Arthur Leo Zagat

Born in New York on February 15, 1896, Arthur Leo Zagat became one of the busiest writers in the pulp-magazine world. Reference sources describe him as extremely prolific, with roughly 500 stories published across several genres, and note that some of his early science-fiction work was written with Nat Schachner.

Much of his strongest science-fiction appeared in the 1930s and early 1940s. He published the Tomorrow sequence in Argosy, imagining a near-future post-apocalyptic America, and his novel Seven Out of Time is often singled out as his best-known book. He also wrote horror and weird fiction for popular magazines of the day, which helped give his work a broad reach among pulp readers.

Zagat died in New York on April 3, 1949. Though he is less widely remembered than some of his contemporaries, he remains an interesting figure from the pulp era: a writer with enormous range, a relentless pace, and a clear gift for dramatic, high-concept storytelling.