Murray Leinster Popular Books

Murray Leinster Biography & Facts

Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Writing career Leinster was born in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of George B. Jenkins and Mary L. Jenkins. His father was an accountant. Although both parents were born in Virginia, the family lived in Manhattan in 1910, according to the 1910 Federal Census. A high school dropout, he nevertheless began a career as a freelance writer before World War I. He was two months short of his 20th birthday when his first story, "The Foreigner", appeared in the May 1916 issue of H. L. Mencken's literary magazine The Smart Set. Over the next three years, Leinster published ten more stories in the magazine; in a September 2022 interview, Leinster's daughter stated that Mencken recommended the use of a pseudonym for non-Smart Set content.During World War I, Leinster served with the Committee of Public Information and the United States Army (1917–1918). During and after the war, his work began appearing in pulp magazines like Argosy, Snappy Stories, and Breezy Stories. He continued to be published regularly in Argosy into the 1950s. When the pulp magazines began to diversify into particular genres in the 1920s, Leinster followed suit, selling jungle stories to Danger Trails, westerns to West and Cowboy Stories, detective stories to Black Mask and Mystery Stories, horror stories to Weird Tales, and even romance stories to Love Story Magazine under the pen name Louisa Carter Lee. Leinster's first science fiction story, "The Runaway Skyscraper", appeared in the February 22, 1919 issue of Argosy, and was reprinted in the June 1926 issue of Hugo Gernsback's first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. In the 1930s, he published several science fiction stories and serials in Amazing and Astounding Stories (the first issue of Astounding included his story "Tanks"). His work continued to appear frequently in other genre pulps such as Detective Fiction Weekly and Smashing Western, as well as Collier's Weekly beginning in 1936 and Esquire starting in 1939.Leinster was an early writer of parallel universe stories. Four years before Jack Williamson's The Legion of Time came out, Leinster published his "Sidewise in Time" in the June 1934 issue of Astounding. Leinster's vision of extraordinary oscillations in time ('sidewise in time') had a long-term impact on other authors, for example Isaac Asimov's "Living Space", "The Red Queen's Race", and The End of Eternity. Leinster's 1945 novella "First Contact" is also credited as one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction. In 2000, Leinster's heirs sued Paramount Pictures over the film Star Trek: First Contact, claiming that it infringed their trademark in the term. However, the suit was dismissed. Leinster was one of the few science fiction writers from the 1930s to survive in the John W. Campbell era of higher writing standards, publishing over three dozen stories in Astounding and Analog under Campbell's editorship. The last story by Leinster in Analog was "Quarantine World" in the November 1966 issue, thirty-six years after his appearance in the premier January 1930 issue. Murray Leinster's 1946 short story "A Logic Named Joe" contains one of the first descriptions of a computer (called a "logic") in fiction. In the story, Leinster was decades ahead of his time in imagining the Internet. He envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers (called "tanks"), to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and commerce; one character says that "logics are civilization."During World War II, he served in the United States Office of War Information. After the war, when both his name and the pulps had achieved a wider acceptance, he would use either "William Fitzgerald", "Fitzgerald Jenkins" or "Will F. Jenkins" as names on stories when "Leinster" had already sold a piece to a particular issue. Leinster was so prolific a writer that Groff Conklin, when reviewing Operation: Outer Space in March 1955, noted that it was his fourth novel of 1954 and that another would be reviewed in the next month. Leinster continued publishing in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing in Galaxy Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as well as The Saturday Evening Post. He won a Hugo Award for his 1956 story "Exploration Team". Leinster's career also included tie-in fiction based on several science fiction TV series: an episodic 1960 novel, Men into Space, was derived from the series' basic concepts, but Leinster had little knowledge of the series' actual content, and none of the book episodes bear any relationship to the filmed episodes. Men Into Space was followed, seven years later, by two original novels based on The Time Tunnel (1967), and three based on Land of the Giants (1968–69). Other endeavors Leinster was also an inventor under his real name of William F. Jenkins, best known for the front projection process used in special effects. He appeared in September 1953 on an episode of the educational series American Inventory, in which he discussed the possibility of space travel. Pseudonym "Murray" is a reference to Leinster's mother's maiden name ("Murry"), while "Leinster" alluded to the connection between his middle name ("Fitzgerald") and the Dukes of Leinster. Personal life In 1921, he married Mary Mandola. They had four daughters. Honors and awards Liberty Award (1937) for "A Very Nice Family", first published in the January 2, 1937 issue of Liberty. Hugo Award (1956) for Best Novelette for "Exploration Team". Retro-Hugo (1996) for Best Novelette for "First Contact". Guest of Honor at Discon I, the 21st Worldcon in 1963. The Sidewise Award for Alternate History (established in 1995) is named after Leinster's story "Sidewise in Time." In the 1979 American film Starcrash, the spaceship in the opening sequence is called the Murray Leinster. In Virginia, June 27, 2009, was designated Will F. Jenkins Day in honor of his achievements in science fiction.Bibliography Novels Far East Sword of Kings, John Long, 1933. Mystery Scalps, Brewer & Warren, 1930. (also known as Wings of Chance) Murder Madness, Brewer & Warren, 1931; first serialized in Astounding, May - August 1930. Murder Will Out (as Will F. Jenkins), John Hamilton, 1932. No Clues (as Will F. Jenkins), Wright & Brown, 1935. Murder in the Family (as Will F. Jenkins), John Hamilton, 1935; first appeared in Complete Detective Novels, April 1934. The Man Who Feared (as Will F. Jenkins), Gateway, 1942; first serialized in Detective Fiction Weekly, August 9–30, 1930.Romance as Louisa Carter Lee Her Desert Lover: A Love Story, Chelsea House 1925. Her Other Husband: A Love Story, Chelsea House 1929. Love .... Discover the Murray Leinster popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Murray Leinster books.

Best Seller Murray Leinster Books of 2024

  • The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Contents: The...

  • Complete Science Thriller of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    Complete Science Thriller of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    A nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an awardwinning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. Table of Contents The Forgotten Planet The Aliens The FifthD...

  • The Fantastical World of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    The Fantastical World of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    This edition brings to you 43 tales exciting by Murray Leinster, including some of his most famous and admired SciFi & Fantasy works in one volume: Novels & Novellas: Murde...

  • The Second Murray Leinster Omnibus synopsis, comments

    The Second Murray Leinster Omnibus

    Murray Leinster

    Hugo Nominee Novel and Two Others by Hugo Winning Author!  An engineer tries to leave the pirate culture of his birth behind when he moves to a peaceful planet; but run afoul ...

  • Epic Sci-Fi Odyssey synopsis, comments

    Epic Sci-Fi Odyssey

    Andre Norton, Murray Leinster, Lester del Rey, Harry Harrison, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Fritz Leiber, Ben Bova, Bluefire Books & Philip K. Dick

    Dive into the realm of cosmic wonder and galactic intrigue with our collection, "Epic SciFi Odyssey". This immersive ebook gathers together a remarkable anthology of classi...

  • The Best Novels of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    The Best Novels of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Murder Madness The Wailing Asteroid The Forgotten Planet Cre...

  • The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Short Stories of Murray Leinster" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Contents: The Aliens ...

  • Complete Science Adventure of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    Complete Science Adventure of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    A nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an awardwinning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. Contents The Forgotten Planet The Aliens The FifthDimension ...

  • The Murray Leinster Collection synopsis, comments

    The Murray Leinster Collection

    Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of science fiction and alternate history literature. He wrote and published more than 1,500 sho...

  • The Murray Leinster Omnibus synopsis, comments

    The Murray Leinster Omnibus

    Murray Leinster

    Three Complete Classics by Hugo Award Winning Author In book one, Research scientist Joseph Burke and his secretary Sandy Lund discover their love for each other and plan to marry,...

  • The Best Novels of Murray Leinster synopsis, comments

    The Best Novels of Murray Leinster

    Murray Leinster

    This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Murder Madness The Wailing Asteroid The Forgotten Planet Cre...

  • The Runaway Skyscraper synopsis, comments

    The Runaway Skyscraper

    Murray Leinster

    Arthur Chamberlain, is an engineer who works at the Metropolitan Tower in Midtown Manhatten. When the sun suddenly begins moving backwards in the sky he is the only person who real...