author
J. J. Allerton
A notably obscure pulp-era writer, this author published science fiction in Amazing Stories during the late 1940s and remains best remembered for the novella Once Upon a Planet. Very little is firmly documented, which gives the work an appealing air of mystery.
1 Audiobook
Once Upon A Planet
by J. J. Allerton
About the author
J. J. Allerton was a mid-20th-century pulp writer whose fiction appeared in Amazing Stories. Confirmed credits include Once Upon a Planet, which Project Gutenberg notes was first published in the December 1948 issue, and Moon of Battle, which bibliographic sources place in the December 1949 issue.
Reliable public information about the person behind the byline is scarce. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists J. J. Allerton as an English-language author, while a genre-history article in Dark Worlds Quarterly describes the career as brief and centered on magazines connected with editor Raymond A. Palmer. That same article suggests Allerton may have written around ten stories, though details beyond the surviving pulp bibliography are limited.
Because so little biographical record seems to survive, Allerton is remembered mostly through the stories themselves rather than through a well-documented life story. For readers who enjoy rediscovering forgotten pulp voices, that obscurity is part of the fascination.