His third novel, Man of Earth (1958), was Budrys' least favourite ('the less said about that book the better') and in 1957 he returned to editorial work, first on the science-fiction magazine Venture and then with Royal Publications. A movie version (1973) starred Elliott Gould and Trevor Howard.

Budrys' first novel, False Night (1954), was savagely abridged by its publisher and his second, Who?, found itself in limbo due to the publisher's financial difficulties, eventually appearing years later. In 1953, a third story appeared in Galaxy, where he spent an unhappy few months as assistant to the influential science-fiction writer and editor Horace Gold. In November of that year, he made a double debut with two stories, The High Purpose, published in the magazine Astounding, and Walk to the World, in Space Science Fiction.

Their temporary exile became permanent when East Prussia was absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.īudrys attended the University of Miami and Columbia University in New York before briefly joining Gnome Press as an assistant editor in 1952. His father, Jonas, had been consul-general for Lithuania in Königsberg, which they had fled to escape the Nazis. Born in Königsberg, East Prussia, in 1931, he arrived in America with his parents in 1936. Given Budrys' background, it is no surprise that identity was an enduring concern. In Michaelmas (1977), an alien resurrects an astronaut believed dead and the hero meets an imperfect replica of himself. In Rogue Moon, published two years later, trips to Earth's satellite require a matter-transporter to create a duplicate of the traveller, who dies time and again as he explores an alien construction, each death allowing the next version of the explorer to journey a little further. With his body rebuilt and his face permanently hidden by a metal mask, he is returned to the west, where nobody can be sure if he is the same man. In Who?, first published in 1958, Lucas Martino, an American scientist vital to national security, is maimed by a laboratory accident that allows him to fall into Russian hands. The best work of the American science-fiction author Algis 'AJ' Budrys, who has died aged 77, often questions the notion of identity.

Morning Song by Dean Wesley Smith