Albert E. Cowdrey (1933-2022)

Author Albert E. Cowdrey, 88, died August 21, 2022 in New Orleans LA.

Albert Edward Cowdrey was born December 8,1933 in New Orleans. He attended Tulane University, graduating with a BA in 1956 and a PhD in 1971; he earned his MA at Johns Hopkins in 1957. Cowdrey was in the US Army, serving in Germany in the late ’50s. He was a historian for the Army Corps of Engineers and US Army Center of Military History, including service as chief of the Special History Branch in Washington DC, where he wrote extensively about Army medics. He also taught at Tulane.

Cowdrey’s first published work of genre interest was “The Lucky People” in F&SF in 1968, under the name Chet Arthur. He began publishing under his own name with “The Familiar” (1997), also in F&SF, which continued to publish the bulk of his work throughout the 2000s. He published over 60 works of short fiction in all, some collected in Revelation and Other Tales of Fantascience (2021). He had one SF novel, Crux (2004), as well as historical novel Elixir of Life (1965). He also wrote books of historical non-fiction.

Cowdrey won a World Fantasy Award for “Queen for a Day” (2001). “The Tribes of Bela” (2004) was a Nebula Award finalist, and “The Overseer” (2008) a World Fantasy Award finalist. He also won the Herbert Feis Award from the American Historical Association in 1984.

For more, see his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

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