This article is about the science fiction and techno-thriller writer. For the man who named Coca-Cola, see
Frank Mason Robinson. For other people named Frank Robinson, see
Frank Robinson (disambiguation).
Frank Malcolm Robinson (August 9, 1926 – June 30, 2014) was an American science fiction and
techno-thriller writer. He was a speechwriter for gay politician
Harvey Milk and Milk's designated successor in the event of his death but declined to be appointed to or run for office.[1]
Biography
Born in
Chicago, Illinois.[2] Robinson was the son of a check forger.[3] He started out in his teens working as a copy boy for
International News Service and then became an office boy for
Ziff Davis.[3] He was drafted into the
Navy for
World War II, and when his tour was over attended
Beloit College, where he majored in
physics, graduating in 1950. He could find no work as a writer, so he ended up back in the Navy and serving in
Korea, where he kept writing and reading, as well as publishing in Astounding magazine.
After the Navy, he attended graduate school in journalism, then worked for a Chicago-based Sunday supplement. Soon he switched to Science Digest, where he worked from 1956 to 1959. From there, he moved into men's magazines: Rogue (1959–65) and Cavalier (1965–66). In 1969, Playboy asked him to take over the Playboy Advisor column. He remained there, without revealing that he was gay, until 1973, when he left to write full-time.
He collaborated on several other works with Scortia, including The Prometheus Crisis, The Nightmare Factor, and Blow-Out. More recent works include The Dark Beyond the Stars (1991), and an updated version of The Power (2000), which closely followed Waiting (1999), a novel with similar themes to The Power. His novel[needs update] is a medical thriller about organ theft called The Donor.[7]
In the 1970s, Robinson started seriously collecting the vintage pulp-fiction magazines that he had grown up reading. The collection spawned a book on the history of the pulps as seen through their vivid cover art: Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines (with co-author Lawrence Davidson).[8] He attended numerous pulp conventions and in 2000 won the Lamont Award for lifetime achievement at Pulpcon.[9]