William Sleator (1945 - )

William Sleator (pronounced Slayter) is the author of over 30 young adult science fiction books. He takes his characters from their everyday lives into unusual situations. His heroes encounter alien beings, doppelgangers, ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, black holes, evil spirits, malevolent dolls, weird scientific experiments, time travel into the past and the future, and other strange phenomena.

His Life:

He was born on February 13th, 1945 in Havre de Grace, Maryland and moved to St. Louis, MO when he was three. He grew up with a sister, Vicky, and two brothers, Daniel and Tycho.

William Sleator wrote his first story when he was six-years-old. He even typed it out. It was a brief novella of exactly four sentences:

"Once there was a fat cat. Boy was she fat. Well, not that fat. But pretty fat."
The title? Why, Fat Cat of course.

Sleator went on from his glory days of writing Fat Cat stories to composing scores of music. He was quite the popular composer in his Missouri high school, where he was known for writing scores for school plays and the orchestra. In high school he continued writing poems and stories and composing music. When the school orchestra played one of his compositions at an assembly, everybody thought he was a genius. Sleater says, "I did nothing to correct this impression." He graduated from University City High School in 1963.

These musical triumphs continued into his college years at Harvard where he says he was miserable. He entered Harvard with full intensions to pursue a music degree, but several tragic novellas later, he found himself with a BA in English. He graduated from Harvard in 1967 with BAs in music and English.

Despite his newly acquired degree in English, Sleator spent many years after graduation from Harvard playing in ballet schools in England. Eventually, he made his way back to the US where he wrote his first published novel, Blackbriar.

Blackbriar was born out of a real-life experience Sleator had when he was helping a college restore a run down cottage. "The place was interesting… the whole thing was like a gothic novel. So there was my first novel, Blackbriar, handed right to me".

"My second novel, Run, also took place in a house I had lived in. After that, I ran out of interesting real places to write about. I saw if I was going to make my living as a writer, I was going to have to begin making things up, using my imagination. The result was my first science fiction book, House of Stairs.

Although I invented the plot and the setting, the characters in that book were all based on people I knew. I continue to use real people in my books, and that has gotten me into trouble at times. Fortunately, most of my friends have started speaking to me again."

"Gradually, without much planning on it, I began drifting more and more into science fiction, a genre I had always loved. A lot of the fun of writing science fiction is learning about real scientific phenomena, like behavior modifications or black holes or the fourth dimension, and turning them into stories." "The challenge is to try to make the parts you invent as believable as the scientific laws you are using. If you succeed, then you are giving the reader something that is magical and fantastic but at the same time might actually be possible. That's the great thing about science fiction -- someday it could really happen."

Sleator lives in Boston and rural Thailand.

His Books:

Everyone avoids Danny as soon as he says he is living at "Blackbriar" - a beautiful but strangely sinister house. Can Danny and his new friend, Lark, escape its eerie power?.This is a ghost story in a strange old house in England. With secret passages, ancient rituals, and long-lost corpses, it's frightening enough to satisfy those who like to lie awake at night breathing hard and staring at the ceiling. It also shows that from the start of his career, Sleator was concerned with painful relationships between family members, and the struggle to heal love that has become diseased.

A girl left home alone (missing parents!) at an isolated cottage meets two boys who are on a biking trip and then have to stay over because of a sudden thunderstorm. There is no hanky-panky (sexless!) but a small mystery does develop when the radio and TV go missing and one of the boys starts acting weird. The kids also think they see some sort of intruder, both outside and inside the house. Sleator wasn't an SF writer yet, so it turns out that the explanation is that a junkie has been stealing stuff to feed his habit. There is some discussion of whether they should turn him into the corrupt local police or help him hide from them, along with who's really to blame for the way things have turned out. This book was the hardest one to track down, and there's a pretty good reason for that.

This is one his classics. - In a dystopian near future in which the air has become unfit to breathe, the culture has turned disturbingly prudish, and the government has become a police state, five orphans (missing parents!) are taken to a sort of bio-dome full of nothing but white staircases and a machine that dispenses food. But it doesn't do so on command. When the machine's light flashes, they have to dance for it in order to receive their food. And they never know when the light will flash. But it seems to flash more often when they are cruel to each other. The five must learn to love the machine and let it rule their lives. But will they let it kill their souls? This chilling, suspenseful indictment of mind control is a classic of science fiction and will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

This is the tale of a boy and a girl who, though they dislike each other at school, are drawn together by the fact that they both have the same dream. To their astonishment, they discover that the dream is a memory, and that the urgent sense of danger that accompanies it is coming from still another character who was present at the scene -- one whose memories are all in black and white. Into the Dream turns into a thriller of sorts; it also shows the "heroes" serving, finally, a subordinate role as they help a still younger character discover his own potential.

When eleven-year-old Tycho discovers that the mysterious egg-shaped object he dug up in his garden is a time travel device, he can't resist using his newfound power. Soon he is jumping back and forth in time, mostly to play tricks on his bossy older brothers and sister. But every time he uses the device, he notices that things are different when he gets back-and the futures he visits are getting darker and scarier. Then Tycho comes face-to-face with the most terrible thing of all: his grown-up self. Can Tycho prevent the terrible future he sees from coming true?

Eighteen-year-old Sam has always been jealous of his younger brother, Humphrey, the famous "wonder child" pianist. But now that Humphrey is fifteen, the one-time child prodigy isn't able to get any more bookings. Sam's mother refuses to accept that Humphrey's career is over and devises a scheme to recapture his fame: Sam will compose "new works" by a long dead gypsy composer, and they will tell the world that the composer is dictating the music to Humphrey from the grave. The scheme is a wild success-until some ghostly occurrences convince Sam that the spirit of the dead composer has actually taken over Humphrey's fingers. Have Sam and his family unleashed a force from beyond the grave?

This is the tale of a teenager trapped into a summer on the beach by his thoughtless parents, only to get into serious trouble when he starts playing the board game called "Interstellar Pig" with the strange trio of jet-setters who move into the cottage next door. The game that becomes real is an ancient fictional tradition which can easily become a cliche -- but Sleator expects you to guess very quickly that the game is real. The story is really about Barney's desperate effort to discover the true rules of the game so that he can win it -- or at least avoid losing. Some regard this as Sleator's best work to date -- it's certainly his most popular.

Singularity is the story of twin brothers who, during a summer tending their late uncle's home, discover that the old man built a shed to enclose a singularity, a place where time flows much faster then normal. The "younger" twin, feeling dominated by his stronger twin, sneaks to the shed one night and lives a full year in complete isolation -- overnight. He emerges the next morning inches taller and, more importantly, much wiser. What makes this novel a masterpiece is the fact that Sleator doesn't gloss over the year of isolation -- we experience it with the narrator, so that we pass through his transformation with him. I can't recommend this novel highly enough -- it's on my list of best all-time works of science fiction.

When Laura finds her homework in her locker with its writing reversed, she's baffled, until she learns an unbelievable secret: her weird neighbor, Omar, has the ability to travel to the fourth dimension. Laura forces him to take her there--and then, a novice in four-space, she goes there on her own. There's only one problem--she doesn't know how to get back. A cerebral science-fiction thriller, cunningly constructed to keep the reader involved until the last pages.

David needs to be in two places at one time: a family party for his grandmother and a date with Angela. He finds what seems to be the perfect answer to this dilemma a machine that has the power to duplicate organic material. Without considering the possible ramifications, he duplicates him self. From that moment, his life be comes a nightmare. Competition, particularly regarding Angela, is fiercelike sibling rivalry, only greatly intensified. Just when readers think that things can't possibly get worse, the duplicate duplicates himself, and then there are three and each claims to be the original. Plus, each would like to solve his problems by getting rid of the others. Sleator has done it again, writ ing an intense thriller, with horror building gradually, in which science fic tion is blended skillfully with reality.

Recent high school graduate Max is looking forward to his visit to Mercury Labs, an honor for top science students, when his mother tells him he's already been there--yesterday. Then Eve, the daughter of the Lab's top scientist, Dr. Sylvan, calls Max and asks him to return what he took from the Lab. But Max doesn't remember anything at all, and discovers that there are two Eves and two Dr. Sylvans. Which ones are real and which are imposters? What does Dr. Sylvan's work on the chaotic bifurcation graph have to do with time travel? Sleator's latest high-tech thriller is compelling and thought-provoking, and offers a clever surprise ending.

Julie, 15, frankly expresses her dread over her family's decision to sponsor a ``weird little Asian guy'' (from Thailand) as a foreign exchange student, but when stylish Bia arrives to spend a year, he charms them all. Even Julie is awed by him, but she soon grows suspicious--he doesn't look like the photograph they received before he came, nor do his current interests match those he described in a letter. When Julie's little brother builds a Thai spirit house (a traditional household shrine) as a gift for Bia, life is oddly changed by its inhabitant. The female spirit has both vengeful and generous aspects; revealed, their effects on Bia are ultimately dire.

After falling off his bicycle into a toxic waste dump, Jared develops the ability to read other people's thoughts. He is catapulted into psychic combat with his amoral grandmother and sociopathically manipulative cousin, both of whom are also mind-readers. In the course of this shrill, forced narrative, the beach compound in which Jared's extended family summers becomes a hotbed of robbery, greed and blackmail. Thin characterizations add little spice to an already jumbled plot: though Jared's cousin and grandmother do make heart-thumpingly nasty villainesses, it is difficult to understand just why they are so very mean.

Book Description Three years of bad luck have passed since Dom's sister lost a valuable jade necklace on her way to Thailand. When his family travels there, he is determined to recover the necklace and appease the vengeful spirit. When Dom meets Lek, an English-speaking Thai his age, he thinks he's got the solution. But Lek has something with supernatural owers, too -- powers that can be deadly. "Riveting. Vintage Sleator."-- The Horn Book William Sleator is the author of many enormously popular science fiction and suspense thrillers for young adults, including The Spirit House, the prequel to this novel.

A teenager discovers that his own memories can't be trusted, in another nightmarish tale of alien intrigue from the author of Interstellar Pig (1984) and the more recent Dangerous Wishes (1995). His best friend, Tim, has disappeared, but all Leo can offer police is a wild tale of being abducted by little green men in a futuristic spaceship. The very banality of this ``memory'' rouses Leo's suspicions, and the plot thickens when Tim shows up two days later--older and bearing a set of disturbing drawings that, he claims, must not fall into the hands of ``The Others.'' The Others are smog-loving shape-shifters bent on devastating the environment, are being chased by ``the heads,'' an alien race of kidnappers.

Doug and his precocious younger sister move to a deep forest when their botanist father has the opportunity to study a rare fungus. Before they leave, Doug's friend warns him to stay away from the shadowy woods or the "beasties" will get him. At first Doug doesn't believe the rumors about bloodthirsty creatures who are said to have left a trail of amputated victims across the northern woods. Then, he and his younger sister find signs of a mysterious presence in the land behind their home. They are about to meet the Beasties, a "family" of beings with war on their minds--war against the human race! At this point, the hairs on readers' arms will start to rise and the plot takes the bizarre twist so familiar in Sleator's titles. Doug, presented with several dilemmas, is forced to make uncomfortable decisions without really understanding his choices.

Orphan Anne Levi tolerates her distant Aunt Ruth, with whom she lives, but adores her mysterious Uncle Marco, who flits in and out of their lives at irregular intervals. When he gives Anne two unusual boxes with strict instructions not to open them, curiosity gets the better of her. Opening the first one, she releases an unusual crablike creature that grows and reproduces rapidly; the life form and its offspring construct a fantastic palace in the basement and communicate with Anne telepathically. Dismayed by what she has done, Anne opens the second box, which she had hidden in her closet, revealing a clocklike object that has the ability to slow down time at the basement creatures' request, but only when Anne agrees to carry messages between the creatures and the clock. Unfortunately, the owners of a suspicious development company are intrigued by the time slowdowns and increase their ominous efforts to control Anne, her home, and the strange devices within it. Through her adventures, Anne grows into a self-confident teenager who is able to stand up to her overbearing aunt and trust her own instincts.

With a devious older sister who wishes he hadn't been born, eleven-year -old Chris needs some heavenly intervention. But when that help arrives in the form of a boltzmon--the all-knowing, shape-shifting remnant of a black hole--Chris is in even bigger trouble. In this clever sci-fi twist on the genie tales of folklore, a young boy suddenly has access to more power than he can handle. The highly unstable boltzmon flips Chris at random to different worlds, including one of his own imagining. It is in Arteria, a country he has mapped out on his computer, that Chris has the chance to confront his sister, Lulu, and end their rivalry before it has deadly consequences. A villainous older sister, a quantum physics genie with a weird sense of humor, and a sharp young hero--this Bermuda triangle of characters is at the center of a funny, frightening novel in the spirit of William Sleator's masterwork, Interstellar Pig.

Eleven-year-old Peter finds out he is adopted, strives to gain glimmers of affection from his stoic, insensitive parents and gets killed by a car when he runs out of their home in a tearful rage. "Peter always acted without thinking," says his mother at his funeral. But life is not over yet; Peter is granted three chances to get it right before he is permanently dead. And in the process he learns to make friends, communicate clearly with his parents about his anxieties and follow his dream of being an artist even though his mother finds it a "waste of time" and his father thinks he should do something more manly. Peter is likable, creative and admirable in his ability to change his behavior. Sleator playfully examines the idea of time travel and of consciously tampering with the future. When a silly conflict arises because Peter thoughtless ly predicts the future (having lived through the same days several times), its resolution is simple and emotionally truthful. Adoptees and time- travel fans alike will find fun and fulfillment in this fantasy of second, third and fourth chances.

A good choice for readers who enjoy The X Files or creepier episodes of Star Trek. When Marco's younger sister Lilly discovers a hidden tunnel in the basement of their house, she is too frightened to enter it. But 12-year-old Marco likes to travel and see different things: to him "millions meant distances-and if you're thinking about distances, millions means going very, very far away." He follows the tunnel from Earth to a different world and is drawn into the alien inhabitants' struggle to propitiate their Lord, a powerful, sentient space/time phenomenon called a naked singularity. Time passes far more quickly on Earth than on the alien world, and Marco's visits are overshadowed by his urgent need to get home before too much time passes.

Sleator has returned with a sequel to Interstellar Pig (1984) that is equally clever and engrossing, a puzzle that incorporates mysterious science fiction with a bit of health education and just plain suspenseful fun. Barney is back, this time inhabited by parasite Madame Gondii and forced to associate with his alien "friends" and a new round of bizarre acquaintances, including a parasitic worm hosted within a dinosaur and a huge wasp armed with her terrifying ovipositor. At least he has human companionship in his friend Katie, who unwillingly joins him on a dangerous search for Piggy on the planet J'koot, where the crab inhabitants consider humans the perfect gourmet treat. The years have not diminished the imaginative nether world of the game-playing teens or the aliens determined to destroy earth, all for a chance to capture the fickle Piggy.

Here he shifts from science fiction to horror, with a plot based on Hollywood-style voodoo lore. When seventeen-year-old Ken's best friend Roger dies in a plane crash, Ken suddenly realizes that he too could die at any moment. Terrified, he seeks out a plump, middle-aged psychic named Cherie Buttercup, who grants him invulnerability from death in exchange for his soul. Eager to test his new powers, Ken talks his family into a vacation in the Caribbean, where he can swim with sharks. There he is entranced with Sabine, a young scuba instructor, and shares his story with her. When Ken begins to have vivid dreams of secret murders, he and Sabine realize that Cherie Buttercup is using his soul as a zombie to do her will. But the dreams also give clues as to where his soul is hidden--so the pair set out to retrieve it. Breathless action is leavened with the unconscious humor of typical Sleator touches in which preposterous fantasy collides with the details of reality, only adding to the fun.

After a brief introduction to the uncertainty of quantum mechanics, the paradox of Schrodinger's cat, and the possibility of infinite universes, Sleator launches into a story inspired by these ideas. Fourteen-year-old Susan feels burdened by her parents' expectation that she will provide help and companionship for her older brother, Gary, an invalid who is wheelchair-bound and becoming progressively weaker. Exploring their large garden, they discover that entering the often-invisible maze at its center will enable them to travel to other times and even different versions of the present reality. When Gary insists that they search for a place where he is cured, Susan acquiesces, despite the warnings of her parents, the enigmatic gardener, and her own good sense. The novel's strengths include a strong sense of place and atmosphere as well as a story with steadily mounting tension and an unexpected twist at the end.

With only 50 hard-earned dollars in his pocket, Nick Gordon can't afford to be choosy when it comes to purchasing a cell phone, so he takes what the dealer at the discount store offers him: a suspiciously newer-looking model with an odd ring and no caller ID. Almost instantly, the phone Nick purchased solely to keep in touch with his girlfriend is taking over his life, with mysterious callers asking for (or demanding) help and a selection of fiendish-looking games. Is it all a hoax, or does the phone's coverage extend into Hell itself? Either way, Nick finds himself going with terrifying speed from poor boy trying to make good to criminal. While the ending wraps up rather too neatly, the rapid pace and vivid, unsettling conception of the Inferno will grab horror readers, particularly those who've enjoyed Sleator's other works