IN WHAT MUST BE a nearly unprecedented display of loyalty (unless there is a darker explanation), all of Albert E(dward) Cowdrey’s (1933–) more than forty short stories have been published exclusively in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The first, “The Lucky People,” appeared in the February 1968 issue under the pseudonym Chet Arthur.
Born in New Orleans, Cowdrey received his B.A. from Tulane University, then an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. He served in the U.S. Army from 1957 to 1959, then in the Army Reserves from 1960 to 1963. He has written numerous histories of the army, including The Delta Engineers: A History of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in the New Orleans District (1971), A City for the Nation: The Army Engineers and the Building of Washington, D. C., 1790–1967 (1979), and Fighting for Life: American Military Medicine in World War II (1994). His first published book was Elixir of Life (1965), a historical novel set in New Orleans. His single science fiction novel, Crux (2004), tells of the resettling on space colonies by Earth’s survivors in the twenty-fifth century after the devastating wars of the twenty-first century in which twelve billion people died. Cowdrey’s novella “Queen for a Day,” which appeared in the October/November 2001 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.
“Death Must Die” was originally published in the November/December 2010 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.