"James Finney Boylan's glasses look ordinary enough. But the world he sees through them is something else,"(Stanley-Sanborn). The way Boylan sees and writes is what makes him a popular writer. He is a comical writer, yet his books still have heart. Many say that his books are weird, but they always seem to read the next one.
James Finney Boylan was born in 1958, in Valley Forge Pennsylvania. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1980, and soon became the managing editor of American Bystander magazine. After working there he worked for "American Punch"; which the first cast of "Saturday Night Live" founded. When the American Bystander went under, Boylan became an editorial assistant with Viking/Penguin. He then taught at Johns Hopkins, soon realizing that Maine was the best place, he became a professor at Colby College. Where he still remains today.
The Planets was Boylan's first novel, and for writing it he got a grant from the Pennsylvania State Council for the Arts. His different style of writing created national attention in 1991. When he wrote, he tried to base the writing on the classical music by Gustav Holst. The Planets was about the lives of several fictional characters in the real town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which has had an underground coal fire for several decades, and houses a few remaining residents.
The town Centralia Pennsylvania no longer exists on some maps. The fire started in 1961 along the outskirts of town when trash was burned in an old open pit mine. The fire in the open pit caught some coal on fire. The coal then began to burn underground. That was in "1961; 40 years and 40 million dollars later the fire still burns through old coalmines and veins following the coal under the town and the surrounding hillsides. The fire, smoke, fumes and toxic gases that came up though the back yards, basements and streets of Centralia practically ripped the town apart.
