I love to read and write historical fiction, science fiction/fantasy. I like to imagine societies that differ from ours -- always looking for the perfect one: the Utopia, and trying to figure out what it could be like. The opposite, the dystopia, also interests me. My Wizard's World explores several societies, and A House in Berlin explores life in a dystopia -- the Third Reich.
I grew up in Springfield, Missouri, graduated Central High 1950, attended Drury and Southwest Missouri State. I currently live in Eastern Kansas.
I've been writing, mostly as a hobby, since around 1990. After I retired from business, I attended creative writing classes at Washington University in St. Louis.
I'm a blogger. I maintain a political blog: (www.asmwizard.com).
bio:
Retired - Widower - former long time computer consultant to many medium and large firms, with extensive and varied experience in business. I got in on the ground floor with large mainframe computers, and when I retired they were on their way out - even faster than I was. Interconnected personal computers were on the way in.
I have a fairly long perspective, and I remember what I was doing when my family first heard the radio announcement that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting on the floor, near the family radio, playing with bubblegum cards of warplanes - British, German, and Italian. Europe had been at war for more than a year, and many thought it possible, or even wanted, war with Germany, but no one I knew expected war with Japan.
I was still a kid, too young to go. During World War II, I eagerly read newspapers and watched newsreels in the movies.
I sold and delivered newspapers during the war. I sold the extra editions for D-Day, Roosevelt's death, Germany Surrenders, Hiroshima, and Japan Surrenders.
After I grew up a bit, I went to college, was drafted, served two years in the army including a year in Germany. This was about eight years after the war ended, so a lot of damage was still visible there. The people were damaged too.
So much for my early perspective. I've lived through World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, the Cold War, both Iraq wars, 9-11, Afghanistan, and the War on Poverty. I remember how impressed I was by Reagan's stump speech when he ran for president. I've been blitzed by many technical advances: penicillin, jet aircraft, television, computers, transistors, the Internet, iPads and iPods, smart phones, and on and on.
Two of my heroes of the last century were Churchill and Lindbergh. My favorite recent presidents are Truman and Reagan.
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