He sold the story, The Double Timer, for $112.50 Having begun his literary career, he did not return to NYU but rather took another series of odd jobs such as bank teller, mortuary assistant, and copy editor - all of which served to fuel what he referred to as his night-time 'writing habit'. In May 1962, he decided to write a short story instead of study for his midterms. A brief flirtation with architecture school led him to night school at New York University, where classes on novella writing and utopian fiction developed his tastes for some of the common forms and topics of science fiction. Eventually, he got another job with an insurance company and went to school. After his discharge, he returned to New York and continued to pursue the arts in his own indirect way: a job in a theater cloakroom that let him peer in on Broadway.

Disch's incompatibility with the armed forces quickly resulted in a nearly three-month commitment to a mental hospital. Just when he seemed to be getting work closer to his love of language, he turned 18 and enlisted in the army. He worked as a (literal) spear-carrier for the Metropolitan Opera, then at a bookstore, then for a newspaper. Saving enough to move to New York City, he found a Manhattan apartment and began to cast his energies in many directions. His early fascination continued to influence his work with poetic form and the direction of his criticism.Īfter graduating from high school in 1957, he worked a summer job as a trainee steel draftsman - just one of the many jobs on his path to becoming a writer. Disch wound up memorizing ten times as much. A teacher, Jeannette Cochran, assigned 100 lines of poetry to be memorized. He describes poetry as his stepping-stone to the literary world. In Minneapolis public schools, Disch discovered his long-term loves of science fiction, drama, and poetry.

The family moved in 1953 to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, rejoining both pairs of grandparents. Disch's first formal education happened at Catholic schools this experience shows itself in parts of his work, which contain scathing criticisms of the Catholic Church. As a result, he skipped from kindergarten to second grade. Because of a polio epidemic in 1946, his mother Helen home-schooled him for a year.

A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fictionĭisch was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on 2 February 1940.

200 Significant SF Books by Women, 1984-2001.

The M.D by Thomas M. Disch