Benson Herbert

(May 16, 1912 – April 21, 1991)

Benson Herbert was a British fan and writer active in the 1930s and 1940s. He attended the Second British Convention in April 1938 and financed and founded Utopian Publications with Walter H. Gillings in the mid-1940s.

Herbert had a novel, Crisis!—1992, serialised in Wonder Stories in 1935-6 and contributed a number of short stories to British and American magazines. He became general manager of the publishing firm Lloyd Cole in 1942 and founded Utopian Publications around 1944. Both published chapbooks, and the latter some short anthologies, in both cases often featuring the work of Benson Herbert.

He was one of the speakers at the 1938 convention:

This restless urge towards the future, this instinct to which science-fiction appeals I propose to call by the concise German word Zukunftsstreben. Zukunftsstreben is the motive of 20th century life. It has invaded our books, our cinemas, our architecture, our social life, even our politics. It has arisen through our intelligence waking up to new wonders of science, and as intelligence is likely to go on expanding I think the instinct will remain with us. Therefore I do not fear that science-fiction is a passing craze. In other words there's a future for the story of the future.

• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Benson Herbert in Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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Person

1912—1991

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