About the Author
Daniel F.Galouye is one of the few prominent science fiction writers to have lived in New Orleans - the late Rosel George Brown and George Alec Effinger are two others - and New Orleans appears prominently in much of his fiction. An Air Force test pilot during World War II, Galouye suffered severe head injuries (necessitating a steel implant on his skull) which carried over to civilian life, forced him to retire early from journalism and which led to his premature death.

He was one of a brilliant generation of science fiction writers who emerged in the leading magazines in the late l940's and early l950's, writers such as Robert Sheckley, James Gunn, Damon Knight Judith Merril, and Cyril Kornbluth, who had read and been deeply influenced by the so-called "Golden Age" science fiction of the l940's. These writers brought new stylistic force and satiric, reshaping approaches too the familiar and established themes and background. Galouye's stories appeared frequently in GALAXY and FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION before he moved on to novels in the early l960's. His first novel, DARK UNIVERSE (l96l), a powerful, brooding treatment of a world of the blind, was considered by many to be the best novel of its year and lost the Hugo only narrowly to Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND (Heinlein's third Hugo for best novel).

Galouye's injuries and consequently failed health forced him toward silence; he died in New Orleans in l976.