James Patrick Hogan (27 June 1941 – 12 July 2010) was a British science fiction author.[1] His major works include the Giants series of five novels published between 1977 and 2005.
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 was married four times and fathered six children.[2]
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.[3]
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 later relocated to Sonora, California.[4]
During his later years, Hogan adopted a number of contrarian opinions. He was a proponent of Immanuel Velikovsky's version of catastrophism, arguing Velikovsky's critics were part of "an entrenched priesthood" who refused to seriously examine Velikovsky even when some of his predictions were validated (such as Venus's extremely high surface temperature which was contrary to prevailing scientific opinion in the 1950s);[5] and as of 1999 Hogan accepted 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 scientific consensus about climate change and ozone depletion.[10]
Hogan believed 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] In 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]
Hogan died of heart failure at his home in Ireland on Monday, 12 July 2010, aged 69.[13]
"Silver Shoes for a Princess" (October 1979, Destinies, October-December 1979, collected in Minds, Machines & Evolution and reworked as the first section of Star Child).
"The Sword of Damocles" (May 1980, Stellar #5, an adapted version appears in Catastrophes, Chaos & Convolutions).
Minds, Machines & Evolution (ISBN 978-0-553-27288-8) – June 1988 (Bantam Spectra, republished by Baen, December 1999, short stories and essays).
Star Child (ISBN 978-0-671-87878-8) – June 1998 (expansion of "Silver Shoes for a Princess" to a four-story cycle: "Silver Shoes for a Princess", "Silver Gods from the Sky", "Three Domes and a Tower" and "The Stillness Among the Stars")
Rockets, Redheads & Revolution (ISBN 0-671-57807-3) – April 1999 (Baen, short stories and essays)
Martian Knightlife (ISBN 978-0-7434-3591-8) – October 2001 (two novellas, "His Own Worst Enemy" and "The Kahl of Tadzhikstan", both featuring the Simon Templar-influenced Kieran Thane)
Catastrophes, Chaos & Convolutions (title as published; was to be Catastrophes, Creation & Convolutions) (ISBN 978-1-4165-0921-9) – December 2005 (Baen, short stories and essays)
The Minervan Experiment (ISBN 978-1-125-44892-2) – November 1982 (an omnibus edition of the first three books of the Giants series)
The Giants Novels: Inherit the Stars, The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and Giants' Star (ISBN 978-0-345-38885-8) – March 1994 (republication of The Minervan Experiment)
The Two Moons (ISBN 978-1-4165-0936-3) - April 2006 (omnnibus of the first two Giants novels)
The Two Worlds (ISBN 978-1-4165-3725-0) - September 2007 (omnibus of the third and fourth Giants novels)
Non-fictionedit
Mind Matters – Exploring the World of Artificial Intelligence (ISBN 978-0-614-28202-3) – March 1997
Kicking the Sacred Cow: Heresy and Impermissible Thoughts in Science (ISBN 978-1-4165-2073-3) – July 2004
Referencesedit
^
Holland, Steve (5 August 2010). "James P Hogan obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2012.
^Holland, Steve (5 August 2010). "James P Hogan obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 September 2021.
^"Biography". 23 January 2016. Archived from the original on 23 January 2016. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
^Lane, Daryl; Vernon, William; Carson, David (December 1985). The Sound of wonder: interviews from "the Science fiction radio show". Oryx Press. ISBN 978-0-89774-233-7.
^Hogan, James P. "The Case for Taking Velikovsky Seriously". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 18 June 2006.
^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."
^Hogan, James P. "Bulletin Board: AIDS Skepticism". Archived from the original on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 1 February 2007.
^Hogan, James P. "The Rush to Embrace Darwinism". Retrieved 1 February 2007.
^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."
^James P. Hogan (2004). Kicking the Sacred Cow. Riverdale, NY: Baen. ISBN 0-7434-8828-8.
^Hogan, James P. (2006). "FREE-SPEECH HYPOCRISY (22 February 2006 commentary)". Archived from the original on 3 May 2006. Retrieved 3 May 2006.
^Hogan, James P. (2010). "Here's To You, Ernst Zundel: A Lonely Voice of Courage". Archived from the original on 18 July 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
^Silver, Steven H. (12 July 2010). "Obituary: James P. Hogan". SF Site. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 13 July 2010.
External linksedit
Wikiquote has quotations related to James P. Hogan.
Truesdale, Dave (18 July 2010). "Classic James P. Hogan Interview". Tangent Online. Archived from the original on 10 January 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2010. Interview originally appeared in Tangent No. 1, July/August 1993, and is reprinted here for the first time.