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James P. Hogan (writer)

For the filmmaker with the same name, see James P. Hogan (director).

James Patrick Hogan
James P. Hogan 2005.JPG
At the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, August 2005.
Born
James Patrick Hogan

(1941-06-27)27 June 1941
London, England
Died12 July 2010(2010-07-12) (aged 69)
Dromahaire, County Leitrim, Ireland

James Patrick Hogan (27 June 1941 – 12 July 2010) was a British science fiction author.[1]

Biography[]

Hogan was born in London, England. He was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. After leaving school at the age of sixteen, he worked various odd jobs until, after receiving a scholarship, he began a five-year program at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough studying the practice and theory of electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. He first married at the age of twenty. He married three more times and fathered six children.[citation needed]

Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually began working with sales during the 1960s, traveling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell. During the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and during 1977 relocated to Boston, Massachusetts to manage its sales training program. He published his first novel, Inherit The Stars, during the same year to win an office bet.[citation needed]

He quit DEC during 1979 and began writing full-time, relocating to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie. They then relocated to Sonora, California.[citation needed] Hogan died of heart failure at his home in Ireland on Monday, 12 July 2010, aged 69.[2]

Writings[]

Most of Hogan's fiction is so-called hard science fiction.

Hogan's fiction also represents anti-authoritarian social opinions and as such forms part of anarchistic science fiction. Many of his novels have strong anarchist or libertarian themes,[3][citation needed] often promoting the idea that new technological advances render certain social conventions obsolete. For example, the effectively limitless availability of energy that would result from the development of controlled fusion power would make it unnecessary to limit access to energy resources. Essentially, energy would become free. This melding of scientific and social speculation is clearly present in the novel Voyage From Yesteryear (influenced strongly by Eric Frank Russell's story "And Then There Were None") about a technologically advanced anarchist society in the Alpha Centauri system, a starship sent from Earth by a dictatorial government, and the events after their first contact. The story features concepts of civil disobedience, post scarcity and gift economy.[4][citation needed]

Controversy[]

During his later years, Hogan's contrarian and anti-authoritarian opinions favored those widely considered extremist. He was a proponent of Immanuel Velikovsky's version of catastrophism,[5] and of the Peter Duesberg hypothesis that AIDS is caused by pharmaceutical[6] use rather than HIV (see AIDS denialism).[7] He criticized the idea of the gradualism of evolution,[8][9] though he did not propose theistic creationism as an alternative. Hogan was skeptical of the theories of climate change and ozone depletion.[10]

Hogan also endorsed the idea that the Holocaust did not happen in the manner described by mainstream historians, writing that he found the work of Arthur Butz and Mark Weber to be "more scholarly, scientific, and convincing than what the history written by the victors says".[11] Such theories were considered by many[who?] to contradict his opinions concerning scientific rationality;[how?] he stated repeatedly that these theories had his attention due to the good quality of their presentation – a quality he believed established sources should attempt to emulate, rather than resorting to attacking their originators.[citation needed]

During March 2010, in an essay defending Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, Hogan stated that the mainstream history of the Holocaust includes "claims that are wildly fantastic, mutually contradictory, and defy common sense and often physical possibility".[12]

Bibliography[]

Novels[]

Short stories[]

Short story collections and fixups[]

Omnibus ions[]

Compilations of novels in the "Giants series".

Non-fiction[]

References[]

  1. ^ Holland, Steve (5 August 2010). "James P Hogan obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2012.
  2. ^ Silver, Steven H. (12 July 2010). "Obituary: James P. Hogan". SF Site.
  3. ^ "Bibliography". www.jamesphogan.com. Retrieved 2017-03-20.
  4. ^ "Voyage from Yesteryear". www.jamesphogan.com. Retrieved 2017-03-20.
  5. ^ Hogan, James P. "The Case for Taking Velikovsky Seriously". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2006.
  6. ^ Hogan, James P. (April 1999). Rockets, Redheads & Revolution. Baen Books. pp. 151–173. ISBN 0-671-57807-3."Well here's what happens to politically incorrect science when it gets in the way of a bandwagon being propelled by 'lots' of money- and to a scientist who ignores it and attempts simply to point at what the fact seem to be trying to say."... "The 'side effects' <of AZT> look just like AIDS."
  7. ^ Hogan, James P. "Bulletin Board: AIDS Skepticism". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2007.
  8. ^ Hogan, James P. "The Rush to Embrace Darwinism". Retrieved 1 February 2007.
  9. ^ Hogan, James P. (April 1999). Rockets, Redheads & Revolution. Baen Books. pp. 175–192. ISBN 0-671-57807-3."My own belief, if it isn't obvious already, is that the final story will eventually come together along such catastrophist lines."
  10. ^ James P. Hogan. Kicking the Sacred Cow. Riverdale, NY: Baen. ISBN 0-7434-8828-8.
  11. ^ Hogan, James P. (2006). "FREE-SPEECH HYPOCRISY (22 February 2006 commentary)". Archived from the original on 3 May 2006. Retrieved 3 May 2006.
  12. ^ Hogan, James P. (2010). "Here's To You, Ernst Zundel: A Lonely Voice of Courage". Retrieved 15 July 2010.

External links[]