Name: BUDRYS, Algirdas Jonas Aged: 77
Born: January 9, 1931 Where: Konigsberg, East Prussia
Died: June 9, 2008 Where: Evanston, IL
Interred: Maryhill Cemetery, Niles, IL
Married: Edna Frances Duna When: July 24, 1954
Awards: 1966 Mystery Writers Edgar Special Award for the novelette, "The Master of the Hounds."

"Algis" (A. J.) Budrys

"Nothing publishable ever came out of a #10 envelope."

Algirdas Jonas Budrys was born January 9, 1931, in Königsberg (Kaliningrad), East Prussia. He slid out from under the years of Nazi/Red Army occupation when his family removed to the USA in 1936 (his father was Consul General for Lithuania). Budrys would remain a Lithuanian citizen until 1996 ... but was lost to that world when he first published, at age 15, his fanzine, Slantasy, in 1946. He then took his higher education at Miami University, 1947-49, and Columbia University, NYC, 1950-51, before backsliding and publishing his first SF stories, in 1952, for Space SF & Astounding.

At about the same time, A. J. was moving into science fiction editing, which was an unstable career to say the least ... not due to personal problems, but rather the dynamics of that field in general. He worked as editorial assistant for Gnome Press, Galaxy, and Space SF. Then associate editor of Venture SF and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In this period he wrote the Hugo nominated book, Who?, and short story, "The Edge of the Sea." In 1961, he became editor-in-chief of Regency Books, and wrote a major Hugo Award nominee, Rogue Moon. In 1963, A. J. also worked as an editorial director for the book-division of Playboy Press. His 1976 short story "The Silent Eyes of Time" was another Hugo nominee.

A. J. reviewed books for F&SF until 1983 and wrote several theme-columns for various magazines. He became one of the judges for the L. Ron Hubbard series, "Writers of the Future," to which he was dedicated. In 1993, his novel Hard Landing was nominated for the 1993 Nebula Award, and A. J. became editor of Tomorrow (Magazine of Speculative Fiction), which, after transitioning from paper to web publication, ended in 2000.

We corresponded over the years ... from the days of my own fanzine in the early 1960s up through the creation of this web page. New things interested A.J. and I always found him to be open and painfully honest. It took age, diabetes, and cancer to put him here. Ed's quote below shows an aspect of this multi-faceted man, but so does this thought which came from the 1986 movie, The Golden Child: "He believes in nothing ... yet still he does what is right." Which echoes another folk wisdom, "Bless the child who has his own."

"A hard guy fifty times smarter than everybody else,
a man who wasn't afraid to say that it was all bullshit."
Ed Gorman

THUMBNAIL: From a larger photograph by Jerry Pournelle.

PEN NAMES: David C. Hodgkins, Paul Janvier, Robert Marner, William Scarff, and John A. Sentry

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

OBITUARY: Donnellan Family Funeral Home

Send relevant email to George C. Willick