Jon Bing (1944–2014) was an important Norwegian speculative fiction writer and professor of law. Born in the town of Tønsberg, Bing moved to Oslo to attend university, and there in 1966 met Tor Åge Bringsværd, with whom he would collaborate and whose career would be intertwined with his own for many decades. Both men were inveterate science fiction readers in a country where science fiction literally did not exist, and in 1966 they founded the still-active Oslo University science fiction club Aniara and its fanzine. Almost from the beginning, however, both Bing and Bringsværd preferred to use the term fabelprosa—best translated as, literally, “fairy-tale fictions,” or, idiomatically, “speculative fiction”—for their endeavors, rather than science fiction.
In 1967, they made their joint debut as professional writers with a short story collection, Rundt solen i ring (“Ring Around the Sun”), the first book by any Norwegian author to be labeled “science fiction.” In the same year, they also published their first jointly edited anthology of translated science fiction, Og jorden skal beve (“And the World Will Shake”). Their first play, Å miste eit romskib (“To Lose a Spaceship,” 1969), was performed at Det Norske Teatret in Oslo, the Norwegian national theater. In 1970, Bing published a first novel, as did Bringsværd, and in the same year they dramatized four science fiction short stories that aired on Norwegian television. With Tor Åge Bringsværd, Bing would publish several story collections; numerous stage, radio, and television plays; and almost twenty science fiction anthologies. On his own, Bing wrote many more novels as well as short stories.
The two would continue to collaborate, but their paths began to diverge when Bing, who studied law, went on to become a full professor at Oslo University, a visiting professor at King’s College in London, and an honorary doctor of Stockholm University and the University of Copenhagen as well as an internationally leading authority on legal informatics; as an academic, Bing published almost twenty books and innumerable essays and papers, in time becoming the first chairman of the Norwegian computer integrity council; chairman of the Norwegian Film Council, the EU Council Committee on Data Processing, and Arts Council Norway; and a member of many other expert committees. In 1999, Bing was made a knight of the Norwegian Order of St. Olav. Perhaps for this reason, Bing published only around fifty volumes of fiction, while Bringsværd has published close to two hundred.
They had already, in 1967, talked the leading Norwegian publisher Gyldendal into launching a paperback line of science fiction, which they edited and which continued until 1980, releasing a total of fifty-five titles; this was where authors like Brian W. Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Stanisław Lem, Clifford D. Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, and Kurt Vonnegut were all first published in Norwegian. Since the series also included several debut Norwegian writers, it is reasonable to say not only that Bing and Bringsværd founded Norwegian fandom but that they went on to create the Norwegian science fiction field.
Although Bringsværd and Bing worked together for almost fifty years, there were clear literary differences between them. Both were civil libertarians, but Bing had a more generous attitude toward a central legislative power and system of justice, while Bringsværd characterized himself as a left-wing anarchist. Bringsværd’s science fiction in English translation has seemed to confirm this distinction in its very form, as he appears to be a more experimental writer than Bing in terms of story structure. (His work is well worth seeking out.)
Bing’s “The Owl of Bear Island” is a sly and very unique tale of alien contact that first appeared in English in 1986.