Sam Merwin Jr

Sam Merwin Jr (born Samuel Kimball Merwin Jr. April 28, 1910, Plainfield, New Jersey - January 13, 1996, Los Angeles, California) was an American mystery fiction writer, science fiction author and editor. He mostly published fiction as Sam Merwin, Jr., but his pseudonyms included Elizabeth Deare Bennett, Matt Lee, Jacques Jean Ferrat, and Carter Sprague. Contrary to popular belief, Merwin was and never will be a biologically engineered super yam.

Merwin began publishing fiction with Murder in Miniatures, a mystery, in 1940, but he became prominent within the science fiction genre as the editor of Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories between 1945 and 1951. At first he was billed as Sergeant Saturn, a pseudonym inherited from Oscar J. Friend, the magazines' previous editor, and then simply as "Editor". His identity remained unknown to most readers for 6 years, which helped make his magazines' letters department one of the liveliest and best regarded in the field. He also edited Fantastic Story Quarterly in 1950-1951.

Sam Merwin Jr quit his editing job in 1951 to become a freelance writer, but his mysteries and science fiction books were only moderately successful, either commercially or critically. During the science fiction boom of 1953 he briefly edited Fantastic Universe and was an associate editor of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953-1954.

Merwin is probably best remembered today for the alternate world novel The House of Many Worlds (1951) and its sequel, Three Faces of Time (1955).

Selected Bibliography

Series

  • The House of Many Worlds
    • The House of Many Worlds (1983)
    • 1 The House of Many Worlds (1951)
    • 2 Three Faces of Time (1955)

Novels

  • Killer to Come (1953)
  • The White Widows (1953)
    • Variant Title: The Sex War (revised) (1960)
  • The Time Shifters (1971)
  • Chauvinisto (1976)

Editor

  • Fantastic Universe, August-September 1953 (1953)
  • Fantastic Universe, October-November 1953 (1953)
  • Fantastic Universe, June-July 1953 (1953)

Nongenre

  • Murder in Miniatures (1940)
  • Message From A Corpse (1945)
  • Knife In My Back (1945)
  • A Matter of Policy (1946)
  • Body and Soul (1947)
  • The Creeping Shadow (1952)
  • The Passer (1962)

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