Jeff VanderMeer (1968 - ?) spent his childhood in Pennsylvania, the Fiji Islands, France, and Mongolia. His father Robert, an insect taxidermist, and his mother Penelope, a graveyard performance artist, traveled constantly for a variety of reasons, some nefarious. A 1986 graduate of Ulan Bator University’s School of Writing, where he studied under the great fiction mystic Jugderdemidiyn Gurragchaa, VanderMeer drifted through several professions—instigator, landrician, maniacist, English instructor, opera singer’s assistant, and dog care professional—before settling down to publish his first fiction, The Book of Frog (1991). Due to its international success, he was able to take up writing full-time.
After appearances in a number of notable periodicals and a famous “call to arms” aimed at complacent writers of fantastical fiction (rudely received), VanderMeer published his second book, Lyric of the Highway Mariner (1992). Although popular, Lyric failed to capture the public imagination. Little is known of VanderMeer’s movements during the next four years, a few random sightings doing nothing to dispel the mystery. A French tourist claimed he saw VanderMeer in Samarkand in July of 1993. On the 10th of August 1994, the American Embassy in Uzbekhistan received a garbled cell phone call from a man claiming to be VanderMeer, asking for what sounded like an “emergency shipment of paper.” A traveling priest saw VanderMeer in Timbuktu in October of 1994 and asked him to autograph his worn copy of The Book of Frog, but the man the priest approached angrily denied being VanderMeer. Further VanderSightings in Cairo, and Sydney appear to be erroneous.
In 1996, VanderMeer resurfaced in Tallahassee, Florida, recently married, sporting dual degrees in fungi and cephalopod studies from Florida State University. When questioned by an interviewer from Modern Fantasy Studies, VanderMeer refused to explain his absence, but indicated that new fictions would be forthcoming. Indeed, Dradin, In Love and a story collection, The Book of Lost Places, appeared in that very year.
Throughout 1997-98, VanderMeer abandoned writing for a career in the field of cephalopod studies. His controversial findings on the Florida Freshwater Squid were published in the journal Mollusca in 1998 and, coupled with a paper entitled “The Empirical Evidence for the Squid-Fungi Connection,” firmly entrenched him on the “exciting lunatic fringe” of both disciplines, as reported in an article published by Scientific American.
However, bored by science and thwarted in an attempt to join the professional racquetball circuit by an injury suffered while swerving to avoid squashing a bullfrog, VanderMeer returned to writing for good. According to his wife, Ann, VanderMeer wrote for 18 or 19 hours a day from January 1999 until July 2001. The results of this intense flurry of writing activity are, of course, now widely known: six novels, publication to be staggered every three months as part of an extended PR campaign by Wildside’s new U.S. imprint Hoegbotton & Sons, the first novel published in May 2002 to acclaim and respectable sales. A trip to New York City to meet with his agent Howard Morhaim culminated in a very public breakfast at Martha’s Vineyard with Paul Auster, John Irving, and a vacationing Martin Amis. A series of readings in major cities also attracted favorable media attention, a photograph of VanderMeer and his wife appearing in Entertainment Weekly.
However, in late October 2003, on the eve of the publication of this very edition, VanderMeer disappeared from his house. He left no note. He did not confide in his wife. The only clue: the galleys of the four main novellas included in this collection, found on his work desk, cut into sentence-sized sections and profoundly rearranged—pieces of “Transformation” stuck together with “Strange Case,” pages from “Dradin” inserted into “The Early History.” The purpose of these juxtapositions remains a mystery, although his wife believes that VanderMeer was attempting to communicate in some new and arcane manner. Regardless, VanderMeer remained missing. The only evidence of any kind as to his whereabouts is the photo accompanying this bio note, taken by the owner of a bookstore in Prague. Although the owner claims the photograph is of VanderMeer, experts who have examined it cannot conclusively identify the silhouette as the author in question. Wildside Press would appreciate receiving any information about VanderMeer’s whereabouts, although no cash reward is being offered.