Relativity (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692665916)

== A LIFE IN WORD & LAW == Henry Abner Sturdivant was best remembered to those that knew him as a family man, a man of god, and a man of the law, keeping the peace as Chief of Police in the small town of Washington, Georgia. But to thousands of adoring fans around the United States and indeed even the world, he was Henry Abner, master-crafter of gritty tales of crime and revenge. Born September 17, 1884, Sturdivant was raised in rural Georgia, a setting reflected in many of his works of fiction. As a boy, Abner was a ravenous reader, using books to escape the drudgery of the life of a young farmhand. When he reached adulthood, Abner followed in his older brothers' footsteps and pursued a career in law enforcement. He rose to the rank of Chief of Police by the summer of 1925, the same year his first short story was published. Nearly all of Abner's originally published work falls squarely in the realm of the hard-boiled detective story. He had a prolific, if modestly successful, career writing for the mystery pulps of the day. He dallied into westerns occasionally, although he never published any science fiction before the Goddamned Lonely Universe series. Ten years later, Henry Abner Sturdivant would lose his life from injuries sustained while apprehending a suspect, much to the shock of the residents of the peaceful, sleepy town of Washington and his devoted fans. == A SECRET TROVE == It is perhaps a miracle that the Goddamned Lonely Universe works are to be read by anyone at all, as it took nearly eighty years and an incredible stroke of luck for Abner's hidden cache of science fiction to be discovered. Indeed, the entirety of this new work was found quite by accident, in a sealed evidence file in the archives of the Washington Police Department in the summer of 2014, where they had remained hidden since before the chief's death in July of 1935. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the curious clerk that saved the collection, consisting of over 1400 pages of notes and partially-finished manuscripts, from the literal trash heap, as the municipal department offices were being closed during a merger with county law enforcement. The Washington, Georgia police department is no more, but Henry Abner's work will be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations. In the words of an early Abner protagonist, "Here's to you, anonymous savior!"