Chris Bunch

Christopher R. Bunch (December 22, 1943 – July 4, 2005) was an American science fiction, fantasy and television writer, who wrote and co-wrote about thirty novels.

Early life and education Bunch was born in Fresno, California and attended Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, where he met his future writing partner Allan Cole, who later became his brother-in-law after marrying Bunch's sister Kathryn. He joined the United States Army and served 14 months in Vietnam during the Vietnam War in 1965–66, serving as a patrol commander.

Career

Television Bunch and Cole began writing for television in the late 1970s, eventually selling more than 150 scripts together over the course of their partnership. Working under executive producer Glen A. Larson, the pair contributed two episodes to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1980) and co-wrote the pilot of The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo with Larson. Their other television credits included The Incredible Hulk, Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., B.J. and the Bear, The Rockford Files, Hunter, The A-Team, The Smurfs, and Walker, Texas Ranger. and served as story editors on the supernatural drama Werewolf.

Bunch and Cole, who had not previously worked on Battlestar Galactica, were hired as two of three story editors on its sequel series, Galactica 1980. According to the pair, they had not sought the position; they said a Universal Television executive threatened to bar them from future work at the studio if they declined the assignment. The series, broadcast in a children's programming timeslot mandated by ABC, required them to insert network-mandated "educational beats" into scripts written almost entirely by series creator Larson, leaving them with little creative input of their own. Their work often led to clashes with Susan Futterman, ABC's then newly-installed head of Broadcast Standards and Practices. Their 1987 novel A Reckoning for Kings, set during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and was praised by a Los Angeles Times reviewer as "an excellent piece of work by two journeymen writers that makes one think."

In June 1996, Bunch shot and killed Michael G. Mauch, 26, a neighbor at the rural-vehicle park in Chinook where Bunch was living at the time. Bunch said he had fired in self-defense after Mauch threatened and charged him during a confrontation. Following a Pacific County coroner's inquest, a jury returned a verdict of justifiable homicide in August 1996, and no charges were filed.

Bunch later settled in his hometown of Ilwaco, Washington, where he died on July 4, 2005, after a long battle with a lung ailment.

Sten (1982) The Wolf Worlds (1984) The Court of a Thousand Suns (1985) Fleet of the Damned (1988) Revenge of the Damned (1989) The Return of the Emperor (1990) Vortex (1992) Empire's End (1993)

Anteros The Far Kingdoms (1985) The Warrior's Tale (1994) Kingdoms of the Night (1995)