John Phillip Backus: American science fiction, adventure fiction, and children’s fiction writer and storyteller. Author of the After The Fall post-apocalyptic series, Jen of Earth – The Dorian Chronicles; Spirit of the Rainforest, The Wilderness Chronicles; Fireside Tales of High Adventure in the Far North Country, and creator of the Happy Hippo, Mean Wigglin, and It’s Everybody’s Wire children’s tales. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 30th, 1952 to Donald Eugene Backus and Mary Aideena (Lee) Backus, as the second of six children of Scotch-English and Native American descent. In the Author’s Forward in Hunter – After The Fall, Backus states:
“Throughout my lifetime, many individuals have influenced my love of the language and of books, not least of whom were my parents. My father, Donald, was a voracious sci-fi and adventure fiction reader. On weekend afternoons, he could often be found relaxing on the couch with his nose in a dog-eared pulp paperback, perhaps by Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert A. Heinlein, Louis L’amour, or H. G. Wells, and boasting some sort of heroic cover art––likely by Frank Frazetta, or one of his counterparts––depicting John Carter of Mars, one of the Sacketts, or Tarzan, smashing his way through hordes of enemies, blade, blaster, or six shooter in one hand and damsel in distress in the other.
My mother, Mary, cherished the more civilized, classic fiction, instilling in me a great love for such books at an early age––books she considered as doorways to a wide variety of experiences, adventures, and ideas––and which I accessed through the offerings of Lewis Carroll, James Clavell, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Mark Twain and Jules Verne to name a few. She introduced me to the wonder of libraries, bookmobiles, and natural history museums, and taught me to respect, nurture, and appreciate the magic of the written word, as well as the beauty and grandeur of our natural world. To my parents, who, by example, imparted their varied literary passions to an impressionable young mind growing up in the American Midwest in the 1950’s, I am truly grateful.”
Three Days of the Living Challenged
The Living Challenged or Three Days of the Living Challenged, is a graphic novel which has fun in the zombie genre. It’s a story about the undead who save the world. Zombies saving the world you scream in disbelief. Yes, zombies save the world. Well, of course there has to be a zombie apocalypse first.
Three Days of the Living Challenged is a mixed color/black & white graphic novel, being published online for everyone, which explores the human condition through the point of view of our living challenged hero Marc. It looks at the crazy things people do for eternal life, for money and control over the ultimate prize, the world. Through humor, poking fun at big business and the power of social networking, Three Days of the Living Challenged takes a walk on the zombie side and looks at what we would do with our world if given the chance for eternal life, or is that eternal death?
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