chaired its board of trustees, and he founded the Science Fiction Oral History Association in the 1970s. His last novel, The Chronocide Mission, appeared in 2002, the year he died.