Occasion for Disaster

Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 – December 31, 1987) was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a prolific contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet.

Garrett is best known for the Lord Darcy books, the novel Too Many Magicians and two short story collections, set in an alternate world where a joint Anglo-French empire still led by a Plantagenet dynasty has survived into the twentieth century and where magic works and has been scientifically codified. The Darcy books are rich in jokes, puns, and references (particularly to works of detective and spy fiction: Lord Darcy is himself partially modelled on Sherlock Holmes), elements that often appear in the shorter works about the detective. Michael Kurland wrote two additional Lord Darcy novels.

Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart (an anagram of his name), Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgensen, Clyde Mitchell, Leonard G. Spencer, S. M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of Hightower" (a pun on "garret"). The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett in conjunction with author Laurence Janifer (using the joint pseudonym Mark Phillips) was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

An inveterate punster (defining a pun as "the odor given off by a decaying mind"), he was a favorite guest at science fiction conventions and friend to many fans, especially in Southern California. According to various anecdotes in a tribute volume, Garrett was a renowned womanizer. He introduced himself to Marion Zimmer Bradley with an obscene Latin phrase which left her speechless and to a pregnant Anne McCaffrey with "sly innuendoes" which horrified her. Philip José Farmer recounted an anecdote where Garrett was punched by his then-wife for having a pair of lace underpants in his pocket, and later ran naked through a hotel after being caught having sex with another woman in the wrong room. Frank Herbert said "You could follow his movements around this creative Anachronists' picnic by the squeals of the women whose bottoms he had just pinched." Isaac Asimov referred to Garrett's offending Judith Merril enough that she emptied an ashtray over his head.

Garrett suffered an attack of encephalitis in the summer of 1979; he spent the last 8 years of his life in a coma.

In 1999, Randall Garrett won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award for the Lord Darcy series.

He was also ordained in the Old Catholic Church.

Glen Cook's private detective character Garrett P.I. is named in honor of Garrett.