Raymond Z. Gallun

Raymond Zinke Gallun (March 22, 1911 – April 2, 1994) was an American science fiction writer.

Gallun (rhymes with "balloon") was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He left college after one year and travelled in Europe, living a drifter's existence, working a multitude of jobs around the world in the years leading up to World War II.

He was among the stalwart group of early sci-fi pulp writers who popularized the genre. He sold many popular stories to pulp magazines in the 1930s. "Old Faithful" (1934) was his first noted story. "The Gentle Brain" was published in "Science Fiction Quarterly" under the pseudonym Arthur Allport.

His first book, People Minus X, was published in 1957 by Simon & Schuster, followed by The Planet Strappers in 1961 (Pyramid). The Ballantine collection issued in 1978, The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun, provides a selection of his early work. Gallun was honored with the I-CON Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985 at I-CON IV; the award was later renamed The Raymond Z. Gallun Award.

His pen names include Dow Elstar, E.V. Raymond and William Callahan.

A posthumous autobiography, Starclimber, authored in part by Gallun and completed by Jeffrey M. Elliot, was published in September 2007. There is an extensive interview with Gallun about his life and career in Eric Leif Davin's Pioneers of Wonder.

Bibliography

• "The Machine that thought" (1940, as William Callahan)
• "A Step Farther Out" (1950)
• "Passport to Jupiter" (1951)
• People Minus X (1958)
• The Planet Strappers (1961)
• Apollo at Go (1963)
• The Eden Cycle (1974)
• Skyclimber (1981)
• "Editorial" (Ahoy!, March 1984)
• "Editorial" (Ahoy!, August 1984)
• Bioblast (1985)

References

• Jeffrey Elliot. Interview with Raymond Z. Gallun, Thrust No. 17, Summer 1981.
• John J. Pierce. "Introduction" in The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun, Ballantine, 1978.
• defunct Scipedia web page at the Wayback Machine (archived October 12, 2008)

External links

• Works by Raymond Z. Gallun at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Raymond Z. Gallun at Internet Archive
• Works by Raymond Z. Gallun at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Raymond Z. Gallun at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database