Richard Setlowe (1933 – 25 August 2022) was an American author and journalist best known for his suspense novels, which have enjoyed critical and academic recognition. His early career as a Navy officer in the Far East and a fascination with technology inform his thrillers. The Brink, published in 1976, was acclaimed as "the classic novel of the Era of Undeclared War" and was a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for First Novels.Flynn, William (1976). "Books: An excellent novel on the immorality of war", San Francisco Examiner. The Experiment (1980) and The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell (1984) venture into the realm of science fiction and the supernatural, while exploring deep personal themes. With The Black Sea (1991), a prescient narrative about a lone Navy frigate's encounter with terrorists, the novelist Clive Cussler commented, "Setlowe has to be the finest adventure novelist in the country today".Cussler, Clive (1991). Web. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/richard-setlowe/black-sea.htm Retrieved 15 September 2010. The Sexual Occupation of Japan (1999) was lauded by English professor and novelist Les Standiford as "rivaling Michael Crichton in topicality, le Carre in authority, and Martin Cruz Smith in emotional depth". Setlowe's five novels to date have been translated into a dozen languages.
Background Setlowe was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York during the height of the Depression. His father Ernest quit law school to become an actor, and a playwright, and met his future wife Marion, a dancer, while performing in the 1927 production of the Broadway musical Good News. With a growing family, Setlowe's father abandoned his theatre ambitions and went to work in a family furniture manufacturing business.
They moved to Morristown, Tennessee, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. The family lived there for just a few years, but the young New Yorker's experiences were deeply affecting. While his novels explore the Pacific Rim from California to Asia, major characters are often Southerners.
Ernest Setlowe encouraged his son Rick's creative interests. In high school on Long Island, teachers were less encouraging. Setlowe's lowest grades were English and languages, but his math and science won him a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York to study engineering. He transferred in his junior year on a Navy scholarship to the University of Southern California. As part of his training, each summer he embarked as a midshipman aboard warships that made ports of call in Europe. Wanting a broader education, Rick switched majors and earned a B.S. degree in social studies along with a regular commission as a Navy officer.
Ensign Setlowe volunteered for Navy flight school with the ambition of becoming a fighter pilot. But after a year of flight training in Florida, in a budget cutback the Navy reassigned him to the USS Midway as an operations officer and flight controller in the Far East. The aircraft carrier was the flagship during the international crisis in the Taiwan Straits in 1958. Setlowe disembarked from the Midway in San Francisco with the material for his first novels in his sea bag.
Early career Prior to becoming a full-time novelist, Rick Setlowe worked as a journalist, first as a staff writer for the San Francisco Examiner, then a correspondent for Time magazine. In San Francisco, he also wrote the "Babylon by the Bay" column for Variety and reviewed drama, movies and music. Subsequently, he transferred to Los Angeles, as the "Show Biz Bible's" primary film critic.
He also served as Press and TV Director for the first National Air Races staged in Reno, Nevada, in 1964, drawing on his Navy flight experience. Setlowe subsequently worked in television news in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
During this time he wrote his first novel, The Brink, but the Vietnam War made publishing any fiction about the military extremely controversial. At one point, he received a long letter from a major editor at Doubleday apologizing for not publishing the novel.
Setlowe successfully ventured from journalism into motion pictures, in the early 1970s at ABC Pictures as Vice President of Creative Affairs. The feature films produced during his tenure included several critically significant pictures: the comedy Kotch (1971), starring Best Actor Oscar winner Walter Matthau, with Jack Lemmon in his directorial debut (Academy Award nominations also for Film Editing, Best Song, and Sound); Sam Peckinpah's controversial thriller Straw Dogs (1971), starring Dustin Hoffman; and the Bob Fosse (Best Director) musical Cabaret (1972), starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in Oscar-winning performances (the film won 8 of 10 Oscars for which it was nominated). Kotch and Cabaret also garnered back-to-back Writer's Guild Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1972 and 1973, respectively.
Richard Setlowe is honored in Who's Who In Entertainment.
As his career and writing developed, he did post-graduate work at Stanford and Charles University in Prague, eventually returning to USC to earn a Masters of Professional Writing with Phi Kappa Phi honors. For 15 years, Setlowe taught in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.
He and his wife Beverly lived in Los Angeles, the setting of his forthcoming sixth novel. On occasion he wrote articles for the Los Angeles Times and Variety.See: Beck, Spencer J. (1993). The Variety History of Show Business, New York: Harry N. Abrams, pp. 143–49.
Major works and commentary
Novels The Brink (Arthur Fields Books, New York, 1976 ) The Experiment (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1980 ) The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell (Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1984 ) The Black Sea (Ticknor and Fields, New York, 1991 ) The Sexual Occupation of Japan (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1999 )
The Brink Setlowe's first novel, The Brink, was critically acclaimed as "the classic novel of the Era of Undeclared War" and was a finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for First Novels. It draws upon his own experience aboard the U.S.S. Midway during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. John Chancellor, the late NBC News anchorman, noted, "The Brink is a vivid and frightening description of something very few people have ever experienced: actually taking the nuclear bombs to the brink of war".Chancellor, John (1976). The New York Times Book Review.
This Doomsday scenario is drawn out in vivid counterpoint to the human dimensions, which portrays the social ferment of marital tedium, love and sexual profligacy in military life. The Brink is a post Cold War thriller that has been favorably compared with one of the best books of the genre, James Michener's Bridges of Toko-Ri.Axelsson, Arne (1990). Restrained response: American novels of the cold war and Korea, 1941–1962. Greenwood Press, p. 128. Setlowe retrospectively incorporates his personal experiences into his narrative, but The Brink also reflects some of the pervasive social discontent of the post-Vietnam War period during which the book was written. The premise for The Brink is contextualized in well-documented historical events—the strident posturing of world leaders such as Nikita Khrushchev, sensational headlines taken directly from the ominous intonations of President Eisenhower and General Dulles, and the clinical calculus of now-declassified reports on the crisis."Foreign Relations of the United States 1958-1960, Volume XIX, China: Press Release Office of the Spokesman", U.S. Department of State. Web. (12 August 1996). http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/frus/summaries/960812_FRUS_XIX_1958-60.html Retrieved 15 November 2010.Zhang, Shu Guang (1992). "The Second Taiwan Straits Crisis", Deterrence and strategic culture: Chinese-American confrontations, 1948-1958. Ithaca: Cornell University, p. 255, n119. One study prepared by a joint committee of the Defense Dept., State Dept. and CIA at the direction of President Eisenhower developed possible limited war contingencies in defense of the Offshore [Taiwanese] Islands, but quickly arrived at a consensus assessment: "…the Joint Chiefs, in particular Air Force General Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, felt that the use of atomic weapons was inevitable and the planning proceeded on that assumption" and "the study proceeded on the assumption that a Chinese Communist move against the Offshore Islands would involve aerial as well as artillery interdiction followed by American atomic attacks on mainland airfields".Halperin, M. H. (December 1996). "The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis: A Documented History (U), RM-4900-ISA (Abridged)", in Research Memorandum. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, pp. 57–58, n73.
The Experiment Setlowe's second novel, The Experiment, published in 1980, is a medical science fiction thriller. The story of "a human Neptune in the grotto of marine science. And, more particularly, our imagination",Loynd, Ray (1980). "A human Neptune returns to the aquatic womb", Los Angeles Times. was a Literary Guild selection.[Book Review.] (1980). Literary Guild. Reproduced online from the original. Web. http://richardsetlowe.com/review-te-literary-guild/ Retrieved 12 September 2010. The New York Times review by Jack Sullivan praised "an underwater phantasmagoria, [that] delivers a welcome sense of wonder in the tradition of H. G. Wells's In The Abyss.Sullivan, Jack (1980). "Book Review: Ordinarily Fantastic", The New York Times. The renowned science fiction author and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, corresponded with Setlowe. The Experiment resonated with Clarke, who had a lifelong interest in the sea and diving. He respected the meticulous scientific research—Clarke had personally known several of the scientists cited—and commented on the novel's place in the sci-fi pantheon."Private correspondence from Arthur C. Clarke to Richard Setlowe." The motion picture rights to The Experiment were optioned by MGM, the producers of Clarke's iconic science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey; however, the film adaption never transpired.
The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell is a departure from the previous two novels. Published in 1984, the story weaves together multiple storylines and elements of love, war and occult genres into a ghost story suffused with smoldering passion, foreboding and suspense.
This second Literary Guild selection is, at one level, a classic gothic.Banks, Carolyn (29 May 1984). "Book World: The Allure of the Ghostly", The Washington Post. Reproduced online from the original. Web. http://www.richardsetlowe.com/review-thsb-washington-post/ Retrieved 12 September 2010. Yet, again drawing on his personal background, the author sets the story on a modern high-tech Navy base. "Those ships!" reviewed Caroline Banks in The Washington Post, "Richard Setlowe has made them—in part by juxtaposing them to the elegant 'pillared mansions of the senior officers along Walnut Avenue'—seem as sinister as the House of Usher. They are 'a great desolate armada—aircraft carriers, battle cruisers, assault transports, destroyers and submarines—all packed stem to stern in tight rows along the length of a narrow bleak pier.' " As in The Experiment, Setlowe creates a convincing scientific framework for the supernatural.
The Black Sea