Dick Wilson
(September 23, 1920 – March 29, 1987)
Richard “Dick” Wilson, Jr. was a fan and science fiction writer in New York. Wilson occasionally used the pennames of Azygous, Edward Halibut and Jay Cross, and he and Cyril Kornbluth used the joint pseudonym of Ivar Towers.
As a fan, Wilson was a Futurian in the late 1930s and early 1940s and wrote for their fanzines and for the prozines they edited. He published the fanzines Aaanthor Argus with Don Wollheim and Cyril Kornbluth and Incredible (1938–39) with W. E. Marconette, Escape (late ’30s), and the Science Fiction News Letter (1937–39). He was one of the Futurians who were not barred from the First Worldcon by the Exclusion Act. He was a member of the UK's Science Fiction Association (SFA), joining in October 1937.
His first published SF story, "Murder from Mars," appeared in the April, 1940, issue of Astonishing Stories, edited by Futurian Frederik Pohl. His SF books include The Girls from Planet 5 (novel, 1955), Those Idiots from Earth (short stories, 1957), And Then the Town Took Off (novel, 1960), 30-Day Wonder (novel, 1960), and Time Out for Tomorrow (short stories, 1962). He also wrote plays, including a radio play for X-Minus One in 1955 ("Inside Story").
Personal Life[edit]
Wilson was born in Huntington Station, Long Island, New York, and attended both Brooklyn College (1935–1936) and the University of Chicago (1947–1948). He was a precocious youth, skipping three grades in elementary school, and graduated from high school at 15. While in high school, he handset the type for his fanzine, The Atom.
He served in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II (1942–1946). After the war he became a journalist and was Chief of Bureau, Transradio Press, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York, 1946–51. He then was a reporter and deputy to the North American editor of Reuters, New York, 1951–64, and later director of the news bureau at Syracuse University.
While at Syracuse, he helped acquire the papers of many prominent SF writers for its library. These papers included proofs, story fragments, correspondence, art, and other materials, making the collection one of the most important of its kind in the world. Wilson wrote an article about this collection in the May, 1967, issue of Worlds of Tomorrow.
Wilson was married to fellow Futurians Jessica Gould, 1941–44, and Doris Baumgardt (Leslie Perri), 1950–67, with whom he had a son, Richard David Wilson. In 1967, he married Frances Keegan Daniels and then immediately took her to a SF convention in New York.
- Early short biography in Who's Who in Fandom 1940, page 14.
- Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
- Aaanthor Argus (with Don Wollheim and Cyril Kornbluth)
- The Atom [1937]
- The Convention Crier [1938]
- Escape [late 30s]
- Incredible [1938–39] (with W. E. Marconette)
- Science Fiction News Letter [1937-1939]
- S-F Dividend [1938]
Awards, Honors and GoHships:
- 1969 -- 1969 Best Novelette Hugo nominee, 1968 Nebula Award for "Mother to the World"
| Person | 1920—1987 |
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