James p hogan biography

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He first married at the age of twenty. He was raised in the Portobello Road area on the west side of London. He published his first novel, Inherit The Stars, during the same year to win an office bet.

james p hogan biography

The original sequence is in fact a Hard-SF fable of humanity's origins – we are the direct descendants of a highly aggressive Forerunner species that had inhabited the destroyed fifth planet, and would have conquered the Galaxy had they not blown themselves up – and espouses a vision of the Universe in which other species must learn to cope with the knowledge that we will, some day, come into our inheritance.

Perhaps surprisingly, a later tale like Echoes of an Alien Sky (2007), though its protagonists were still Talking Heads, imparted a sense of gravitas to its depiction of a Ruined Earth and of the Time Abyss between the present tense of the novel and any world its readers might hope will survive. [JC]

further awards or honours:Seiun Award.

see also:Automation; Moon; Nuclear Energy; Time Radio; Utopias.

James Patrick Hogan

born London: 27 June 1941

died at home near Lough Gill, Ireland: body discovered 12 July 2010

works

series

Minervan Experiment/Giants

  • Inherit the Stars (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1977) [Minervan Experiment/Giants: pb/Darrell Sweet]
  • The Gentle Giants of Ganymede (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1978) [Minervan Experiment/Giants: pb/H R van Dongen]
    • The Two Moons (New York: Baen Books, 2006) [omni of the above two: Minervan Experiment/Giants: hb/Bob Eggleton]
  • Giants' Star (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1981) [Minervan Experiment/Giants: pb/Darrell Sweet]
    • The Minervan Experiment (Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, 1981) [omni of the above three: Minervan Experiment/Giants: hb/Tom Miller]
  • Entoverse (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1991) [Minervan Experiment/Giants: hb/Peter Gudynas]
    • The Two Worlds (New York: Baen Books, 2007) [omni of the above two: Minervan Experiment/Giants: hb/Allan Pollack]
  • Mission to Minerva (New York: Baen Books, 2005) [Minervan Experiment/Giants: hb/Bob Eggleton]

Code of the Lifemaker

Cradle of Saturn

individual titles

  • The Genesis Machine (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1978) [pb/Darrell Sweet]
  • The Two Faces of Tomorrow (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1979) [pb/Darrell Sweet]
  • Thrice Upon a Time (New York: Ballantine Books/Del Rey, 1980) [pb/Rowena Morrill]
  • Voyage from Yesteryear (Garden City, New York: Nelson Doubleday, 1982) [hb/Tom Miller]
  • The Proteus Operation (New York: Bantam Books, 1985) [Hitler Wins: hb/Jim Warren and Bob Larkin]
  • Endgame Enigma (New York: Bantam Books, 1987) [hb/Frank Riley]
  • The Mirror Maze (New York: Bantam Books, 1989) [pb/Tony Randazzo]
  • The Infinity Gambit (New York: Bantam Books, 1989) [pb/Bill Schmidt]
  • The Multiplex Man (New York: Baen Books, 1992) [pb/Paul Youll]
  • Out of Time (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1993) [pb/Bruce Jensen]
  • Realtime Interrupt (New York: Bantam Spectra, 1995) [pb/Mierre]
    • Cyber Rogues (New York: Baen Books, 2015) [omni of The Two Faces of Tomorrow and Realtime Interrupt: hb/Kurt Miller]
  • Paths to Otherwhere (New York: Baen Books, 1996) [pb/Gary Ruddell]
  • Bug Park (New York: Baen Books, 1997) [hb/David Mattingly]
  • Star Child (New York: Baen Books, 1998) [pb/Stephen Hickman]
  • Outward Bound: A Jupiter Novel (New York: Tor, 1999) [hb/Vincent Di Fate]
  • The Legend That Was Earth (New York: Baen Books, 2000) [hb/Dru Blair]
    • Worlds in Chaos (New York: Baen Books, 2014) [omni of Cradle of Saturn and The Legend that was Earth: hb/Kurt Miller]
  • Martian Knightlife (New York: Baen Books, 2001) [hb/Clyde Caldwell]
  • Echoes of an Alien Sky (New York: Baen Books, 2007) [hb/Bob Eggleton]
  • Moon Flower (New York: Baen Books, 2008) [hb/Alan Pollack]
  • Migration (New York: Baen Books, 2010) [hb/Alan Pollack]

collections

nonfiction

links

previous versions of this entry



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This willingness on Hogan's part to re-activate sequences that had come to a natural halt generated a further sequel to the Minervan Experiment/Giants series: Mission to Minerva (2005), assembled with Entoverse as The Two Worlds (omni 2007), which features Time Travel back to a period before the original sequence began, and the creation of an Alternate History that side-steps the earlier closure.

Though most of them either shared or accepted his right-wing Politics, and (at least in the first half of his career) tolerated editorial animadversions addressed to personal bêtes-noires like the Ecology movement, Hogan's awkwardness as a stylist and creator of character made his books difficult, at times, actually to read. His first novel (and first publication), Inherit the Stars (1977), aroused interest for the exhilarating sense it conveys of scientific minds at work on real problems and for the genuinely exciting scope of the sf imagination it deploys.

Hogan worked as a design engineer for several companies and eventually began working with sales during the 1960s, traveling around Europe as a sales engineer for Honeywell.

Bibliography

Titles in a series

Titles other than in a series

Giants Series

          INHERIT THE STARS

          THE GENTLE GIANTS OF GANYMEDE

          GIANTS' STAR

          ENTOVERSE

          MISSION TO MINERVA

 

Code of the Lifemaker Series

          CODE OF THE LIFEMAKER

          THE IMMORTALITY OPTION

 

Cradle of Saturn Series

          CRADLE OF SATURN

          THE ANGUISHED DAWN

 

Novels

          THE GENESIS MACHINE

          THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW

          THRICE UPON A TIME

          VOYAGE FROM YESTERYEAR

          THE PROTEUS OPERATION

          ENDGAME ENIGMA

          THE MIRROR MAZE

          THE INFINITY GAMBIT

          THE MULTIPLEX MAN

          PATHS TO OTHERWHERE

          REALTIME INTERRUPT

          BUG PARK

          OUTWARD BOUND

          THE LEGEND THAT WAS EARTH

          ECHOES OF AN ALIEN SKY

          MOON FLOWER

          MIGRATION

 

Collections

   Fiction

          STAR CHILD

          MARTIAN KNIGHTLIFE

   Fiction and Nonfiction

          MINDS, MACHINES, AND EVOLUTION

          ROCKETS, REDHEADS, AND REVOLUTION

          CATASTROPHES, CHAOS AND CONVOLUTIONS

   Nonfiction

          MIND MATTERS: EXPLORING THE WORLD OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

          TRUTH UNDER TYRANNY: SCIENCE'S IMPERMISSIBLE THOUGHTS

          KICKING THE SACRED COW

Entry updated 13 October 2025.

James P Hogan

Biography

(:redirect quiet=1 JamesPHogan:)
James Patrick Hogan (27 June 1941 – 12 July 2010) was a British science fiction author. Although Hogan's later attempted rescue of the fifth world from Disaster may not fully satisfy, the sequence as a whole remains his best work.

Other novels variously succeed in presenting Heroes – generally clumped into male-bonded affinity groups – and scientific problems of a similar nature.

In Voyage from Yesteryear (1982) a colony world, governed according to the kind of Trickster Libertarianism of old and honoured Astounding writers like Eric Frank Russell (see Colonization of Other Worlds), effortlessly faces down and flummoxes, with the assistance of wise Robots and hidden Weapons, an attempt by Earth to re-establish control.

He married three more times and fathered six children. In Code of the Lifemaker (1983) a Robot civilization on Titan is saved from similarly corrupt Earth corporations; there are entertaining sidelights on Earthly Pseudoscience and robotic Evolution and Religion.

But in Endgame Enigma (1987) a Near-Future Russian threat to dominate the world via armed satellite is recounted with leaden flippancy, and this brought to the fore a problem Hogan had presented to his readers from the first.

This Libertarian SF novel won a Prometheus Award. They then relocated to Sonora, California.

He quit DEC during 1979 and began writing full-time, relocating to Orlando, Florida, for a year where he met his third wife Jackie.

Hogan was born in London, England. When he abandoned his strengths – his hard-edged sense of how Scientists think, and his joyful capacity to stretch the terms of Space Opera – this gaucheness was difficult to ignore – especially in his later years when his contrarian instincts led him in various directions, sometimes in defence of civil liberties, sometimes into favourable comments on Holocaust Denial as a form of "scepticism": his "arguments", which he maintained in actual conversations with Holocaust survivors, were abhorrent then, and remain so.

During the 1970s he joined the Digital Equipment Corporation's Laboratory Data Processing Group and during 1977 relocated to Boston, Massachusetts to manage its sales training program.