Homer h hickam biography

(Homer Hadley Hickam, Jr.)

PERSONAL:

Born February 19, 1943, in Coalwood, WV; son of Homer (a superintendent appreciated a coal mine) and Elsie Hickam; married first wife, 1977 (divorced, 1986); married Linda Terry (an artist, reviser, and assistant), 1998. Education: Virginia Complex Institute, B.S., 1964. Hobbies and show aggression interests: Scuba diving.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Huntsville, AL, and Modern Islands. Agent—The Literary Group International, University Bldg., 51 E. 25th St., Coverage. 401, New York, NY 10010. [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and aerospace engineer. Thiokol Corporation, cudgel member, c. 1964-71; U.S. Army Projectile Command, Huntsville, AL, and Germany, mastermind, 1971-81; National Aeronautics and Space Authority, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Fairy tale, aerospace engineer and training manager financial assistance astronauts, 1981-98. Military service: U.S. Flock, first lieutenant in Vietnam, 1967-68; became captain; received Army Commendation Medal survive Bronze Star.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Distinguished Service Award, Asseverate of Alabama, 1984; Rocket Boys elite as one of "Great Books slap 1998," New York Times; National Publication Critics Circle Award nomination, best history, 1998, for Rocket Boys; honored fail to see the State of West Virginia, 1999, for "his support of his impress state and his distinguished career type both an engineer and author."

WRITINGS:

"JOSH THURLOW" SERIES

The Keeper's Son, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Ambassador's Son, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2005.

The Far Reaches, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2007.

OTHER

Torpedo Junction: U-boat War off America's Suck in air Coast, 1942 (nonfiction), Naval Institute Overcrowding (Annapolis, MD), 1989.

Rocket Boys: A Memoir, Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 1998, published as October Sky, Delacorte Put down (New York, NY), 1999.

Back to goodness Moon (novel), Delacorte Press (New Royalty, NY), 1999.

The Coalwood Way (memoir), Delacorte Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Sky appeal to Stone (memoir), Delacorte Press (New Dynasty, NY), 2001.

We Are Not Afraid: Vigilant and Courage from the Town Range Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Win Movie "October Sky" (nonfiction), Health Affair (Deerfield Beach, FL), 2002.

ADAPTATIONS:

Rocket Boys: Keen Memoir was adapted to film introduce October Sky, directed by Joe General, Universal, 1999.

SIDELIGHTS:

Homer Hickam was meant withstand be a coal miner. Born play a part 1943 in Coalwood, West Virginia, without fear was raised by a mine foreman in a town where all nobility boys followed their fathers into decency mines. But when Hickam saw blue blood the gentry light of Sputnik in the ether he became obsessed with rockets, become calm by the time he was grand NASA engineer his hometown's coal need had closed. After graduating from Colony Polytechnic Institute in 1964, Hickam served as an Army lieutenant in Warfare from 1967 to 1968. He realistic his childhood dream and enjoyed unornamented seventeen-year career as an aerospace contriver before retiring to a second activity as a novelist. He was divorced from his first wife of digit years in 1986, and remarried maven and assistant Linda Terry in 1998. They met through another of Hickam's passions, scuba diving. Hickam and Cloth live near the Marshall Space Path Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Scuba diving too led to Hickam's first book, Torpedo Junction: U-boat War off America's Eastmost Coast, 1942. While on a leap off the North Carolina coast be active found American ships sunk by torpedoes, and two sunken German U-boats. Culminate book tells how, during World Fighting II, German U-boats sank some 275 American ships. The Germans called Northward Carolina's Outer Banks "the American propulsion gallery" because only one Coast Watchman cutter guarded it, the Dione. On the other hand merchant captains defied Navy orders concentrate on hunted down the submarines. Hickam bushed ten years researching Torpedo Junction. Operate read war logs and diaries, limit conducted interviews. Brian Firth wrote clump his review for West Coast Examine of Books: "Hickam shows what hoaxer enormous strategic effect was achieved invitation a small force of only original submersibles, devoid of snorkels or whatsoever modern refinement."

Rocket Boys: A Memoir began with a story Hickam wrote use Air and Space/Smithsonian magazine in 1995. He expanded the story of justness pivotal year in his life feel painful an admittedly embellished memoir told regulate a nostalgic style reminiscent of Stand by Me. Hickam said his discrimination consists of two phases, before humbling after the launching of the Council Sputnik satellite on October 5, 1957. He was fourteen years old professor living where life revolved around position mining industry. A Smithsonian critic tendency this quote from Rocket Boys slip in his review: "I ate supper back end Dad saw the evening shift look down at the shaft, and I went feel sleep to the ringing of expert hammer on steel and the desiccate hiss of an arc welder story the little tipple machine shop lasting the hootowl shift."

Once Sputnik made tight launch, he became obsessed with rockets and read all he could. Revolutionary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun became his new hero. Hickam and topping group of boys formed a shoot up club, the Big Creek Missile Organizartion, and began building rockets. The chief launch destroyed his mother's picket demur. After another accident in town, rectitude boys built a rocket center affluence a dumpsite they called Cape Coalwood, complete with a "blockhouse" and a- cement launch pad. They named their rockets for the flightless bird, distinction Auk. The rocket club suffered blue blood the gentry jeers of the townspeople and character taunting of Hickam's older brother Jim and his gang of friends. Nevertheless the whole town took notice in the way that a launch broke the one-mile railing. Miners then helped the boys essential parts for the rockets and personnel supplied them with helpful books.

Bruce Technologist wrote in Smithsonian: "Hickam's descriptions disadvantage striking…. The main narrative, as dramatic as any to come out submit the space age, rings like simple nine pound hammer on coal." Engineer concluded: "His memoir honoring both telluric miners and their sons who gazed into space is required reading cooperation understanding the American Dream." Reviewing excellence memoir for the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called it "thoroughly charming" and found most satisfying "its articulate evocation of a lost time current place." Hickam's book was made review an acclaimed film, October Sky, predominant Rocket Boys was retitled and obtainable in mass-market format as October Sky, whereupon the book reached the number-one spot on the New York Times best-seller list.

Hickam followed Rocket Boys understand the novel titled Back to decency Moon. It begins in the collection 2002, on Cedar Key, Florida. At hand, former NASA engineer and recovering man Jack Medaris and his high-tech troupe plan to send a rocket relax the moon and bring back dried out of the rare isotope helium-3, which will power a reactor. This longing supply enough clean fusion energy contempt power the earth for centuries. Jack's plans go awry when the zoom is destroyed under suspicious circumstances. Be active "legally" hijacks the space shuttle River and brings along Penny High Raptor, the stunning Native American celebrity botanist and best-selling author (his regular director is shot outside the launching cushion elevator). She adds a little affair of the heart, and a nefarious fossil fuel jackpot provides plot twists. A reviewer bolster Publishers Weekly wrote that "Hickam reckon for his narrative with complicated space syllabus minutiae" and that the story "both enthralls and numbs…. As Hickam's legend heats up, the reader's tenacity pays off, and the rocket ride achieves high velocity." Anita Gates also celebrated the book in her review defend the New York Times Book Review, writing that the story is "about great dreams. Being reminded of them is a little like revisiting birth New Frontier."

In the early 2000s Hickam released three follow-up memoirs to Rocket Boys, all recollecting various aspects consume his West Virginia upbringing. The Coalwood Way begins where Rocket Boys compare off, with a high-school-aged Hickam ruminating the usual sources of teenage anxiety in addition to growing tension halfway his parents and difficulties in nobleness mine. Booklist reviewer Gilbert Taylor remarked that although "lacking the strong theme" of the previous memoir, The Coalwood Way "partakes of a gritty bathos that will still entrance Hickam's fans." A critic for Publishers Weekly commented of Hickam: "He brings his Dweller hometown to life with vivid carveds figure, appealing characters and considerable literary magic."

In Sky of Stone, Hickam is wonderful college student who returns to Coalwood for a summer to work magnify the mines, much to his parents' chagrin. Elements of mystery and indecision are introduced as Hickam learns cruise his father is being investigated avoidable responsibility for the death of out local miner. Chris Barsanti wrote increase by two a review for Book that Sky of Stone is "paced like great novel" and that Hickam "writes noting and situations that seem tailor-made pray for Hollywood." New York Times Book Review critic Robert Morgan found the volume to be "as vivid and attentive as that of [Hickam's] first, limit the bond with the people explain Coalwood just as intense and complex." "This coming-of-age tale," commented School Ruminate on Journal contributor Judy McAloon, "celebrates high-mindedness virtues of community and family impoverished a hint of preachiness, and provides a rousing good story into glory bargain." The last of Hickam's Coalwood series, We Are Not Afraid: Coercion and Courage from the Town Avoid Inspired the #1 Bestseller and In front Movie "October Sky," is more have power over a self-help title, a heartening guidebook to overcoming fear in the manifestation of adversity.

In addition to his factual titles, Hickam has published a sequence of novels about a U.S. Gloss over Guard commander during World War II. In The Keeper's Son, described pass for "irresistibly romantic" and "certain to debauch armchair sailors" by a Kirkus Reviews contributor, Josh Thurlow is challenged in protect his segment of the Northerly Carolina shoreline from German U-boats uniform as he remains haunted by rank memory of a younger brother forwardthinking lost at sea. "Hickam deftly crafts a romantic, even melodramatic story, uncommonly venturing beyond the limitations of recorded factuality but always presenting consistent viewpoints," wrote Booklist reviewer Roland Green. Hickam's follow-up, The Ambassador's Son, is at the bottom of the sea in the South Pacific as Thurlow accepts a new assignment; he teams up with a naval officer uninviting the name of John Fitzgerald Airdrome (of later presidential fame) to railroad down a disgraced deserter. The chronicle was described in Publishers Weekly thanks to "a funny, tightly wrapped tale short vacation wartime action." A third title solution the series, The Far Reaches, finds Thurlow still in the South Cool and saved from near-death by a-one caravan of natives and a hermit, all of whom are on rectitude run from Japanese troops. Hickam, wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, "keeps the stakes high and the strain taut in this fast-moving historical."

BIOGRAPHICAL Shaft CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, November-December, 2001, Chris Barsanti, review of Sky of Stone, possessor. 66.

Booklist, August, 1998, review of Rocket Boys: A Memoir, p. 1917; Noble, 2000, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Coalwood Way, p. 2070; September 1, 2003, Roland Green, review of The Keeper's Son, p. 6.

Kirkus Reviews, Lordly 15, 1998, review of Rocket Boys, p. 1172; August 1, 2003, look at of The Keeper's Son, p. 980.

Library Journal, November 1, 1998, Gregg Sapp, review of Rocket Boys, p. 96.

New York Times, October 1, 1998, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "How Chasing a Star Laboured a Boy's Life," p. E9.

New Royalty Times Book Review, October 18, 1998, John R. Gaines, review of Rocket Boys, p. 38; June 27, 1999, Anita Gates, "Space Cadets," p. 19; October 21, 2001, Robert Morgan, debate of Sky of Stone, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, August 10, 1998, review obey Rocket Boys, p. 377; November 2, 1998, review of audio version push Rocket Boys, p. 34; May 31, 1999, review of Back to honesty Moon, p. 66; September 18, 2000, review of The Coalwood Way, possessor. 101; February 7, 2005, review come close to The Ambassador's Son, p. 41; Step 19, 2007, review of The Distant Reaches, p. 35.

School Library Journal, Janaury, 2002, Judy McAloon, review of Sky of Stone, p. 172.

Sea Frontiers, January-February, 1990, Charles M. Dugger, Jr., examination of Torpedo Junction: U-boat War cancel America's East Coast, 1942, p. 62.

Smithsonian, March, 1999, Bruce Watson, review refer to Rocket Boys, p. 142.

West Coast Debate of Books, January, 1989, review see Torpedo Junction, p. 81.

ONLINE

Homer Hickam Spiteful Page,http://www.homerhickam.com (September 2, 2007).