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Martin Mundt

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United States

Website

http://www.martinmundt.com/

Genre

Horror, Humor, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Influences

Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Kurt Vonn ...more

Member Since

September 2011

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The year was 1957. Sputnik was launched & the Space Age was born. Me, too.
The next event of any significance happened in '69. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the 1st time & my 12-year-old self thought that it was the best thing I'd ever seen, despite a total lack of knowledge of LSD. Also, the Moon landing dominated the news. Astronauts were heroes. For a skinny, uncoordinated kid with bad eyes & a fear of heights, it was a time when I realized that no matter how crazy my dream, no matter how high my goal, I was still just a skinny, uncoordinated kid with bad eyes & a fear of heights. I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever being an astronaut.
Cut to '74, when I received the results of my high school aptitude test. I was still The year was 1957. Sputnik was launched & the Space Age was born. Me, too.
The next event of any significance happened in '69. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the 1st time & my 12-year-old self thought that it was the best thing I'd ever seen, despite a total lack of knowledge of LSD. Also, the Moon landing dominated the news. Astronauts were heroes. For a skinny, uncoordinated kid with bad eyes & a fear of heights, it was a time when I realized that no matter how crazy my dream, no matter how high my goal, I was still just a skinny, uncoordinated kid with bad eyes & a fear of heights. I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of ever being an astronaut.
Cut to '74, when I received the results of my high school aptitude test. I was still skinny, but even more uncoordinated & my eyes had gotten worse, but that aptitude test had determined that I should be an astronaut. I felt vindicated. The threads of my future were at last becoming clear. (Of course, the same test had also recommended that I become a sheriff or an army officer or perhaps a department store manager if the astronaut gig didn't work out, but since those results left the threads of my future rather more tangled, I disregarded them.)
Quite naturally, I suppose, I then flung myself into the study of science fiction--Arthur Clarke, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah, OK, maybe flinging myself into the study of 'science', as such, might have been more pertinent to the goal of becoming an astronaut, but those science-fiction guys all wrote better than the textbook guys. How much difference could one little word like 'fiction' make anyway? Well, apparently, there's just so much difference between studying quantum physics & watching Space 1999 on TV that the two just don't compare at all. & I mean, at all.
Well, to make a long story short (check out the sly play on words there; it's a writing thing), I never got into the Astronaut Training Program, or whatever they call it, but just 21 short years after taking a wrong turn on my aptitude test, I published a short story.
OK, so maybe I could've gotten my career off the ground a little quicker if I'd been a department store manager, but I'm not bitter. Not at all. So what if the cherished dreams of my childhood lie in ruins because of a string of D's in chemistry? So what? I discovered that I have a real flair for spelling. Take that, Buzz Aldrin.
Does an astronaut get to hold up a book & say, "This is my book."? Well, OK, maybe a lot of them do. But does an astronaut get to go to writing conventions & volunteer to check bags at the art show door? Well, OK, so maybe that's not such a good example. Oh, wait, wait, wait! Does an astronaut know what a gerund is? Hah! In your face, John Glenn.
& that compulsion to hang myself as an abject failure? Well, that pretty much goes away for days at a time now. So, I'm fine with my career choice. Just fine. I'm all good. Yep. Just great.
I'm a pretty nifty writer, too, if I do say so myself. Really. I'm not just saying that because I'm a bitter, middle-aged man bitter about the bitter way the world has treated me, & with a totally irrational chip on my shoulder about astronauts in general. No. That's absolutely not what's going on here. Not at all. I worked thru all that mindless rage a long time ago. I did. Really. I'm all good with astronauts now. I am. That dead rat I mailed to Neil Armstrong back in '81? A total mistake. I can see that now. Never should have happened. Sorry about that, Neil. Love ya. Really.
But, anyhoo, back to the point of this whole thing. I went to school, got a job, made a lot of friends who change their phone numbers often, blah, blah, blah. I'm currently at work on the 15th book of a series of novels about a skinny, uncoordinated serial killer with bad eyes & a fear of heights who torture-murders a... ...more

12 posts
Martin Mundt's Blog

Review of "The Holy Terror" by Wayne Allen Sallee, 1992

What I like -- what I've always liked -- about Wayne Allen Sallee's writing is that he is a quintessentially Chicago writer, in the way I have always seen Nelson Algren. He writes stories like "In the Shank of the Night", from the collection "Fiends by Torchlight", with Chicago policeman Frank St. Cyr, that, to me at least, capture the sound and feel of the city, along with being just a great Read more of this blog post »

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Published on June 04, 2014 07:45

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Martin Mundt’s books

Average rating: 3.91 · 437 ratings · 61 reviews · 26 distinct works

	100 Wicked Little Witch Stories by Martin H. Greenberg (editor/contributor), Robert Weinberg (Editor), Martin Mundt (Goodreads Author) (contributor) 3.81 avg rating — 267 ratings — published 1995 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Crawling Abattoir by Martin Mundt (Goodreads Author), Martin Mundt (Goodreads Author), Jay Bonansinga (Goodreads Author) (Introduction) 3.70 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Crawling Abattoir: Expanded Edition 4.18 avg rating — 33 ratings — published 1999 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Dark Underbelly of Hymns by Martin Mundt (Goodreads Author), Chad Savage (illustrator) 4.24 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2006 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Synchronized Sleepwalking 4.20 avg rating — 15 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Cranston Gibberer 3.92 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2011 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reanimated Americans: A Zombie Novel 3.80 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Jambands as an Interactive American Genre 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Crawling Abattoir 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Dark Underbelly of Hymns (Delirium X Series No. 7) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars