Profile of Lawrence M Schoen

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This profile moderated by Lawrence M Schoen.

Bio

Though born in Chicago, Lawrence M. Schoen grew up in the endless sunshine of southern California. From age five until his eighteenth birthday, he worked every weekend with his family at various swap meets, selling everything from black Santa Claus dolls to melon ballers to women's underwear. This provided him the opportunity to watch the full range of humanity pass by (and sell the occasional melon baller), and probably marks the start of his interest in human behavior. His writing career also began at those swap meets, and when business was slow he filled spiral notebooks with endless tales for his own amusement.

Eventually he left the swap meet behind and went off to college where the fascination with people won out and he put fiction aside. He first studied psychology, then linguistics, and then psycholinguistics, before ending up doing graduate work in Kansas on the nature of semantic representation and human memory. Doctoral degree in hand, he moved on to the teaching and research side of academia, working at schools in Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. In 1992, Lawrence's interests in science fiction and language found common ground and he established, and became director of, the Klingon Language Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of the world's most popular fictional language. After ten years as a professor of psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, Lawrence left academia to work in the private sector as a Research Director and Compliance Officer for a series of mental health and substance abuse facilities providing treatment for the poor and indigent in Philadelphia.

He also found time to return to his first love, crafting fiction. Last year, his story "The Sky's The Limit" (a Damon Runyon homage set onboard a dirigible) landed on the preliminary Nebula Award ballot. Other stories have appeared in variety of print and electronic magazines and anthologies, in English, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, German, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, and Klingon, and he has begun a special project to make his first Amazing Conroy story, "Buffalo Dogs," available in all of these languages and more.

Bibliography

Published/Upcoming

Short Stories

"A Buffalito Of Mars" in Visual Journeys (forthcoming)

"Thresher" in Breaching The Hull (forthcoming)

"Polar Opposites" in Tales From The Den (forthcoming)

"The Amulet Of Winter" in Mirrorstone (forthcoming)

"Texas Fold'em " in nanobison (2007)

A Fool's Death in Abyss & Apex (2006)

"Cat Futures" in The Town Drunk (2006)

"Thinking" in AEON Magazine (2005)

Pidgin in Aliens And AIs (2005)

Pun Gazing in Aliens And AIs (2005)

Requiem in Absolute Magnitude (2005)

"Stations of the Cheeseburger in TEL : Stories (2005)
reprinted, Best Of The Rest (2006)

Sweet Potato Pie in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (2005)

Take Me To Your Leiderkranz in Analog Magazine (2005)

The Conservation Of Thelos in Apex Digest (2005)

The Epistemology of Bread in Lenox Avenue (2005)

The Matter At Hand in Aliens And AIs (2005)

The Game Of Leaf And Smile in AEON Magazine (2005)

The Sky's The Limit in All Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories (2004)

Bidding the Walrus in Low Port (2003)
reprinted in Aliens And AIs (2005)

Cruel Teacher in Speculon Webzine (2003)

Quantum Pen in Artemis (2003)

The Day After The Census in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (2003)

Chasing The Bear in Speculon Webzine (2002)

Red Shell in Speculon Webzine (2001)

Retro-Virus in Speculon Webzine (2001)
reprinted in Aliens And AIs (2005)

Smooth Manuever in Blue Food No. 4 (2001)
reprinted in Aliens And AIs (2005)

Solitaire in Not One Of Us No. 26 (2001)

Bug Juice in The Age Of Wonders (2000)
reprinted in Spanish, Sable (forthcoming)
reprinted in Greek, Dramaturges of Yann (2006)
reprinted in Portuguese, DragQuico (2006)

Case Study in Terra Incognita No. 6 (2000)

Cycles in Spaceways Weekly No. 153 (2000)

jubHa' in Strange New Worlds III (2000)

Whale Song in Spaceways Weekly No. 156 (2000)
reprinted in Finnish, Spin (2005)

Euphemism Skin in Spaceways Weekly No. 100 (1999)
reprinted in Aliens And AIs (2005)
reprinted in The Annual Best Of SpaceWays Weekly 1999 (2000)

Thirst For Knowledge in Maelstrom SF No. 3 (1999)

Writer's Block in Harbinger No. 1 (1999)
reprinted, The Goblin Muse (2000)
reprinted, The Martian Wave (1999)

Artificial Contrariness in Dragonscroll 1 No. 5 (1999)

Candeloro's Magic in Dragonscroll 1 No. 3 (1999)

The Novice in Gothic.net (1999)

Experimental Design in The Martian Wave (1998)

Fermentation in The Martian Wave (1998)

"The Promise in Spaceways Weekly No. 55 (1998)

Names in Jackhammer 1 No. 28 (1998)
reprinted in Dutch, Visionair (2000)
reprinted, Planet Relish (2000)

Of Storm and Furry: Contemporary Past in Mythagoras No. 3 (1990)

Of Storm and Furry: Petals and Vents in Mythagoras No. 2 (1990)

Past Waves in Strange Plasma (1990)
reprinted, Electric Velocipede (2001)
reprinted, The Martian Wave (1999)

Novelettes

Buffalogenesis (2006)

Telepathic Intent in Buffalogic, Inc. (2003)

Golem Summer in Elysian Fiction (2002)

Buffalo Dogs in Absolute Magnitude (2001)
reprinted in Chinese, SF World (forthcoming)
reprinted in Hebrew, Bli-Panika (forthcoming)
reprinted in Greek, Universe Pathway (forthcoming)
reprinted in Finnish, Spin (2006)
reprinted, Buffalogic, Inc. (2003)

Poetry

The Figurative Gryphon in Speculon Webzine (2002)

The Last Day Of School in Spellbound (2002)

Historical Trolls in Spellbound No. 8 (2001)

Choral Reef in Spellbound No. 5 (2000)

Dragon Math in Spellbound No. 4 (2000)

Every Janitor's A Goblin in Spellbound No. 3 (2000)

The Gargoyle and the Bully in Spellbound No. 6 (2000)

Brown Bagging in Spellbound No. 1 (1999)

Minotaur Boys in Faerie Gold (1999)

Snowball in Spellbound No. 2 (1999)


Reviews

James S. Reichert for Tangent Online
on "Buffalo Dogs" in Absolute Magnitude

"Buffalo Dogs" by Lawrence M. Schoen is reminiscent of those early wonder stories of Asmiov and Clark that I grew up on.

Sherwood Smith for Tangent Online
on "Aliens And AIs: A Collection"

Lawrence M. Schoen's fiction is chock-full of nifty ideas. His futuristic computers alone are fascinating, and he designs really cool aliens, then turns them loose to interact with everyday humans-ordinary people encountering the extraordinary-one of literature's favorite tropes.

Thomas Marcinko for Tangent Online
on "Buffalogic, Inc.: Tales of the Amazing Conroy, #1"

A stage hypnotist who plays interstellar dives is such a great idea that the reviewer is determined to stop right there. It sounds like a lost series by Henry Kuttner or Fredric Brown, or maybe a radio hero forgotten by everybody but Harlan Ellison.

Matthew M. Foster for Tangent Online
on ""Sweet Potato Pie" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, #18

This is a tale that defies summarizing. It's weird and wonderful and will dig into you more with its strangeness than with its deep meaning, but as most stories don't get ahold at all, that's just fine.