Rick Raphael
Rick Raphael was an American writer known for his contributions to science fiction during the 1960s and early 1980s. Born on February 20, 1919, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, earning honors such as the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. After the war, he pursued higher education with the help of the G.I. Bill, eventually graduating from the University of New Mexico. Raphael had a multifaceted career that included work in journalism and politics; he was a political reporter and later served as press secretary for Senator Frank Church.
Raphael's science fiction writing gained recognition, with his short story "Code Three" nominated for a Hugo Award. His works often explored themes related to technology and societal structure, making notable contributions to the genre. Following a period of silence in his writing career, he returned to fiction in the 1980s with two novels, but they did not achieve the same acclaim as his earlier stories. Raphael passed away on January 4, 1994, leaving behind a legacy that includes works that continue to influence the science fiction community.
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Subject Terms
Rick Raphael
Fiction Writer
- Born: February 20, 1919
- Died: January 4, 1994
- Place of death: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Biography
Rick Raphael is an enigma to science-fiction fans: He produced a series of good stories in the early 1960’s, another in the early 1980’s, and was not heard from before or after. There is no mystery, however: Raphael simply had a very busy life outside of science fiction.
Born February 20, 1919, to Louis N. and Viola (Felix) Raphael, young Rick enlisted in the U.S. Army before finishing high school. Already in his second term of service when war was declared in 1941, Raphael served in the European Theater of Operations, earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Clusters. At the end of the war, Raphael served in the Army Reserve for another twenty years, retiring in 1965 at the rank of captain.
The G.I. Bill, a federal program paying educational expenses for military veterans, allowed Raphael to enter the University of New Mexico in 1945; he received his B.A. in 1948. Beginning in college, and continuing after graduation, Raphael wrote for various daily newspapers. When the new medium of television came along, local stations looked for their newscasters in established print outlets. After writing news for various stations, Boise, Idaho’s KBOI-TV hired Raphael as its political reporter and assistant news director in 1959.
When Senator Frank Church (a Democrat from Idaho) was looking for a press secretary in 1964, he wanted a veteran of television. He hired Raphael, who helped the senator win a third term in 1968. By this time, he was already a published science-fiction writer, and even his earliest stories earned critical notice. His 1963 short story “Code Three” was nominated for a Hugo Award, as was “Once a Cop” the following year. He collected his short stories in The Thirst Quenchers (1965), and expanded Code Three as a novel (1966).
Code Three is probably Raphael’s best-known work, and highly regarded when remembered at all. When science-fiction editors Jim Baen, David Drake, and Eric Flint proposed in 2005 an anthology of the science-fiction stories that most influenced them, “Code Three” (the 1963 short story version) was one of twenty-nine stories that made the cut. It is easy to see why. Fictional extrapolations of the future tend to focus on new technologies and ignore the extent to which the older technologies persist. Raphael’s twenty-first century explores the future of the superhighway, both in terms of its dangers and of the police state required to maintain it.
Just as Raphael made a splash in American science fiction, he fell into silence. In private life he was quite active: He left the senator’s staff in 1969 to become a lobbyist. He returned to fiction once more a decade later, after retiring to Minnesota, with The Defector (1980) and The President Must Die (1981), but neither novel was as successful as his earlier works, and neither his readers nor reviewers seemed aware that he had been writing in the 1960’s. He died on January 4, 1994, in Minneapolis.