Lloyd Biggle, Jr. | Biography

Lloyd Biggle, Jr., was born in Waterloo, Iowa. After winning a Purple Heart with oak-leaf cluster in World War II, he took an A.B. with high distinction at Wayne University (now Wayne State) in 1947 and a Ph.D. in music at the University of Michigan in 1953. He taught the literature and history of music there from 1948 to 1951 and has been self-employed since then. He married Hedwig Janiszewski, a violin teacher, in 1947; they now live in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Biggle has contributed over fifty stories to science-fiction and mystery magazines; many of his books have been republished in Europe. Theodore Sturgeon has praised his work, and The Metallic Muse (1972) and Monument (1974) are included in Pfeiffer and de Bolt's list of basic science-fiction titles in Barron's Anatomy of Wonder . Frequently a science-fiction convention participant, Biggle has promoted the scholarly study of science fiction and attacked the superficial treatment it sometimes receives from academics.

Biggle imagines a galaxy of diverse sentient species, united by commerce but sometimes divided by xenophobia. He has become increasingly sophisticated in creating situations that allow an individual's heroism or creative imagination to save the day for humanistic values. Biggle combines elements of science fiction and detective fiction in an early character, Jan Darzek, an Earthling private eye. In All the Colors of Darkness (1963) Darzek discovers the pangalactic government of Supreme, a worldsized computer. Although Earth has not evolved morally to the level required for admission to Supreme's Galactic Synthesis, Darzek becomes a high ranking agent for this enlightened government in Watchers of the Dark (1966), This Darkening Universe (1975), and Silence is Deadly (1977). In Watchers of the Dark (nominated for a Nebula Award) Darzek masquerades as an interplanetary entrepreneur to investigate an epidemic of xenophobia--the moral "darkness" most dangerous to Supreme's government. The plot resolution rather simplistically indicts demagoguery, but the story is enlivened by witty portraits of alien businessmen, such as the many-tentacled patriarch E-Wusk, who are surprisingly tolerant and genial by human standards. In the later books Darzek comes to resemble the cultural exchange officers in Biggle's Interplanetary Relations Bureau stories. These officers visit alien worlds that are technologically primitive, despotically governed, but aesthetically sophisticated. In The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets (1968) cultural survey officer Jef Forzon must foment revolution on Gurnil, in Kurr, tyrannized by King Rovva. Tor, a stringed instrument virtuoso, has had one arm cut off by the cruel king, and Forzon prompts him to lead a rebellion of others who have suffered a similar punishment by providing them with a new instrument that can be played with one hand: the trumpet. In spite of treachery among the Interplanetary Relations Bureau staff and Forzon's own misgivings about changing a contented and culturally rich, if "backward," society, the rebellion succeeds in clearing the way for democracy. Among other Interplanetary Relations Bureau books, The World Menders (1971) is notable. The Light That Never Was (1972)--the title is an allusion to Wordsworth's "Peele Castle"--treats the xenophobia confronting nonhuman painters but never defines an alien perspective in art and lamely resolves the plot by unmasking an individual villain.

Biggle's most sophisticated treatment of intercultural relations, and his best novel, is Monument , from a story nominated for a Hugo Award in 1962. Here Biggle combines a light-handed critique of profit-oriented social priorities with deft manipulation of science-fiction conventions. The hero, Cerne Obrien, is not an agent for a pangalactic government, but a space bum who crashlands on a paradise planet where the humanoid natives specialize in culinary art. He protects them from exploitation by entrusting a secret plan to the young leader, Fornri. Soon after Obrien's death Federation ships arrive, and bloated entrepreneur Wembling builds a huge resort hotel; a predictable destruction of the native culture begins, despite protests from Wembling's niece, medical student Talitha Warr, and Aric Hort, an anthropologist. Yet no really brutal crimes are committed (unlike Ursula K. Le Guin's 1972 novella, "The Word for World Is Forest"), and the fatal illness of a native child makes the reader feel that medical innovations, at least, might be an unmixed blessing. Meanwhile, the natives doggedly pursue Obrien's plan and save themselves with civilized finesse in a surprise ending, in which they prove to be quick learners in exploiting the power of money. Biggle plays neatly on the reader's expectations, making Monument intriguing at first reading, but absolutely delightful in retrospect.

Yet whatever its charm, psychological and philosophical depths are not probed in Biggle's science fiction, and his later works have not shown the literary sophistication of Monument. His strengths lie in a commonsense portrayal of human motivation and in an ability to exploit the obvious for clever plot twists, as in Silence is Deadly, where the natives' lack of hearing organs--their most striking characteristic--becomes a vital clue to the nature of the "death ray" found on their primitive planet, Kamm. Biggle's science fiction never errs through excess in intention or design and is altogether engaging and entertaining.