Albert dePina

Albert dePina, usually identified as Robert Albert dePina, was a science fiction short-story writer associated with the pulp-magazine boom of the 1940s and early 1950s. Reliable biographical information about him is surprisingly scarce, but sources consistently connect him with a run of space-opera stories published between 1943 and 1954, and list his death year as 1957.

His fiction appeared in magazines such as Planet Stories, and several works were later preserved by Project Gutenberg and LibriVox. Among the stories still widely read are The Star Guardsman, The Silver Plague, Moon of Danger, Keeper of the Deathless Sleep, and Minions of the Crystal Sphere. He also collaborated with fellow writer Henry Hasse on stories including Star of Panadur and Alcatraz of the Starways.

What makes dePina interesting today is the vivid, full-throttle feel of his work. He was not a prolific author, but his stories capture the colorful excitement of classic pulp science fiction: perilous planets, heroic struggle, and big imaginative ideas delivered at speed.