F. Paul Wilson


Francis Paul Wilson is an American medical doctor and author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and other genres of literary fiction. His books include the Repairman Jack novels—including Ground Zero, The Tomb, and Fatal Error—the Adversary cycle—including The Keep—and a young adult series featuring the teenage Jack. Wilson has won the Prometheus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Inkpot Award from the San Diego ComiCon, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers of America, among other honors. He lives in Wall, New Jersey.
WWW Official Site

Career

Wilson made his first sales in 1970 to Analog while still in medical school, and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. His debut novel was Healer. In 1981, he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller The Keep, which was adapted into a film in 1983. In the 1990s, he moved from science fiction and horror to medical thrillers and interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed, which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992 to 1996.
Among Wilson's best-known characters is the anti-hero Repairman Jack, an urban mercenary introduced in the 1984 New York Times bestseller The Tomb. Unwilling to start a series character at the time, Wilson refused to write a second Repairman Jack novel until Legacies in 1998. Since then he has written one per year along with side trips into vampire fiction, science fiction, and even a New Age thriller. Current book sales are around six million.
Throughout his writing – especially in his earlier science fiction works – Wilson has included explicitly libertarian political philosophy which extends to his "Repairman Jack" series. He won the first Prometheus Award in 1979 for his novel Wheels Within Wheels and another in 2004 for Sims. The Libertarian Futurist Society has also honored Wilson with their Hall of Fame Award for Healer and An Enemy of the State. In 2015 he received the third special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement; the previous two recipients were Poul Anderson and Vernor Vinge. In 2021, his "Lipidleggin'" won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.
Wilson is a noted fan of H. P. Lovecraft.
Why? Because HPL is special to me.
Donald A. Wollheim is to blame. He started me on Lovecraft. It was 1959. I was just a kid, a mere thirteen years old when he slipped me my first fix. I was a good kid up till then, reading Ace Doubles and clean, wholesome science fiction stories by the likes of Heinlein, E. E. Smith, Poul Anderson, Fred Pohl, and the rest. But he brought me down with one anthology. He knew what he was doing. He called it The Macabre Reader and slapped this lurid neato cool Ed Emshwiller cover on it. I couldn't resist. I bought it. I read it. And that was it. The beginning of my end.

Like other American science fiction writers directly or indirectly influenced by Campbell's view of the genre as a literature of ideas, Wilson makes use of his work to explore trends and technologies speculatively as they manifest. A prominent example is his novel An Enemy of the State, which was written during the 1970s, an era that saw stagflation develop in the U.S. economy. Throughout the book, Wilson runs chapter headings quoting from economic works such as Fiat Money Inflation in France and KYFHO, a kind of anarchic philosophy that he invented as model for a perfect society. The protagonist La Nague was born on Tolive, where the philosophy led to a government described in detail in "The Healer".
The Keep was later made into a movie. Wilson said in 2003 that there was talk of a film based on a Repairman Jack novel.
Hate to say it, but The Tomb looks like it's on its way to being filmed this year. Last October, after seven years of development, numerous options, five screenwriters, and eight scripts, Beacon Films finally bought film rights. Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista will be partnering and distributing the film here and abroad. The film will be called Repairman Jack.

His short stories "Foet", "Traps", and "Lipidleggin'" were filmed as short films and collected on the DVD OTHERS: The Tales of F. Paul Wilson.
His short story "Pelts" was adapted into the season 2 episode of Masters of Horror titled "Pelts".
Short stories "Definitive Therapy" and "Hunters" were adapted as short films.
In January 2012, Wilson began writing for the tech website Byte, mostly in the persona of Repairman Jack.

Personal life

Wilson has been a resident of Wall Township, New Jersey. He is a practicing physician as a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.

The Adversary Cycle

The Keep, The Tomb, The Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld,
  • ''Signalz''

Repairman Jack

  1. "Fix"
  2. The Tomb,
  3. "A Day in the Life"
  4. "The Last Rakosh"
  5. "The Long Way Home"
  6. "Home Repairs"
  7. "The Wringer"
  8. Legacies,
  9. Conspiracies,
  10. All The Rage,
  11. Hosts,
  12. The Haunted Air,
  13. Gateways,
  14. Crisscross,
  15. Infernal,
  16. Harbingers,
  17. "Interlude at Duane's"
  18. "Infernal Night"
  19. Bloodline,
  20. "Do-Gooder"
  21. By The Sword,
  22. Ground Zero,
  23. "Recalled"
  24. Fatal Error,
  25. The Dark at the End,
  26. Quick Fixes- Tales of Repairman Jack,
  27. The heavily revised version of Nightworld is styled as "a Repairman Jack novel" and marks the end of the RJ and Adversary cycles.
  28. "Santa Jack:
  29. The Last Christmas (2019, an interlude that takes place between Ground Zero and ''Fatal Error''

Young Repairman Jack

  1. Secret Histories
  2. Secret Circles
  3. ''Secret Vengeance''

Early Repairman Jack

  1. Cold City
  2. Dark City
  3. ''Fear City''

LaNague Federation

  1. Healer,
  2. Wheels Within Wheels,
  3. An Enemy of the State,
  4. Dydeetown World,
  5. The Tery,
  • The LaNague Chronicles,
  • ''The Complete LaNague''

Nocturnia Chronicles

  1. Definitely Not Kansas
  2. Family Secrets
  3. ''The Silent Ones''

The ICE Sequence

  1. Panacea
  2. The God Gene
  3. ''The Void Protocol''

Other novels

Black Wind Sibs / Sister Night Select Implant Virgin Mirage Deep as the Marrow Nightkill Masque The Fifth Harmonic Artifact Midnight Mass The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus & Oddity Emporium The Proteus Cure A Necessary End
  • Duad Series
  • * Double Threat
  • * Double Dose
  • Rx series
  • * Rx Murder
  • * Rx Mayhem
  • The Hidden series
  • * The Upwelling
  • * ''Lexie''

Short story collections

Soft and Others Ad Statum Perspicuum The Barrens and Others Sims A Little Beige Book of Non-Descript Stories Aftershock & Others Secret Stories: Tales from the Secret History
  • ''Other Sandboxes''

Uncollected short fiction

Nyro Fiddles The Lord's Work Winter Quarters The Pine Barrens, NJ Good Friday Feral Sermon The Tapeworm Letters Riding the R The Sound of Blunder Wayward Pines: The Widow Lindley The Dead World Renascence Astraphobia The Adventure of the Abu Qir Sapphire The Compendium of Srem The Long and the Short of It Wardenclyffe To the Lonely Sea and the Sky
  • ''The Last Bonneville''

Anthologies

Freak Show
  • ''Diagnosis: Terminal''

Awards

WorkYear & AwardCategoryResultRef.
Wheels Within Wheels1979 Prometheus AwardNovelWon
Green Winter1981 Analog AwardShort StoryWon
The Keep1982 Balrog AwardsNovel
The Keep1982 Locus AwardFantasy Novel
An Enemy of the State1982 Prometheus AwardNovel
An Enemy of the State1991 Prometheus AwardHall of Fame AwardWon
The Tomb1985 Prometheus AwardSF Novel
Dydeetown Girl1987 Locus AwardNovella
Dydeetown Girl1987 Nebula AwardNovella
Day-Tay-Vao1987 Bram Stoker AwardShort Fiction
Traps1987 Bram Stoker AwardShort Fiction
Black Wind1988 Bram Stoker AwardNovel
Wires1989 Locus AwardNovella
Soft and Others1989 Bram Stoker AwardFiction Collection
Pelts1990 Bram Stoker AwardLong Fiction
Healer1990 Prometheus AwardHall of Fame AwardWon
The Barrens1991 World Fantasy AwardNovella
The Tery1992 Prometheus AwardNovel
Freak Show1993 World Fantasy AwardAnthology
Masque1999 Prometheus AwardSF Novel
After Shock1999 Bram Stoker AwardShort FictionWon
Dydeetown World1999 Seiun AwardTranslated Long Work
The Christmas Thingy2000 Bram Stoker AwardWork for Young Readers
Hosts2002 Prometheus AwardNovel
The Haunted Air2003 Prometheus AwardNovel
Sims2004 Prometheus AwardNovelWon
Harbingers2007 Prometheus AwardNovel
A Necessary End2013 Bram Stoker AwardNovel
Lipidleggin2021 Prometheus AwardHall of Fame AwardWon
Fear City2015 Killer Nashville AwardsSilver Falchion Award - Speculative/Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy)Won
Double Dose2024 Dragon AwardsHorror Novel
1999 Inkpot AwardWon
2005 World Horror Convention Grand Master AwardWon
2007 Inkpot AwardWon
2009 Bram Stoker AwardLifetime AchievementWon
2015 Prometheus AwardSpecial Prometheus Award for Lifetime AchievementWon

Publisher profiles

Interviews

Film version of ''The Keep''

  • – Includes interviews with F. Paul Wilson, Michael Mann and Enki Bilal, creator of the visual given to "Molasar" the film version of The Keeps villain.
  • of the movie
  • —Parody page about the movie adaptation of ''The Keep''