HOMER HICKAM

'Homer Hadley Hickam, Jr.' (born February 19, 1943) is an American author, Vietnam veteran, and a former NASA engineer. His autobiographical novel ''Rocket Boys: A Memoir'', was a #1 ''New York Times'' best-seller, is studied in many American and international school systems, and was the basis for the popular film ''October Sky''. Hickam has also written a number of best-selling memoirs and novels, his latest the "Josh Thurlow" historical fiction novels. His books have been translated into several languages. He is married to Linda Terry Hickam, an artist and his first editor and assistant.

Contents

Biography

Military and Engineering Careers

Literary career

Honors

Books

The Coalwood Series

The Josh Thurlow Series

Stories of the Future and Past

External links

References

Biography

Military and Engineering Careers

Homer H. Hickam was the second son of Homer, Sr. and Elsie Hickam and was raised in Coalwood, West Virginia. He graduated from Big Creek High School in 1960 and from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, better known as Virginia Tech, in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial engineering. A United States Army veteran, Hickam served as a First Lieutenant in the Fourth Infantry Division during the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968. For his service, he earned the Commendation and Bronze Star Medals. He served six years on active duty, leaving the military as a Captain.
Hickam was an engineer for the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command from 1971 to 1981 assigned to Huntsville and Germany. He began employment with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Marshall Space Flight Center in 1981 as an aerospace engineer. During his NASA career, Hickam worked in spacecraft design and crew training. His specialties at NASA included training astronauts on science payloads, and extra-vehicular activities (EVA). He also trained astronaut crews for many Spacelab and Space Shuttle missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope deployment mission, the first two Hubble repair missions, Spacelab-J (the first Japanese astronauts), and the Solar Max repair mission. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Hickam was the Payload Training Manager for the International Space Station Program.

Literary career

Hickam began writing in 1969 after returning from Vietnam. His first writings were mostly about his scuba diving adventures for a variety of different magazines. Then, after diving on many of the wrecks involved, he branched off into writing about the battle against the U-boats along the American east coast during World War II. This resulted in his first book, ''Torpedo Junction'' (1989), a military history best-seller published in 1989 by the Naval Institute Press.
In 1998, Delacorte Press published Hickam's second book, ''Rocket Boys'', the story of his life in Coalwood. It quickly became a very popular book. ''Rocket Boys'' has since been translated into eight languages and also released as an abridged audiobook and electronic book. Among its many honors, it was selected by ''The New York Times'' as one of its "Great Books of 1998" and was an alternate "Book-of-the-Month" selection for both the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. ''Rocket Boys'' was also nominated by the National Book Critics Circle as Best Biography of 1998. In February 1999, Universal Studios released its critically-acclaimed film ''October Sky'', based on ''Rocket Boys'' (The title "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys"). Delacorte subsequently released a mass market paperback of ''Rocket Boys'', re-titled ''October Sky''. ''October Sky'' reached the number one position on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Hickam's first fiction novel was ''Back to the Moon'' (1999) which was also simultaneously released as a hardcover, audiobook, and eBook. It has also been translated into Chinese.
''The Coalwood Way'' a memoir of Hickam's hometown, was published a year later by Delacorte Press, and is referred to by Hickam as "not a sequel but an equal". His third Coalwood memoir, a true sequel, was published in October 2001. It is titled ''Sky of Stone''. ''Sky of Stone'' is presently under development as a television movie. His final book about Coalwood was published in 2002, a self help/inspirational tome titled ''We Are Not Afraid: Strength and Courage from the Town That Inspired the #1 Bestseller and Award-Winning Movie October Sky''.
His latest work is ''The Far Reaches'' (2005), published by St. Martin's Press. It is the third of his series of popular novels about Josh Thurlow, a Coast Guard officer during World War II. The series began with ''The Keeper's Son'' (2003), and continued with ''The Ambassador's Son'' in 2005.
Hickam maintains three scholarship programs, one at Virginia Tech, one at Southwest Virginia Community College, and one at Concord University in Athens, West Virginia.
Hickam is an avid scuba diver and jogs nearly every day. A new avocation is amateur paleontology. He works with Dr. Jack Horner in Montana every summer. He is credited with finding two ''Tyrannosaurus'.
On January 15, 2006, Hickam spoke at the memorial service in Buckhannon, West Virginia for 12 miners killed in an explosion at a Sago, West Virginia mine two weeks earlier. The service was televised nationally on CNN.

Honors

In 1984, Hickam was presented with Alabama's Distinguished Service Award for heroism shown during a rescue effort of the crew and passengers of a sunken paddleboat in the Tennessee River. Because of this award, Hickam was honored in 1996 by the United States Olympic Committee to carry the Olympic Torch through Huntsville, Alabama, on its way to Atlanta.
In 1999, the governor of the state of West Virginia issued a proclamation in honor of Hickam for his support of his home state and his distinguished career as both an engineer and author and declared an annual "Rocket Boys Day".
In 2007, Hickam was awarded an honorary doctorate in Literature from Marshall University. That same year, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Virginia Tech.
His next novel will be ''Red Helmet'', published by Thomas Nelson, which will mark his return to writing about his beloved coalfields of West Virginia. Following that, he will co-author the memoir of Anousheh Ansari.

Books

The Coalwood Series

★ Rocket Boys (ISBN 0-385-33321-8) (movie: October Sky)

★ The Coalwood Way (ISBN 0-385-33516-4)

★ Sky of Stone (ISBN 0-440-24092-1)

★ We Are Not Afraid (ISBN 0-7573-0012-X)

The Josh Thurlow Series

★ The Ambassador's Son (ISBN 0-312-30192-8)

★ The Keeper's Son (ISBN 0-312-30189-8)

★ Torpedo Junction (ISBN 0-440-21027-5)

★ The Far Reaches (ISBN 0-312-334753)

Stories of the Future and Past

★ Back to the Moon (ISBN 0-385-33422-2)

External links

★ Official Homer Hickam website

★ Official Homer Hickam FAQs

★

★ The Ambassador's Son Interview

References