S. P. Meek

S. P. Meek

S. P. Meek c.1930
Born April 8, 1894
Chicago, IL
Died June 10, 1972
Palm Beach, FL
Occupation writer, military officer
Nationality American
Genre science fiction, children's books

Sterner St. Paul Meek (April 8, 1894 in Chicago, Illinois – June 10, 1972) was an American military chemist, early science fiction author, and children's author. He published much of his work first as Capt. S.P. Meek, then, briefly, as Major S.P. Meek and, after 1933, as Col. S. P. Meek. He also published one story as Sterner St. Paul.

Biography

Meek received his Associate degree from University of Chicago in 1914 and his Bachelor's degree in Metallurgical Engineering from University of Alabama in 1915. He continued his education at University of Wisconsin–Madison (1916) and MIT (1921–1923). He married in 1927 and had one son.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Meek joined the military as a chemist and ordnance expert. He served as Chief, Small Arms Ammunition Research, in 1923-1926, and Chief Publications Officer, Ordnance Dept., in 1941-1945. He retired a colonel in 1947, at which point he became a full-time writer.

Meek's "The Red Peril" was the cover story in the September 1929 issue of Amazing Stories

Writing career

Meek sold his first fiction story, "Taming Poachers", to Field and Stream, where it appeared in September 1928. Between early 1929 and January 1933, he published over 20 science fiction stories and short novels in pulp science fiction magazines like Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories, most of them in his popular Dr. Bird and Operative Carnes series. Meek left the field in early 1933, with only one further science fiction story published in 1939.

Like many early pulp science fiction writers, Meek used fiction to give detailed descriptions of current and projected scientific advances. He utilized many contemporary science fiction tropes, e.g. the notion that atoms were miniaturized solar systems in his stories "Submicroscopic" and "Awlo of Ulm".[1]

Meek quickly became popular with pulp magazine readers and was eagerly sought out by editors. In the first issue of Astounding Science Fiction in 1930, its editor Harry Bates listed Meek among "some of the finest writers of fantasy in the world", alongside Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings and others.[2] However, Meek's stories were crudely executed and the higher standards introduced with the Golden Age of Science Fiction soon made them of strictly historical interest. Science fiction writer and critic Samuel R. Delany later called Meek's writing "unbelievably bad"[3]

After leaving science fiction, Meek published over twenty children's books between 1932 and 1956, starting with Jerry, the Adventures of an Army Dog, usually about dogs or horses. Many of these books drew on Meek's experiences in the military.

Works

Meek's "Trapped in the Depths" was the cover story in the debut issue of Wonder Stories in 1930

Science fiction

The Atlantis series

Collections

Children's novels

Non-fiction

Notes

  1. ↑ See Tony Hey and Patrick Walters. The New Quantum Universe, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-56457-3 p.286
  2. ↑ Quoted in Gary Westfahl. The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1998, ISBN 0-85323-573-2 p.168
  3. ↑ See Samuel R. Delany. Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics, Hanover, New Hampshire, Wesleyan University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8195-6280-7 p.26

References

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