Lloyd Biggle Jr. Books In Order

Publication Order of Grandfather Rastin Mystery Books

Publication Order of Interplanetary Relations Bureau Books

Publication Order of Jan Darzek Books

Publication Order of Lady Sara Varnley Victorian Mystery Books

Publication Order of Pletcher and Lambert Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Lloyd Biggle
Lloyd Biggle, Jr. was born in Waterloo, Iowa on April 17, 1923 and is one of the old-time masters of science fiction, with a long series of best-selling novels during the sixties and seventies.

In later years, he moved on to suspense and mysteries, creating many popular series, including one new series of Sherlock Holmes. This series was written from the point of view of Edward Porter Jones, an assistant that began his association with Holmes as a “Baker Street Irregular”. Each year, he managed to write a science fiction tale or two, typically for Analog magazine.

He served in World War II as a communications sergeant in a rifle company of the 102nd Infantry Division. He was wounded twice, during the war, the second of which, a shrapnel wound in his leg received close to the Elbe River at war’s end, left him disabled for the rest of his life. Lloyd was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, and the Disabled American Veterans.

He resumed his education, after the war, and received an AB Degree with High Distinction from Wayne State University and also received M.M. and PhD degrees from the University of Michigan. Lloyd taught at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan during the fifties. He started writing professionally in the year 1955 and started writing full-time when “All the Colors of Darkness” was published in the year 1963.

Lloyd was the founding Secretary-Treasurer of Science Fiction Writers of America and he served as Chairman of its trustees for several years. During the seventies, he founded the Science Fiction Oral History Association, which built archives containing hundreds of cassette tapes of science fiction notables discussing aspects of their craft and making speeches. He numbered quite a few of these science fiction notables among his buddies.

Lloyd’s article in the July/August 2002 Analog Magazine called “Isaac Asimov Remembered”, was based a bit on his personal recollections of Asimov himself.

He was nominated for a Hugo for short fiction in 1962, and also for the Locus Readers awards three years in a row in 1972, 1973, and 1974.

Lloyd was celebrated in science fiction circles as the author that introduced aesthetics into a literature that was known for its technological and scientific complications. His tales would frequently use artistic and musical themes. Such notables like Orson Scott Card (an author) and Jimmy Webb (a songwriter) have written about the spectacular effect that “The Tunesmith”, an early story of Lloyd’s, has had on them during their youth.

Among some of Biggle’s most enduring science fiction creations were the matter-transmission trouble-shooting team of Jan Darzek/Effie Schlupe, and the Cultural Survey. This was featured in magazine stories and novels, through which Biggle explored issues of things like technology and multi-culturalism.

Lloyd died on September 12, 2002 at the age of 79 after a twenty year long battle with cancer and leukemia. His final novel, called “The Chronocide Mission”, was released in the year 2002 and in total, he published some two dozen books, along with several articles and magazine stories.

Lloyd wrote the “Cultural Survey” series, the “Grandfather Rastin Mystery” series, and the “Pletcher and Lambert” series, as well some stand alone novels.

He wrote almost up to the time that he died Lloyd once said that he could write them faster than the magazines are able to publish them, and indeed, magazines continued to publish his backlogged stories well after he died.

“This Darkening Universe” is the third novel in the “Jan Darzek” series and was released in the year 1975. Moving through the Small Magellanic Cloud, leaving behind a trail of consumed worlds and wrecked civilization, is the Udef—the Unidentified Death Force. The best scientific minds of two galaxies cannot make anything of it. The Udef is invisible. There no scientific instruments are able to detect its presence.

The only marks made of its passing are the screams its victims mad and the piles of dead left behind in its wake. Safe, for the time being at least, on the world of Montura, Jan Darzek’s strategy against the Udeffalters. He and Effie, his assistant have been ordered to go there by a supreme computer, which isn’t telling why.

There isn’t anything to do on Montura yet frantically wheel and deal in its tremendous interworld trading market. Supreme’s also sent out a perplexed Dr. Malina Darr from Earth, whose purpose seems to be to cure some unknown disease in some alien life form that nobody’s ever seen. The three of them have to contend with a mad mix of Montura’s mysterious race of natives, the Kloatraz (the universe’s oddest living computer), and the melange of self-serving life forms in the whole marketplace. All while the Udef gets closer to wiping out all the intelligent life forms in the entire universe.

“Murder Jambalaya” is the third novel in the “Pletcher and Lambert” series and was released in the year 2012. Their missing person did not fish, hunt, or even engage in any sort of sport that one might do in a Louisiana fishing village. And after the cursory look at what was once called Pointe Nueve, so they doubted that a decent antique would be found to buy in the whole collection of rusty and metal-roofed buildings. At least, they knew they couldn’t expect to find someone’s body there. The alligators would have taken care of this weeks ago. OK so they’re wrong sometimes.

Marc DeVarney (a Louisiana antique dealer) is a well respected businessman and has suddenly gone missing. J. Pletcher and Raina Lambert, who are investigative consultants, get hired by his family to locate the guy. Or his remains. Their search sends them scurrying through the area surrounding New Orleans, from the wealthy mansions of the Garden District and to the swamps and bayous of close by, small fishing villages.

With the help of a special group of New Orleans characters, including a licensed witch, local “royalty”, a game warden, an intelligent attorney, flea market vendors, and assorted street people, they have to sort through all kinds of deceptions to confront the twisted evil secrets of the past.