F.M. Busby

Francis Marion Busby (March 11, 1921 – February 17, 2005) was an American science fiction writer and science fiction fan. In 1960 he was a co-winner of the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine. Francis Busby was born in Indianapolis, the son of Francis Marion Busby and Clara Nye Busby. The family settled in Colfax, in the state of Washington, in 1931, and Busby attended high school there. He subsequently attended Washington State College until he joined the National Guard. He was subsequently discharged and returned to college. He did not remain long, however, and enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 23, 1943, at Spokane, Washington.

Busby served the war as part of the Alaska Communication System, assigned to the island of Amchitka. At the end of World War II, he was discharged from the army and returned to college to graduate as an engineer. He subsequently returned to the Alaska Communication System to work in a civilian role based in Seattle.

In 1954 Busby married Elinor Doub. He had one daughter, Michele. Together with his wife and others, he published a fan magazine named Cry of the Nameless which won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1960. Busby continued to work for the Alaska Communication System until 1971, when the organization was sold to private industry and renamed RCA Alascom, and he took early retirement from the company.

From 1974 to 1976, Busby was Vice President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. At the age of fifty, he became a freelance science-fiction author. He wrote nineteen published novels and numerous short stories between 1973 and 1996. Robert A. Heinlein, in part, dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Busby, and in part, dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Elinor.

Busby ceased writing fiction sometime after 1996, claiming in an email: No, I haven't been writing fiction for some time. Many, if not most of us "midlist" writers have been frozen out like a third party on an Eskimo honeymoon. The IRS started it by getting the Thor Power Tools decision stretched to cover an inventory tax on books in publishers' warehouses (so they don't keep 'em in print anymore), and the book chains wrapped it up by setting one book's GROSS order on that writer's previous book's NET sales. 4–5 books under those rules, and you're road kill; a publisher can't be expected to buy a book the chains won't pay out on.

How real the influence of the Thor Power Tools decision was on Busby's writing career is uncertain, considering a great many of his novels were written and published after it. In November 2004, Busby was diagnosed with severe intestinal problems. He went to the Swedish Medical Center/Ballard Campus for surgery and suffered complications. He underwent further surgery before being moved to Health and Rehabilitation of Seattle, where he died on Thursday afternoon, February 17, 2005.