Tim Sullivan (writer)

Sullivan's 2013 story "The Nambu Egg" received praise from the SF CrowsNest website: "'The Nambu Egg' by Tim Sullivan is definitely Science Fiction. It is set in the distant future when the Tachtrans Authority can beam people to a distant planet, Cet Four in this case. Adam Naraya has returned to Earth because he has a Nambu egg to sell to the head of a rich corporation, one Mr. Genzler. To tell more of the plot would be to ruin it for it's the kind of tale where things are slowly revealed. Rest assured that the length of this paragraph does not reflect the very high esteem I have for the story."

Sullivan's short story "Under Glass" has received much attention. Lois Tilton wrote, "This is a story of friendship and the duty we owe to our friends." Reviewer Sandra Scholes said in a review of the November/December 2011 The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction that the issue "gets straight to it with a tasty novelette, "Under Glass" by Tim Sullivan; who sees everything with a writer's vision of the future we have never known yet or at least until it is too late." Sam Tomaino, another reviewer of the same issue of F&SF, urgently wrote, "The fiction in the issue starts with "Under Glass" by Tim Sullivan... This was an imaginative, moving, wonderful novelette and one that will be on my Hugo short list for next year."

John Clute writes that Sullivan "concentrated for almost a decade on an acting career, though he began to publish short stories again in 2000."

After graduating from college, Sullivan lived for many years in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, Southern California. He has not married and has no children. In 2000, Sullivan moved to South Florida to care for his ailing mother who died in 2004. In 2003, he moved to South Miami, Florida to share a house with Fiona Kelleghan.

It was republished in German as Heisse Angst (Droemer Knaur, 1990), translated by Marcel Bieger. (ISBN 3-426-01836-5)

Sullivan began his career in film in a collaboration with S. P. Somtow, entitled The Laughing Dead (1989); Sullivan plays a priest losing his faith, Father O'Sullivan, who becomes possessed by a Mayan god of death. Throughout the 1990s, he scripted, directed and acted in several low-budget science fiction and horror films, most notably Twilight of the Dogs (1995) and Hollywood Mortuary (1998), both of which have become cult favorites.

Sullivan edited a horror anthology for Avon Books, Tropical Chills, in 1988. Sullivan also published his first novel, Destiny's End, in 1988. This science fiction novel was followed by The Parasite War in 1989, The Martian Viking in 1991, and Lords of Creation in 1992, and another horror anthology, Cold Shocks (Avon, 1991), among other books.

John Clute writes that Sullivan "began publishing sf with stories like "Tachyon Rag" ... "My Father's Head" ... and "The Rauncher Goes to Tinker Town" ... tales whose sophistication led to some disappointment when his first-published novels turned out to be three ties to the V Television series, a series of exercises in easy Paranoia set in an America taken over by Aliens... The published order of Sullivan's books was, however, deceptive, as his first-written novel, Destiny's End (1988), had suffered delays and modifications at the hands of the publisher to which it had first been contracted. The book proved to be a complexly moody depiction of humanity at the end of its tether in an array of Dying-Earth venues, as Secret Masters from the stars with quasimagical Technologies manipulate the course of events. Other sf of interest included The Parasite War (1989), which garishly intensifies the premises of V with a few scattered humans engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Aliens who have nearly destroyed the planet; The Martian Viking (1991), in which a prisoner escapes from Mars and roams space and time with stern but rowdy Vikings; and Lords of Creation (1992), which combines palaeontological fantasy including dinosaur eggs and another alien Invasion."

The Locus Index to Science Fiction: 1984–1998 described Tropical Chills as "Highly recommended."

The Locus Index to Science Fiction: 1984–1998 described Destiny's End as a "transcendental, philosophical space opera."

Many of his stories have been critically acknowledged and reprinted. His short story "Zeke," a tragedy about an extraterrestrial stranded on Earth, has been translated into German and was a finalist for the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Short Story. "Under Glass" (2011), a well-reviewed semi-autobiographical short story with occult hints, has been translated into Chinese and is the basis for a screenplay by director/actor Ron Ford. "Yeshua's Dog" (2013), similarly has been optioned for translation into Chinese.

He befriended Michael Dirda, a chief book reviewer for The Washington Post and, as a result of that friendship, in the 1980s and 1990s Sullivan wrote commissioned reviews of dozens of books for The Washington Post, the Washington Post Book World, and USA Today. Among the fiction and nonfiction he reviewed are included: Kathleen Ann Goonan's The Bones of Time; a review of a novel by Walter Jon Williams, Metropolitan, which Sullivan characterized as highly readable "due largely to pungent characterization and persuasive dialogue"; and Allen Steele's novel The Tranquillity Alternative (1995), which he praised in the same issue of Book World.

When Sullivan's father died in 1968, Sullivan and his mother moved to Lake Worth, Florida. Tim Sullivan briefly attended Miami Dade Community College. Later, while studying English literature at Florida Atlantic University, he made a lifelong friendship with Professor Robert A. Collins. Sullivan earned a bachelor's degree while at FAU. Sullivan helped Dr. Collins create what has become the prestigious International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA; originally called Swanncon in honor of fantasy author and former FAU professor Thomas Burnett Swann). Sullivan began but did not complete postgraduate education.

Sullivan lived in Florida from 1968 to 1983, then in Philadelphia, and in the Washington, D.C. area. He moved to southern California in 1988, where he lived for the next twelve years.

Tim Sullivan was born on June 9, 1948, in Bangor, Maine, the son of Charles Edward Sullivan, a United States Postal Service worker (born February 2, 1923), and Lillian Hope Fitzgerald Sullivan (b. March 31, 1924), a stay-at-home mother who raised their children, Charles ("Charlie") Edward Sullivan, Jr., and Timothy. Sullivan later wrote short stories about his father, including "Hawk on a Flagpole" (2000) and "The Memory Cage" (2014).

Tim and Charlie developed a love of genre fiction from their father, who brought home for them books and comics ranging from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Vladimir Nabokov to Mad magazine. Tim shared these with his neighbors, who included Richard Tozier (who has become a jazz radio personality at Maine Public Broadcasting Network, and who is featured in three Stephen King novels, It, Dreamcatcher and 11/22/63). These show the strong ties among friendships born in Bangor, and Sullivan and Tozier retain a lifelong friendship. The Sullivan brothers attended John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, as did Tozier. Timothy's older brother, Charlie (1946–1967), a corporal in the United States Marine Corps, died in battle in the Vietnam War.