John Boyd was born Boyd Bradfield Upchurch in Atlanta, Georgia. Commissioned into the U.S. Navy in 1940, he served in the Philippines, Russia, Japan, and England. On 26 January 1944 he married Fern Gillaspy, and he took a degree in history and journalism from the University of Southern California in 1947. Boyd is a salesman of photoengravings and lives in Los Angeles.

Publishing his science fiction under a pseudonym, Boyd has signed his legal name to two novels that can be described as Southern Gothic romance, The Slave Stealer (1968) and Scarborough Hall (1976). Perhaps because of a reluctance to identify himself as a science-fiction writer, Boyd's critical reputation has not advanced appreciably since the enthusiastic reviews of his first novel, The Last Starship from Earth (1968), which Robert A. Heinlein endorsed highly.

As well as employing an element of humor--often satiric--and demonstrating a fondness for literary allusion, Boyd's fiction explores the dangers of...