F. Paul Wilson


Francis Paul Wilson is an American author, primarily in the science fiction and horror genres.

Career

Wilson made his first sales in 1970 to Analog while still in medical school, and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. His debut novel was Healer. In 1981, he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep. In the 1990s, he moved from science fiction and horror to medical thrillers and interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed, which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992 to 1996.
Among Wilson's best-known characters is the anti-hero Repairman Jack, an urban mercenary introduced in the 1984 New York Times bestseller, The Tomb. Unwilling to start a series character at the time, Wilson refused to write a second Repairman Jack novel until Legacies in 1998. Since then he has written one per year along with side trips into vampire fiction, science fiction, and even a New Age thriller. Current books sales are around six million.
Throughout his writing – especially in his earlier science fiction works – Wilson has included explicitly libertarian political philosophy which extends to his "Repairman Jack" series. He won the first Prometheus Award in 1979 for his novel Wheels Within Wheels and another in 2004 for Sims. The Libertarian Futurist Society has also honored Wilson with their Hall of Fame Award for Healer and An Enemy of the State. In 2015 he received the third special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement: the previous two recipients were Poul Anderson and Vernor Vinge.
Wilson is a noted fan of H. P. Lovecraft

Why? Because HPL is special to me.
Donald A. Wollheim is to blame. He started me on Lovecraft. It was 1959. I was just a kid, a mere thirteen years old when he slipped me my first fix. I was a good kid up till then, reading Ace Doubles and clean, wholesome science fiction stories by the likes of Heinlein, E.E. Smith, Poul Anderson, Fred Pohl, and the rest. But he brought me down with one anthology. He knew what he was doing. He called it THE MACABRE READER and slapped this lurid neato cool Ed Emshwiller cover on it. I couldn't resist. I bought it. I read it. And that was it. The beginning of my end.

In answer to a claim that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was an influence on The Keep, Wilson responded:
First off, I'm not a fan of LOtR – I struggled through it once as a teen and never looked back.... The influences on The Keep were Ludlum, R. E. Howard, and Lovecraft.

Like other American science fiction writers directly or indirectly influenced by Campbell's view of the genre as a literature of ideas, Wilson makes use of his work to explore trends and technologies speculatively as they manifest. A prominent example is his novel An Enemy of the State, which was written during the 1970s, an era that saw stagflation develop in the U.S. economy. Throughout the book, Wilson runs chapter headings quoting from economic works such as Fiat Money Inflation in France and KYFHO, a kind of anarchic philosophy that he invented as model for a perfect society. The protagonist La Nague was born on Tolive, where the philosophy led to a government described in detail in "The Healer".
The Keep was later made into a movie and there is much talk of a Repairman Jack film based on one of Wilson's novels.

Hate to say it, but The Tomb looks like it's on its way to being filmed this year. Last October, after seven years of development, numerous options, five screenwriters, and eight scripts, Beacon Films finally bought film rights. Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista will be partnering and distributing the film here and abroad.The film will be called "Repairman Jack".

His short stories "Foet", "Traps", and "Lipidleggin'" were filmed as short films and collected on the DVD OTHERS: The Tales of F. Paul Wilson. 2012 Director Ian Fischer, Marc Buhmann; Studio RPM Films; MPAA rating NR; Format Amazon Streaming; Availability Not Available July 21, 2016.
His short story "Pelts" was adapted into the season 2 episode of Masters of Horror'' titled "Pelts".
In January 2012, Wilson began writing for the tech web site Byte, mostly in the persona of Repairman Jack.
Wilson has been a resident of Wall Township, New Jersey. He is a practicing physician as a Doctor of Osteopathy.

Novels

The Adversary Cycle

  1. "Fix"
  2. The Tomb,
  3. "A Day in the Life"
  4. "The Last Rakosh"
  5. "The Long Way Home"
  6. "Home Repairs"
  7. "The Wringer"
  8. Legacies,
  9. Conspiracies,
  10. All The Rage,
  11. Hosts,
  12. The Haunted Air,
  13. Gateways,
  14. Crisscross,
  15. Infernal,
  16. Harbingers,
  17. "Interlude at Duane's"
  18. "Infernal Night"
  19. Bloodline,
  20. "Do-Gooder"
  21. By The Sword,
  22. Ground Zero,
  23. "Recalled"
  24. Fatal Error,
  25. The Dark at the End,
  26. Quick Fixes- Tales of Repairman Jack ,
  27. The heavily revised version of Nightworld is styled as "a Repairman Jack novel" and marks the end of the RJ and Adversary cycles.
  28. "Santa Jack:
  29. The Last Christmas (2019, an interlude that takes place between Ground Zero and Fatal Error.

    Young Repairman Jack

  30. Secret Histories
  31. Secret Circles
  32. Secret Vengeance

    Early Repairman Jack

  33. Cold City
  34. Dark City
  35. Fear City

    LaNague Federation

  36. An Enemy of the State,
  37. Dydeetown World,
  38. The Tery,
  39. Wheels Within Wheels,
  40. Healer,
  1. Definitely Not Kansas
  2. Family Secrets
  3. The Silent Ones

    The ICE Sequence

  4. Panacea
  5. The God Gene
  6. The Void Protocol

    Other Books

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