Stanley G. Weinbaum

(April 4, 1902 – December 14, 1935)

Stanley Grauman Weinbaum was an SF author whose career was short but influential. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey," was published to great acclaim in July 1934, but he died eighteen months later.

That groundbreaking short story presented a sympathetic but decidedly non-human alien, Tweel. Isaac Asimov described the story as a perfect Campbellian SF story, before John W. Campbell. Lester del Rey said that "Weinbaum, more than any other writer, helped to take our field out of the doldrums of the early thirties and into the beginnings of modern science fiction."

He was a member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers.

His SF novels were The New Adam (Ziff Davis Publishing Co., 1939); The Black Flame (Fantasy Press, 1948); The Dark Other [aka The Mad Brain] (Fantasy Publishing Co., 1950); and The Red Peri (Fantasy Press, 1952). Weinbaum occasionally used the pseudonyms of John Jessell and Marge Stanley. The Best of Stanley Weinbaum was published by Ballantine Books in 1974.

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, first as a chemical engineering major but later switching to English as his major. He did not graduate because, on a bet, Weinbaum took an exam for a friend. This was discovered, and he was forced to leave the University in 1923. He became a salesman advertising and selling chemical products. Sometime before 1930, Weinbaum married Margaret Hawtof.

He died of lung cancer. His sister, Helen W. Kasson, completed some of his work.

Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Awards, Honors and GoHships:

• 2008 -- Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award

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Person

1902—1935

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