Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Flowers for Algernon | 1966 |
| The Touch / The Contaminated Man | 1968 |
| The Fifth Sally | 1980 |
| Until Death Do Us Part: The Sleeping Princess | 1998 |
| The Asylum Prophecies | 2009 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| The Minds of Billy Milligan | 1981 |
| Unveiling Claudia | 1986 |
| The Milligan Wars | 1994 |
| Algernon, Charlie and I: A Writer’s Journey | 2000 |
About Daniel Keyes
Daniel Keyes (1927 to 2014) was an American writer best known for “Flowers for Algernon”, the story of a man with an intellectual disability whose intelligence is raised by experimental surgery. It won a Hugo Award as a short story and a Nebula Award as a novel, and was filmed as “Charly” in 1968.
Keyes was born in New York City. He attended New York University briefly, then joined the United States Maritime Service at 17 and worked as a ship’s purser on oil tankers. He returned to New York and took a degree in psychology at Brooklyn College in 1950. A month later he joined Martin Goodman’s magazine company, where he edited the pulp magazine Marvel Science Stories and went on to write comic-book scripts for Atlas Comics under Stan Lee. He also wrote for EC Comics in the mid 1950s, and worked as a teacher.
The idea behind “Flowers for Algernon” began as a plot synopsis he chose not to hand in as a comic script, and it drew on his experience of teaching students with learning difficulties. The story is told through the progress reports of Charlie Gordon, who becomes a genius after an operation first tried on a laboratory mouse called Algernon, and then loses what he has gained. It appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1959 and won the Hugo Award in 1960. Keyes expanded it into a novel, published in 1966, which shared that year’s Nebula Award. Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version.
Keyes taught creative writing at Wayne State University and joined Ohio University in 1966 as a professor of English and creative writing. His later novels were “The Touch” (1968) and “The Fifth Sally” (1980). He then turned to true crime with “The Minds of Billy Milligan” (1981), an account of the first person in the United States acquitted of a major crime on the grounds of multiple personalities, followed by “Unveiling Claudia” (1986).
Several of his books were first published in Japan, including “The Milligan Wars” (1994). The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named him Author Emeritus in 2000, the year his memoir “Algernon, Charlie and I” appeared. His last novel was “The Asylum Prophecies” (2009). Keyes died at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, in June 2014.