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Brian at the recording
studio. |
Brian was enthralled by the Star Wars saga and very excited by the possibilities it afforded for popularizing science fiction for a mass audience, so he was very pleased to be chosen as the author for the first Star Wars spin-off novels, the three volumes of The Han Solo Adventures, one of which became a New York Times bestseller. He continued his association with Star Wars by writing the radio plays for "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back," and "Return of the Jedi."
The morning following the wrap party for the recording of the radio play "Return of the Jedi," Brian Daley died, of complications due to the cancer he'd been battling for a year.
Brian Daley was a Vietnam veteran, a great writer, and a great guy. We at Del Rey miss him.
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Brian with his Dad Charles & big brother David. |
Information on Brian
Daley
(a letter to a young fan, Jacob)
by Lucia St. Clair Robson
Brian was born in Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey on Dec. 22, 1947. A blizzard kept him and his mother at the hospital over Christmas, and the nurses sang "Away in a Manger" to them.
His middle name is Charles. He grew up in Rockleigh, NJ. His mother's name was Myra and his father's name was Charles. He has an older brother, David, and a younger sister, also named Myra. He had no children of his own, but he was always great with his two nieces and four nephews. He was a big kid himself, and the funniest, smartest person I ever met in my life.
He went to Nathan Hale Elementary School in Norwood, NJ, and a consolidated High School - Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, NJ.
Brian loved to read, drive his '74 Corvette Stingray, spend summers with me on Martha's Vineyard, and travel to wild and exotic places like the jungles of Guatemala and Mexico, and the mountains of Nepal.
He said he
wanted to write from an early age, about third grade. He also read a LOT
of science fiction as a kid, and that inspired him.
After he graduated from high school in 1965 he joined the army and went to Vietnam for a year's tour of duty. Then he went to Berlin, Germany.
After the army he went to Jersey City State College, majoring in media. While attending college and working as a waiter at a local steak house, he also wrote his first novel, Doomfarers of Coromande. Del Rey Books accepted it and started him on his writing career. The editor picked Brian's manuscript out of the "slush" pile (unsolicited manuscripts) because it was the most neatly typed, but it wasn't accepted right away. The editor made Brian do a lot of re-writing.
When the first STAR WARS movie came out Brian saw it, and he was elated. He said he came out of the theater fundamentally changed. His editor asked which character he would like to write about for a movie-related novel. Brian said he picked Han Solo because Han was the only one who made a moral decision... he started out on the wrong side of the law, but joined with the good guys. And to tell you the truth, Brian was a whole lot like Han, a maverick.
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I met him at the 13th Baltimore Science Fiction convention in 1979, and was totally charmed by him.
As you probably know, he died of cancer in February of 1996. He had just turned 49. He wrote the adaptation for National Public Radio drama THE RETURN OF THE JEDI while he was undergoing chemotherapy. He died at our house in Maryland the night the Jedi radio cast was toasting him at their wrap party, having finished the taping of the shows that day.
When his best friend Jim and I posted the notice of his death, messages began coming in from all over the world. The gist of them was that his passing created a "disturbance in the Force."
All the best,
Lucia Robson
| "Inspiration is my
specialty." Life goes on, and if you lose sight of that, sweetheart, you're asking to be dealt out." "I'm a guy with a hot ship and places to go." Regrets were a waste of time. From Han Solo at Star's End |
"The sucker quotient never goes
down." "We'll blow up that bridge when we come to it." "We're just going to have to give up wine, women and song. I vote we start with song." From Fall of the White Ship Avatar |
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Instead, Mason pointed to Boon's Trans-Bourne style caftan, which was a
varicolored as two palette fish locked in combat. " How many
innocent fruit cocktails died to make that party dress, Eisley?" "What's your plan?" Ghost asked Spume as nonchalantly as if inquiring how his scalp follicle regen was holding up. "Sounds like somebody doing sea-monster birdcalls underwater," a tech summed it up. Fitting it to its unorthodox launch vehicle and preparing the jerry-rig to Quant's specifications opened whole new worlds of beat-the-clock kludging. They shook rattles, clashed cymbals, and beat drums; they slugged down gooner, pyro, sot-mead, and twenty other kinds of local throat exfoliant. From GammaLAW Broken Country
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