Educated at the Trinity School in New York, he then spent the next 10 years at the Snyder School in North Carolina. He then spent time at the California Institute of Technology and received a BA in 1930. He then went on to his Masters from The Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933. He began working for the Inventor's Foundation, Inc as an engineer. The school was later taken over by the International Correspondence Schools. He transferred to the Scranton Pennsylvania division and was the principal of the School of Inventing and Patenting. In 1937, he resigned and published his first book, Inventions and Their Management. He married Catherine Crook in 1939. during the war, he served as a researcher at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, where he met Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy as a reserve officer. Following the war, he began contributing to science fiction magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction. In 1939, he coined the term E.T. for extra-terrestrial. His interests were widespread and his works reflected this. In addition to his science fiction, he produced numerous essays and articles. He was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerer's Guild of America. In 1953, he won the International Fantasy Award and was named the third Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy after Tolkien and Leiber. In 1989, he and his wife moved to Plano, Texas, where he eventually died in 2000. His works include Lest Darkness Fall (1939), The Incomplete Enchanter (1941), Land of Unreason (1942), The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (1948), The Virgin of Zesh (1953), The Glory That Was (1960), The Great Monkey Trial (1968), The Fallible Fiend (1973), Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), The Ape Man Within (1995) and his Hugo Award winning autobiography >time and Chance (1996). |
