H. B. Hickey

Herbert B. Livingston wrote under the pen name H. B. Hickey. Born in Chicago on June 25, 1916, he became a busy magazine writer in the 1940s and early 1950s, producing science fiction along with mystery, detective, western, and other stories. Bibliographic sources and later biographical notes connect the name H. B. Hickey with Livingston, and note that he died on March 8, 2016, in California, just short of his 100th birthday.

An obituary published in the Los Angeles Times says he wrote more than 80 stories and names Hilda and Gone Are the Lupo among his best-known works. The same obituary also notes his novel Saddles West and says his fiction was reprinted internationally, both in English and in translation.

Outside writing, he also worked in insurance and was active in labor and secular causes. According to his obituary, he helped organize an insurance workers' union in the 1950s and later co-founded Atheists United, serving as its first president.