Algirdas Jonas Budrys (picture ©William Shunn) was born on January 9, 1931, in Königsberg, East Prussia. His father was consul general of the exiled Lithuanian government and in 1936 his family found sanctuary in the U.S.A., where he lived for the rest of his life.

A science fiction fan since his childhood, Algis Budrys studied at the University of Miami and at Columbia University in New York, where he started his first writing experiments.

The first science fiction story Algis Budrys published was “The High Purpose” in 1952. During that year he started working as an editor and manager for science fiction publishers Gnome Press and Galaxy Science Fiction. Maybe it was because of those tasks that Algis Budrys was prolific mostly in short fiction and only in 1954 he published his first novel “False Night”, which he later expanded and in 1961 became “Some Will Not Die”.

Algis Budrys’ most famous novel is perhaps “Who?”, set in a future where there’s still a cold war it has a scientist who gets badly wounded in a facility close to the borders with the Soviet bloc. Taken by the communists he’s released to the Americans after many months but he’s turned into a faceless cyborg. The novel plays on the ambiguity of the man’s real identity: is he actually the scientist or is he a spy?

In 1959 Algis Budrys published “The Falling Torch” which talks about humans who try to free the Earth from the aliens that invaded it. This novel shows a parallel with the situation of the Soviet-occupied Lithuania.

In 1961 Algis Budrys published “Rogue Moon” (later republished as “The Death Machine”) which talks about the discovery and the investigation of an alien maze on the Moon.

His 1977 novel “Michaelmas” is a science-fiction and political thriller that in various ways foresees today’s Internet’s importance.

In his last novel “Hard Landing” published in 1993 Algis Budrys tells the story of four aliens shipwrecked on Earth who try to survive keeping a low profile but everything changes when one of them sells their technological secrets.

Algis Budrys died from cancer on June 9, 2008.

Psychological development is very important in Algis Budrys’ stories: action is generally limited and it just leads to consequences on the characters’ minds. His attention to the characters’ development brought him the critics’ favor, not always the general public appreciation yet his stories are interesting to read for that very reason.