Homer Nearing

Homer C. Nearing Jr (April 15, 1915 – May 29, 2004) was an American professor and author of mathematically themed short fiction, often under the byline "H. Nearing Jr.".[1]

Fiction and poetry

Nearing is best known for his humorous Professor Cleanth Penn Ransom series[2] published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the early 1950s,[3] with the protagonist being a surreal head of the mathematics department at Uh-Uh University.[4] One of Nearing's Professor Ransom short stories "The Maladjusted Classroom" was reprinted in the 1954 edition of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction[5] while "The Cerebrative Psittacoid" was reprinted in Best SF, edited by Edmund Crispin.[6][7] His story "The Mathematical Voodoo," about a teacher struggling to teach math to students,[8] was reprinted in Fantasia Mathematica, a 1958 anthology on mathematical topics compiled by Clifton Fadiman.[9] A sequel featuring Professor Ransom entitled "The Hermeneutical Doughnut" was published in Fadiman's sequel anthology "The Mathematical Magpie".

Seven of the Professor Ransom stories from F&SF were also reprinted alongside four new stories[2][10] in The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom, released in 1954 by Doubleday.[11][12][13][14] The collection functioned as a "consistently funny"[15] fix-up novel about the attempts by a pair of professors to create a union between science and the arts[13] by experimenting with different strange devices.[16] The book was reprinted in paperback in 1969 by Curtis Books and rereleased in 2015 by Singularity&Co, with a new review in Amazing Stories calling the stories "delightfully whimsical."[17]

Nearing also published poetry in The New Yorker.[14][18]

Academic career

In addition to writing fiction, Nearing was a published expert on historical English poetry and on British traditions concerning Julius Caesar. He was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and as an undergraduate competed on the university's varsity swimming team,[14] earning a letter in 1934, 1935, and 1936.[19] After earning bachelor's and master's degrees,[14] he completed his doctorate there in 1944, with the dissertation English Historical Poetry, 1599-1641.[20]

After working as a schoolteacher at Perkiomen School and the Episcopal Academy and as a manager at a shipbuilding company, he became a professor of English at Pennsylvania Military College,[14] which became Widener University in 1972. The Homer C. Nearing, Jr. Distinguished Professorship at Widener University is named for him.[21]

Personal life

Nearing married Alice Eleanor Jones, who like Nearing earned a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1944 and wrote speculative fiction. They had two children.[22]

Bibliography
  • English Historical Poetry, 1599–1641 (1945)
  • The Sinister Researches of C.P. Ransom (Doubleday, 1954, 217 pp.) Dust jacket design by Edward Gorey.

References
  1. "Obituary for H(omer) Nearing, Jr." Locus Magazine, June 2006, issue 545, page 82.
  2. Anatomy of Wonder 4: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction edited by Neil Barron, R.R. Bowker, 1995, page 181.
  3. Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, 3rd edition, by James Gunn, McFarland 2018, page 199
  4. Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia by Brian Stableford, Taylor & Francis, 2006, page 287.
  5. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Third series, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, Doubleday and Company, 1954, page 134.
  6. Best SF edited by Edmund Crispin, Faber and Faber, 1962, page 214.
  7. "Something To Read" by Kenneth F. Slater, Nebula Science Fiction No. 12., April 1955.
  8. "Review: The Mathematical Voodoo by H. Nearing, Jr.," The Guide to Supernatural Fiction by Everett F. Bleiler, Kent State University Press, 1983, page 68.
  9. "Review of Fantasia Mathematica" by Allen Stenger, Mathematical Association of America, published 01/22/2019.
  10. The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Third series, edited by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, Doubleday and Company, 1954, page 152.
  11. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature edited by Douglas Menville and Mary A. Burgess, Wildside Press, 1979, page 382.
  12. The Best Science-fiction Stories and Novels edited by Everett Franklin Bleiler and Thaddeus Eugene Dikty, Advent: Publishers, 1955, page 536.
  13. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z edited by Peter Nicholls, Granada, 1979, page 421.
  14. "Nearing's first book published". The Dome. Vol. 8, no. 5. April 9, 1954. p. 1.
  15. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z edited by Peter Nicholls, Granada, 1979, page 299.
  16. Publishers Weekly, volume 165, page 1376, 1954.
  17. "Scide Splitters: The Sinister Researches of C. P. Ransom by H. Nearing, Jr." by David Kilman, Amazing Stories, Sept. 16, 2015.
  18. An Index to Literature in The New Yorker: Volumes XVI-XXX, 1940-1955 by Robert Owen Johnson, Scarecrow Press, 1969, page 26.
  19. "All-Time Penn Men's Swimming Letterwinners". Men's Swimming & Diving. Penn Athletics. June 10, 2005. Retrieved December 27, 2021.
  20. Catalog entry for English Historical Poetry, 1599-1641 in the Pennsylvania State University library, accessed 2021-12-27
  21. Reyes, Jessica (May 19, 2020). "Distinguished Professorship will Support Undergraduate Research in English". Widener Newsroom. Widener University. Retrieved December 27, 2021.
  22. Jones's biography from Yaszek, Lisa, ed. (2018). The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin. Library of America. ISBN 9781598535853.
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