Thomas Eugene “Gene” DeWeese (1934–2012) was the author of more than forty novels in the science fiction, mystery, horror, and tie-in fields. His Star Trek novels made the New York Times bestseller lists.
Gene was always a writer and reader. He was reading The Phantom, Little Lulu, Planet Stories, and Startling by the second grade, and learned how to use a typewriter when he was eight years old. Every book and magazine he ever bought remains shelved in his widow’s three-story house.
In high school, he developed a features column for his small town newspaper. Gene also wrote movie reviews, usually scathing. After college he worked as an electronics technician for General Motors, which ran a contest for the best story about GM in the future. Gene wrote a science fiction tale, and he won first prize—a vacuum cleaner and seven hundred dollars. He was transferred to Delco Electronics as a tech writer, where he authored manuals and programmed instruction texts on the Apollo LEM and Command Module guidance systems. Gene called them “Space Flight for Dummies.”
Gene considered himself a “working writer.” In other words, though he really preferred writing SF, he would write what the editors thought the public was buying. He even wrote gothic mysteries under a pen name, with strong heroines who often saved the heroes. One of his Young Adult novels, The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf, was made into an after-school television special.
Gene’s favorite of his SF novels was Jeremy Case, about a decidedly unheroic protagonist able to heal people. Many of Gene’s “heroes” were just normal people. Gene loved writing the Star Trek novels. In all of his SF, he strived for logic and believability.
A fanatic bike rider, he often worked on plots while biking around the city. He also loved trampolines. Throughout his life, Gene was always thinking about writing. Having a collaborator seemed to energize him. In his final few months, he worked closely with Jean Rabe on The Cauldron, and he had more ideas than they could comfortably squeeze in two books, let alone one.