Arthur Herzog (1927-2010)

Arthur Herzog, author of The Swarm, died on 26 May at a Southampton, New York, hospital from complications following a stroke. He was 83.

He was born in Manhattan on 6 April 1927, the eldest son of songwriter Arthur Herzog Jr. and his wife Elizabeth Lindsay "Bunny" (nee Dayton). Raised in Tucson, Arizona, he attended Arizona University and received a B.A. from Stanford University in 1950. After serving in the U.S. Navy (1945-46), he returned to New York and received a M.A. in English literature from Columbia University in 1956. He worked in the Far East as an evaluator for the Peace Corps. In the mid-1950s he was an editor for Fawcett Publications.

After writing non-fiction articles for Esquire, True, Harper's and Nation, he produced a monthlyu series of interviews for IBM's Think magazine and, over a period of a year, wrote 18 articles for the New York Times Magazine. He turned down a job on the magazine, instead travelling to Angola to cover the Angolan uprising led by Holden Roberto.

Herzog wrote a number of non-fiction books before turning to novels, his first, The Swarm, about killer African bees migrating through South America into the United States. The novel was filmed in 1978 with Michael Caine in the lead role. His third novel, Orca, was filmed by Dino D. Laurentis, whilst I.Q.83, about a genetics team which creates a virus which reduces everyone's IQ, is in development by DreamWorks.

Herzog was married six times and is survived by his latest wife, Leslie Mandel-Herzog, a son from an earlier marriage and three grandchildren.

Novels
The Swarm. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1974; London, Heinemann, 1974.
Earthsound. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1975; London, Heinemann, 1975.
Orca. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1976; London, Pan Books, 1977.
Heat. New American Library, 1976; London, Heinemann, 1977; revised, Tudor Books, 1989.
I.Q.83. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1977; London, Heinemann, 1978.
Make Us Happy. New York, Crowell, 1978.
Glad to be Here. New York, Crowell, 1979.
Aries Rising. New York, Richard Marek, 1980; London, Heinemann, 1981.
The Craving. Dell, 1982.
L.S.I.T.T.. New York, Arbor House, 1984; as Takeover, Berkley, 1987.
Gone But Not Forgotten, with Patricia Fox-Sheinwold. New York, HarperCollins Children's Books, 2003.
Imortalon. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2003.
The Village Buyers. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2003.
Icetopia. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2004.
The Town That Moved to Mexico. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2004.
The Third State. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2005.
Polar Swap. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse Star, 2008.

Collections
Body Parts. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2005.
Beyond Sci-Fi. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse, 2007.

Non-fiction
Smoking and the Public Interest, with others. Mount Vernon, NY, Consumers Union, 1963.
The War-Peace Establishment. New York, Harper & Row, 1965.
The Church Trap. New York, Macmillan, 1968.
McCarthy for President. New York, Viking, 1969.
The B.S. Factor: The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1973.
Vesco: From Wall Street to Castro's Cuba. The rise, fall and exile of white collar crime. New York, Doubleday, 1987.
How to Write Almost Everything Better. Carlton, 1987; revised as How to Write Almost Everything Better—and Faster, New York, Carlton, 1995.
The Woodchipper Murder. New York, Henry Holt, 1989.
17 Days, the Katie Beers Story. New York, HarperCollins, 1993.
A Murder in Our Town. Bloomington, IN, iUniverse Star, 2007.

(* Photo from Electron Press authors' web page.)