Tim Sullivan (writer)


Timothy Robert Sullivan, who more commonly uses the name Tim Sullivan, is an American science fiction novelist, screenwriter, actor, film director and short story writer.
Many of his stories have been critically acknowledged and reprinted. His short story "Zeke," a tragedy about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, has been translated into German and was a finalist for the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. "Under Glass", a well-reviewed semi-autobiographical short story with occult hints, has been translated into Chinese and is the basis for a screenplay by director/actor Ron Ford. "Yeshua's Dog", similarly has been optioned for translation into Chinese.

Early life

Tim Sullivan was born on June 9, 1948, in Bangor, Maine, the son of Charles Edward Sullivan, a United States Postal Service worker, and Lillian Hope Fitzgerald Sullivan, a stay-at-home mother who raised their children, Charles Edward Sullivan, Jr., and Timothy. Sullivan later wrote short stories about his father, including "Hawk on a Flagpole" and "The Memory Cage".
Tim and Charlie developed a love of genre fiction from their father, who brought home for them books and comics ranging from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Vladimir Nabokov to Mad magazine. Tim shared these with his neighbors, who included Richard Tozier. These show the strong ties among friendships born in Bangor, and Sullivan and Tozier retain a lifelong friendship. The Sullivan brothers attended John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, as did Tozier. Timothy's older brother, Charlie, a corporal in the United States Marine Corps, died in battle in the Vietnam War.
When Sullivan's father died in 1968, Sullivan and his mother moved to Lake Worth, Florida. Tim Sullivan briefly attended Miami Dade Community College. Later, while studying English literature at Florida Atlantic University, he made a lifelong friendship with Professor Robert A. Collins. Sullivan earned a bachelor's degree while at FAU. Sullivan helped Dr. Collins create what has become the prestigious International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Sullivan began but did not complete postgraduate education.
Sullivan lived in Florida from 1968 to 1983, then in Philadelphia, and in the Washington, D.C. area. He moved to southern California in 1988, where he lived for the next twelve years.

Career

Sullivan has written several novels and many more short stories. He has scripted, directed, and starred in microbudget films in the genres of science fiction and horror, often with his friend Ron Ford. Among his day jobs, Sullivan has worked in construction, in a bookstore, in a library, in a liquor store and other retail sites, as a night guard, as a taxicab driver, and with helping and teaching the mentally challenged.

Writing

Sullivan edited a horror anthology for Avon Books, Tropical Chills, in 1988. Sullivan also published his first novel, Destiny's End, in 1988. This science fiction novel was followed by The Parasite War in 1989, The Martian Viking in 1991, and Lords of Creation in 1992, and another horror anthology, Cold Shocks, among other books.
He befriended Michael Dirda, a chief book reviewer for The Washington Post and, as a result of that friendship, in the 1980s and 1990s Sullivan wrote commissioned reviews of dozens of books for The Washington Post, the Washington Post Book World, and USA Today. Among the fiction and nonfiction he reviewed are included: Kathleen Ann Goonan's The Bones of Time; a review of a novel by Walter Jon Williams, Metropolitan, which Sullivan characterized as highly readable "due largely to pungent characterization and persuasive dialogue"; and Allen Steele's novel The Tranquillity Alternative, which he praised in the same issue of Book World.
He has used different versions of his name while publishing fiction: Timothy Robert Sullivan, Timothy R. Sullivan, and Tim Sullivan.

Acting

Sullivan began his career in film in a collaboration with S. P. Somtow, entitled The Laughing Dead ; Sullivan plays a priest losing his faith, Father O'Sullivan, who becomes possessed by a Mayan god of death. Throughout the 1990s, he scripted, directed and acted in several low-budget science fiction and horror films, most notably Twilight of the Dogs and Hollywood Mortuary, both of which have become cult favorites.
John Clute writes that Sullivan "concentrated for almost a decade on an acting career, though he began to publish short stories again in 2000."

Personal life

After graduating from college, Sullivan lived for many years in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, Southern California. He has not married and has no children. In 2000, Sullivan moved to South Florida to care for his ailing mother who died in 2004. In 2003, he moved to South Miami, Florida to share a house with Fiona Kelleghan.
Sullivan is an atheist. He is a constant reader; his bookshelf is filled with science fiction favorites, but also with the works of science popularizers, biographies, and histories. He maintains a Facebook page.

Literary friendships

Sullivan has been roommates with fantasy authors S. P. Somtow in Alexandria, Virginia and Gregory Frost in Philadelphia. He became friends with several Clarion Workshop graduates, such as Kim Stanley Robinson. He has long been friends with Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, Pat Cadigan, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, John Grant, and Michael Swanwick.
He is part of a group of writers named the "Savage Humanists" by anthologist Fiona Kelleghan.
Sullivan has been tuckerized in the novels of many science fiction writers, including Sharon Webb.

Novels

Anthologies edited by Sullivan

Tropical Chills
The Locus Index to Science Fiction: 1984–1998 described Tropical Chills as "Highly recommended."
It was republished in German as Heisse Angst, translated by Marcel Bieger.
Cold Shocks
John Clute wrote that these two anthologies, "composed of carefully selected original and reprinted material, mostly horror, demonstrate Sullivan's editorial acuteness."

Screenplays

- Nominated for the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.
- Translated as "Zeke" in Kopernikus 8.
- Reprinted in Nebula Award Stories Seventeen, ed. Joe Haldeman,.
- Reprinted in Nebula Award Stories 17, ed. Joe Haldeman,.
- Reprinted in The Savage Humanists, ed. Fiona Kelleghan,.
- Reprinted in The Eighth Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Stories, Wildside Press
- Reprinted in: The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, ed. Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, DAW Books,.
- Reprinted in Time Travelers: From Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, ed. Gardner Dozois,.
- Nominated for the 1983 Locus Poll Award - Best Short Story.
- Placed #5 in the 1987 Asimov's Readers' Poll.
- Reprinted in: Dinosaurs!, ed. Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois,.
- Reprinted in: Jack the Ripper, ed. Dozois and Casper,.

Critical response

writes that Sullivan "began publishing sf with stories like "Tachyon Rag"... "My Father's Head"... and "The Rauncher Goes to Tinker Town"... tales whose sophistication led to some disappointment when his first-published novels turned out to be three ties to the V Television series, a series of exercises in easy Paranoia set in an America taken over by Aliens... The published order of Sullivan's books was, however, deceptive, as his first-written novel, Destiny's End, had suffered delays and modifications at the hands of the publisher to which it had first been contracted. The book proved to be a complexly moody depiction of humanity at the end of its tether in an array of Dying-Earth venues, as Secret Masters from the stars with quasimagical Technologies manipulate the course of events. Other sf of interest included The Parasite War, which garishly intensifies the premises of V with a few scattered humans engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Aliens who have nearly destroyed the planet; The Martian Viking, in which a prisoner escapes from Mars and roams space and time with stern but rowdy Vikings; and Lords of Creation, which combines palaeontological fantasy including dinosaur eggs and another alien Invasion."
Science fiction scholar Fiona Kelleghan has written that Sullivan "often turn to classical history and mythology to dramatize his concerns about contemporary American culture - although the historical settings suggest a Santayana-esque view of our so-called post-historical era.... Sullivan cares deeply about his characters. His books are viciously funny in a deadpan way..."
The Locus Index to Science Fiction: 1984–1998 described Destiny's End as a "transcendental, philosophical space opera."
Christine Hawkins, in her online Mars in Science Fiction Bibliography, described The Martian Viking as "reminiscent of Philip K. Dick". The reviewer of the Schlock Value review website said, in a mostly positive review of the same novel:
It's a well-established fact that the two coolest things ever are Vikings and Mars, and now, thanks to Tim Sullivan, we get both of them in one convenient package. How could this book be anything but great? Unfortunately, The Martian Viking deals a lot less with Vikings than we were promised, although Mars does feature quite prominently, and as far as crapsack future societies go, the book does present us with a pretty interesting one... The world we are presented with is a fairly interesting form of dystopia... All-in-all, The Martian Viking was a pretty fun read... Tim Sullivan managed to set up a really interesting future world.

Raymond's Reviews said of The Martian Viking, "it had some moments of warped originality that were hard to forget."
Robert Silverberg, who purchased Sullivan's early story "The Rauncher Goes to Tinker Town" for his New Dimensions series of science fiction anthologies, called it "vivid and energetic".
A reviewer for the Dark Roasted Blend website wrote of Sullivan's short story "Stop-Motion": "Animation, dinosaurs, special effects, a little bit of murder mystery - not bad a combination, solid story in the pulp tradition."
Sullivan's short story "Under Glass" has received much attention. Lois Tilton wrote, "This is a story of friendship and the duty we owe to our friends." Reviewer Sandra Scholes said in a review of the November/December 2011 The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that the issue "gets straight to it with a tasty novelette, "Under Glass" by Tim Sullivan; who sees everything with a writer's vision of the future we have never known yet or at least until it is too late." Sam Tomaino, another reviewer of the same issue of F&SF, urgently wrote, "The fiction in the issue starts with "Under Glass" by Tim Sullivan... This was an imaginative, moving, wonderful novelette and one that will be on my Hugo short list for next year."
Sullivan's 2013 story "The Nambu Egg" received praise from the SF CrowsNest website: "'The Nambu Egg' by Tim Sullivan is definitely Science Fiction. It is set in the distant future when the Tachtrans Authority can beam people to a distant planet, Cet Four in this case. Adam Naraya has returned to Earth because he has a Nambu egg to sell to the head of a rich corporation, one Mr. Genzler. To tell more of the plot would be to ruin it for it's the kind of tale where things are slowly revealed. Rest assured that the length of this paragraph does not reflect the very high esteem I have for the story."
Colleen Chen, writing a review for Tangent magazine of "Through Mud One Picks a Way", said,
"Sullivan revisits a space and time he's written about before — a future in which main characters hail from Cet 4, a heavy-gravity planet tough to live on but with abundant natural resources. In this story, taking place on Earth, Uxanna Venz has been hired by a fellow named Hob to communicate with three Cetians whom he has illegally obtained and wants to use for his own benefit. The Cetians are amorphous, clammy creatures whose home is the bogs of Cet 4, and they communicate with Uxanna by touching her with squidlike tentacles they can form at will. Uxanna earns their trust at the same time as she feels guilty for doing so. They've been so abused on their home planet by humans encroaching on their territory, and she knows Hob can't have good intentions for them. There's more twists to the story, though, as Uxanna learns the truth about their appearance on Earth, and then unveils her own surprises as she tries to do what's best for the Cetians at the same time as earning her money.
I've read one other story by Sullivan that takes place in this universe. I liked this one more — although maybe it's just that the author's particular style, which seems to develop both plot and characters mainly through dialogue, is growing on me. But this story has enough action to keep the story moving despite the lengthy dialogues, and thus it translates into a visual piece that I felt I could watch like a movie in my own head. The characters were likable, the world-building strong, and although the ending is left somewhat unresolved, it stops at a point which promises later continuation."

Eamonn Murphy, writing for the SF Crowsnest, agreed:
"Through Mud One Picks A Way" by Tim Sullivan... is genuine Science Fiction about three aliens from Cet Four who have been transported to Earth by a businessman for purposes unknown. He has hired Uxanna Venz to communicate with them by touch telepathy, which they do well. She worked on their home planet and is an expert on the species. A nice parable about colonialism with a couple of decent twists to keep you surprised. It was mostly written in dialogue with very little narration, but Sullivan managed to get all the background information across anyway. A neat trick."