About
J. NEIL SCHULMAN
J. NEIL SCHULMAN is the author of two Prometheus award-winning
novels, Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza,
short fiction, nonfiction, and screenwritings, including the
CBS Twilight Zone episode "Profile in Silver."
In 1987 he founded SoftServ Publishing, the first
publishing company to distribute paperless bookstm by bestselling authors such as Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg via personal computers and modems and in 1996 he founded and now operates
Pulpless.Comtm, which is distributing the works of bestselling
authors such as Piers Anthony through the World Wide Web. Pulpless.Comtm also
electronically distributes all of Schulman's own books. He has been recognized as a
pioneer in electronic publishing as far back as the January 18, 1989 Wall Street Journal, which wrote "J. Neil Schulman has seen the future, and there are no books"; and more recently explicitly named as a pioneer in this field by the New York Times web site.
He's lectured on electronic publishing
for Connected Education/the New School for Social Research in
New York, and Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. He's
currently at work on a third novel, Escape From Heaven.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction's article about
Schulman calls his books, "very influential in the LIBERTARIAN-SF
movement" and says his books "are motivated by a combination
of moral outrage and a fascination with the hardware of politics
and economics."
During 1992, he hosted The J. Neil Schulman Show, a
program of interviews and music, on the American Radio Network's
Kaleidascope program, and wrote frequent articles for
the Los Angeles Times and Orange
County Register opinion pages which were reprinted in
numerous major newspapers across the country.
Schulman is a popular speaker on a variety of topics, having delivered talks at World Science Fiction conventions and other conferences, and a frequent
talk show guest coast-to-coast on subjects including his books and screenwriting, electronic publishing, and political issues, for such hosts as Dennis Prager, Michael Jackson, Oliver North, Gene Burns, and Barry Farber. He has been interviewed on CNN, was on ABC's World News Tonight as an expert on defensive use of firearms during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and debated one-on-one with Los Angeles
County Sheriff Sherman Block on UPN Channel 13 News Los Angeles
on the topic of the repeal of the federal "assault weapons"
ban. His writings on firearms have been used by witnesses on both sides of the gun-control debate in congressional hearings before the House Subcommittee on Crime. Schulman's writings have appeared in magazines and newspapers including Reader's Digest, National Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Reason Magazine, Liberty, Gun Week, The American Rifleman, The Lamp-Post, and The Journal of Social and Biological Structures. In addition to media already noted, Mr. Schulman has been written about in magazines and newspapers including USA Today, Shooting Times, Analog, and Byte Magazine,.
Schulman's first novel,
Alongside
Night (Crown hardcover 1979, Ace paperback 1982, Avon paperback
1987, SoftServ 1990, Pulpless.Comtm 1996),
a prophetic story of an America
beset by inflation and revolution, was endorsed by Anthony
Burgess and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and received widely
positive reviews, including the Los Angeles Times and Publisher's
Weekly. The novel, published in 1979, anticipated such 1980's
and 1990's problems as increased gang violence and homelessness,
economic chaos such as the 1980's stock market crash and S&L
crisis, and political trends such as the economic and political
unification of Europe. In 1989, Alongside
Night was entered into the "Prometheus Hall of Fame"
for classic works of fiction promoting liberty.
The Rainbow Cadenza (Simon &
Schuster hardcover 1983, New English library paperback 1984, Avon
paperback 1986, SoftServ 1989, Pulpless.Comtm 1996)
was his second novel, winning the 1984 Prometheus Award, and was the basis
for an all-classical-music LASERIUM concert which played for several
years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston. It's the story
of a young girl in the 22nd Century who must fight the sexual
exploitation of her era to pursue a career as a performer of
"lasegraphy," a classical form of visual music evolved
from the current laser shows. The book received favorable comments
from such diverse authors as psychologist/bestseller Nathaniel
Branden, British author Colin Wilson, Gregory Benford, and Robert A. Heinlein, who publicly praised it in front of a crowd at a 1983 meeting of the L-5 society. The book also got raves from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Poul Anderson in Reason Magazine, and Jeff Riggenbach in the San Jose Mercury-News.
Schulman also wrote the "Profile in Silver"
episode, exploring the JFK assassination, for The Twilight
Zone TV series on CBS, which was run three times
in network prime time in 1986 and 1987, and which can now be seen
in syndication. The outlines and first two drafts of the teleplay are included in
Schulman's latest book to be released on Pulpless.Comtm, Profile In Silver And Other Screenwritings.
The book also includes the bulk of Schulman's works written for the screen and commentaries about
his adventures and trials in the film industry.
Schulman is also author of the popular Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans
Own Guns (Synapse-Centurion hardcover 1994, Pulpless.Comtm 1996), which Charlton Heston called "the most cogent explanation
of the gun issue I have yet read." In Stopping Power, a collection of forceful,
dramatic, and often funny polemics (including four Los Angeles Times articles),
Schulman challenges the distortions and misinformation that pundits
ranging from network anchors to ill-informed doctors are
promoting about guns. The book received rave reviews from The Los Angeles Daily
News, and from talk-show hosts including Dennis Prager and Michael Jackson.
One chapter from Stopping Power was excerpted in National Review as
an article titled, "Medical Malpractice," then was chosen to be reprinted in the book Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society, Second, Edition, Edited by Eileen K. Daniel, (Dushkin Publishing Group/Brown & Benchmark
Publishers, 1996), as rebuttal to "Guns in the Household" by Jerome P.
Kassirer, MD, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
His latest book to see print, Self Control Not Gun Control (Synapse-Centurion hardcover 1995,
Pulpless.Comtm 1996), is Schulman's magnum
opus on both current controversies and timless questions, and he hits whatever he
targets with magnum force, whether it's guns, revolution, New Age thinking,
liberal hate speech, his vision of "The Coming Golden Age," or 226 words which
give us "The Meaning of Life." Dr. Walter E. Williams says of it, "Schulman
interestingly and insightfully raises a number of liberty-related issues that we
ignore at the nation's peril. His ideas are precisely those that
helped make our country the destination of those seeking liberty.
The book's title says it all: personal responsibility, not laws
and prohibitions, is the mark of a civil society."
His most recent book, The Frame of the Century?, asks the question, "Was O.J. Simpson framed for murder by his biggest fan?" In this work of speculative nonfiction, Schulman uses the tools of deductive logic, forensic microbiology, and analytical psychology to propose the theory that a long-time worshipper of both O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson, a substance-abusing ex-LAPD officer, might have murdered Nicole out of rejection and rage, and used his expert knowledge of forensics to frame O.J. Simpson for the crime. Prior to print publication, Schulman has released advance reading copies of The Frame of the Century? for free download on the World Wide Web, and in the first two months of availability since its release on May 21, 1997, over 4,000 copies were downloaded by interested readers. The book has received advance praise from Netsurfer Digest, which wrote, "The reasoning is compelling. The lack of official interest is disappointing. And Schulman's insight into character is damning. Read this, and see if it instills in you
reasonable doubt that OJ Simpson committed the murders most people believe he
did."
The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana (SoftServ, 1990, Pulpless.Comtm 1996)
collected Schulman's writings on an author who was not only particularly influential
on Schulman but also a friend for fifteen years, and features
Schulman's 25,000 word interview with Heinlein
for the New York Daily News, in 1973.
Schulman's first ventures into electronic publishing are documented in his two-volume electronic book,
Book Publishing in the 21st Century, which includes the transcript of the course he gave for
Connected Education/The New School for Social Research, as well as material from the SoftServ RoundTable he operated on GEnie and its successor, the SoftServ Paperless Book BBS.
His most-recent published short stories are "The Repossessed,"
the lead story in Adventures in the Twilight Zone, edited by Carol Serling
(Daw, 1995) and "Day of Atonement," in the libertarian shared-future anthology Free Space, edited by Brad Linaweaver and Ed Kramer, a hardcover from Tor Books published in July, 1997. Schulman's short story, "The Musician," a psychological
mystery about a violinist whose career takes a sudden bizarre
turn, was dramatized for Los Angeles radio, broadcast several
times in 1980 on Pacifica/ KPFK FM's "Hour 25"
show, read by the late Mike Hodel, and with classical violin accompaniment
by the author's father, Julius Schulman.
His latest short story, "When Freemen Shall Stand," is available on his personal World Wide Website,
The World According to J. Neil Schulman, along with a selection of his recent articles and poetry.
A complete download of J. Neil Schulman's eight published volumes, along with three collectible
autographed hardcovers, is now available from Pulpless.Comtm as The J. Neil Schulman Anthology.
In September, 1993, the Second Amendment
Foundation awarded Schulman the James Madison Award
for his Los Angeles Times article, "If Gun Laws Work,
Why Are We Afraid?" and in November, 1995, the 500,000-member
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms awarded
Schulman its Gun Rights Defender prize.
Schulman is also webmaster for the World Wide Web Gun Defense Clock, which uses the best criminological research on the use of firearms in self defense against criminals to calculate the number of gun defenses each year.
Last Updated August 3, 1997