Philip Wylie

Philip Wylie
Born Philip Gordon Wylie
April 12, 1902(1902-04-12)
Beverly, Massachusetts
Died October 25, 1971(1971-10-25)
Miami
Occupation Author, short story writer, screenwriter
Nationality American
Genres science fiction
Notable work(s) When Worlds Collide,
A Generation of Vipers
Spouse(s) Sally Ondek,
Frederica Ballard

Philip Gordon Wylie (May 12, 1902 – October 25, 1971) was a prolific American author on subjects ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire, to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust.

Contents

Biography

Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, he was the son of Presbyterian minister Edmund Melville Wylie and the former Edna Edwards, a novelist, who died when Philip was five years old. His family moved to Montclair, New Jersey and he later attended Princeton University from 1920–1923. He married Sally Ondek, and had one child, Karen, an author who became the inventor of animal "clicker" training; she was the wife of Taylor Alderdyce Pryor, a Marine helicopter pilot who became a Hawaii state senator and a co-founder of Sea Life Park and Oceanic Institute in Hawaii, of which his wife served as director. After a divorcing his first wife, Philip Wylie married Frederica Ballard, who was born and raised in Rushford, New York; they are both buried in Rushford.

A writer of fiction and nonfiction, his output included hundreds of short stories, articles, serials, syndicated newspaper columns, novels, and works of social criticism. He also wrote screenplays while in Hollywood, was an editor for Farrar & Rinehart, served on the Dade County, Florida Defense Council, was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and at one time was an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy which led to the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission.[1] Most of his major writings contain critical, though often philosophical, views on man and society as a result of his studies and interest in psychology, biology, ethnology, and physics. Over nine movies were made from novels or stories by Wylie. He sold the rights for two others that were never produced.

His wide range of interests defies easy classification but his earliest books exercised great influence in twentieth-century science fiction pulp magazines and comic books:

He applied engineering principles and the scientific method quite broadly in his work. His novel The Disappearance (1951) is about what happens when everyone wakes up one day and finds that all members of the opposite sex are missing (all the men have to get along without women, and vice versa). The book delves into the double standards between men and women that existed prior the woman's movement of the 1970s, exploring the nature of the relationship between men and women and the issues of women's rights and homosexuality. Many people at the time considered it as relevant to science fiction as his Experiment in Crime.

During World War II, writing The Paradise Crater (1945) resulted in his house arrest by the federal government; in it, he described a post-WWII 1965 Nazi conspiracy to develop and use uranium-237 bombs[2], months before the first successful atomic test at Alamagordo – the most highly classified secret of the war.[3] His nonfiction book of essays, Generation of Vipers (1942), was a best-seller during the 1940s and inspired the term "Momism". Some people have accused Generation of Vipers of being misogynistic. The Disappearance shows his thinking on the subject is very complex. (His only child, Karen Wylie Pryor, is the author of a classic book for breastfeeding mothers, Nursing Your Baby, and has commented that her father was far from being a misogynist.) His novel of manners Finnley Wren was also highly regarded in its time.

He wrote 69 "Crunch and Des" stories, most of which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post,[4] about the adventures of Captain Crunch Adams, master of the charter boat Poseidon, which was the basis of a brief television series. His "Crunch and Des" stories were an apparent influence on John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee books. In 1941 Wylie became Vice-President of the International Game Fish Association and for many years was responsible for writing IGFA rules and reviewing world record claims.[5]

He was also active in writing detective and mystery novelettes for a variety of magazines. Five of them were collected in 2010 as Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments and Other Mysteries, published by Crippen & Landru in its "Lost Classics" series and edited by Bill Pronzini.

An article Wylie written in 1951 in The Saturday Evening Post entitled 'Anyone Can Raise Orchids' led to the popularization of this hobby — not just the rich, but gardeners of every economic level began experimenting with orchids[6]

In August 1963, his niece Janice Wylie was murdered, along with her roommate Emily Hoffert, in New York City. The crime, which became known as the "Career Girls Murder Case," led to the — at that time — most expensive criminal investigation in New York's history. The case provided the inspiration for the television movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders, which led to the television series Kojak.

Philip Wylie died from a heart attack on October 25, 1971 in Miami.[7] Some of his papers, writings, and other possessions are in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library.

Bibliography

Novels

Short stories

"Crunch and Des" collections

Non-fiction

Essays/Articles

The following is a partial list:

TV series

References

Notes
  1. ^ Keefer. Page 109.
  2. ^ Urbanski 2007. p. 29
  3. ^ Franklin 2008. p. 147.
  4. ^ Wylie. Page viii.
  5. ^ IGFA Hall of Fame
  6. ^ Orlean. Page 140.
  7. ^ Time Magazine 1971
Sources
  • Barshay, Robert Howard. Philip Wylie; The Man and His Work. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979.
  • Bendau, Clifford P. Still Worlds Collide: Philip Wylie and the End of the American Dream. San Bernardino: The Borgo Press, 1980. Volume 30 in The Milford Series "Popular Writers of Today", 63 pages. ISBN 0163-2469
  • Breit, Harvey "Talk with Philip Wylie" New York Times Book Review (July 3, 1959)
  • Franklin, H. Bruce (2008). War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. Univ. of Mass. Press. ISBN 978-1558496514. 
  • Keefer, Truman F. Philip Wylie. Boston: Twain Publishers, 1978.
  • Lupoff, Richard A. "In Search of The Savage: An Introduction"
  • Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. New York: Random House, 1998.
  • Urbanski, Heather (2007). Plagues, Apocalypses and Bug-Eyed Monsters: How Speculative Fiction Shows Us Our Nightmares. McFarland & Co.. ISBN 978-0786429165. 
  • "Milestones, Nov. 8, 1971", Time Magazine, 8 November 1971, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877401,00.html, retrieved 2010-12-13 
  • Wylie, Philip. Crunch & Des: Classic Stories of Saltwater Fishing. New York: Lyons & Burford, 1990.

External links

 
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