


novels as part of a Cub Scout project and was soon hooked. He first encountered science fiction as an eight-year-old when he read the first three Tom Swift Jr. Vardeman was born on 6 January 1947 "down the street from the Crazy Water Hotel" in Mineral Wells, a city in Palo Pinto County, Texas. Vardeman, from an interview with M-BRANE SF, 2009 Hale book, too.") I have no idea if this is reality, but the publishers liked the notion." ("I'll buy one Vardeman book this month, but two? Never! I'll buy that Edward Hudson book instead. This difference in pen names soothed publishing feathers that I wouldn't be competing with myself. I put the Star Frontier series under a pen name for this reason (ditto with the fantasy series After the Spell Wars ). When I was turning out a lot of SF, there would be times where I had two or three titles coming out in the same month from different publishers. My F/SF pen names were used for a different reason. "Using Karl Lassiter keeps SF fans from being startled if they’d pick up, say Sword and Drum or First Cherokee Rifles.
