John Moore grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia. After high school, he moved to Texas and attended the University of Houston at night. He spent ten years working towards a diploma in chemical engineering. While studying he worked in the oilfields and as a truck driver, and began his writing career. In 1989 he finally received his engineering degree and began working as an engineer. He currently lives and works in Houston, Texas.
Works
At college Moore became interested in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and after a year decided to write a story and send it to the magazine. It was not accepted, but he did receive a letter from assistant editorDarrell Schweitzer from which he learned of fanzine and science fiction conventions. Moore joined the Fandom Association of Central Texas, began attending workshops for writers participating in the Writers of the Future contest, and wrote his first serious fiction. Moore's early stories were mostly science fiction thrillers. These include the techno-thriller Heat Sink, written in 1991 but only published in 2010 as an e-book. It describes a near future in which Canadian and Russian scientists try to melt the polar ice to gain access to new oil fields. Moore's earliest published story in the ISFDB catalog is "Bad Chance", a two-page item in the January 1986 issue of Space and Time. His short works have also seen print in Aboriginal SF, New Destinies, Realms of Fantasy, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, Tomorrow, Writers of the Future, and elsewhere. Beginning with Slay and Rescue, most of Moore's longer works have been light, humorous fantasies set in the mythical "Twenty Kingdoms." These have been compared to the writings of Terry Pratchett and Robert Asprin. He was influenced to use humor in his fiction by comedian Bill Hicks when both were students at the University of Houston. At the Comedy Workshop, Moore studied the techniques of performers like Hicks, Sam Kinison, and Ellen DeGeneres to develop his own sense of comic timing and pacing. His fantasies have been published in a number of languages other than English, notably German, Czech and Russian. The Czech version of his novel The Unhandsome Prince was actually published before the first edition in English. As for his other novels, Slay and Rescue is available in all three languages; The Unhandsome Prince in Czech and Russian, and Heroics for Beginners in Czech and German. Heroics for Beginners and Bad Prince Charlie were also published in Poland.
