A Somewhat Theoretical Recollection of the Past
Gary W. Shockley grew up in the farm country of Northeastern Indiana. He majored in electrical engineering at IU-Purdue University with the long-term goal of becoming an astronaut, but dropped out after two years.
Thereafter he flirted with a succession of employment opportunities, first in a small print shop operating a seriously demented linotype machine, then in a fiberglass factory dumping bags of asbestos into mixers. At last, with an intuitive stroke of genius, he scrawled “computer programmer” across the top of his resume to avoid further glissades into menial labor and ensure employment at such illustrious companies as Burroughs, Control Data, and Data General, each of which — in the wake of his departure — succumbed to bankruptcy or buyout.
Along the way he took hiatuses to attend the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, to live for a spell in Eugene, Oregon (where he met his future wife), and to win a Writers of the Future Gold Award. In truth, he has spent much of his adult life on hiatus, enjoying the fruits of the garden out back, undaunted by the fact that there is no garden, no out back, and no fruits whatsoever save those that grow in the mind.
He has suffered many setbacks in his careerless careen. In 1990 he entered a psychiatric facility to be treated for a nitrogen fixation. In 1994, again on hiatus (this time living among the redwoods of Mendocino County), he experienced a remarkable succession of epiphanies, forty-seven in number, all in the space of a month, none of which amounted to anything but which, by their magic number, convinced him to return to civilization.
He currently lives in Mountain View, CA with his wife, Lori Ann White, herself an award-winning writer of similar background.
