John Victor Peterson

John Victor Peterson was an American science fiction author who began publishing in genre magazines in the late 1930s. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that his first story of genre interest, "Martyrs Don't Mind Dying," appeared in Astounding in January 1938, and that he continued placing stories in science fiction magazines into the 1950s.

His fiction is closely tied to the classic magazine era of SF: short, concept-led, and often built around a clever speculative twist. He also collaborated with Allen Ingvald Benson under the joint pseudonym Victor Valding, and several of his shorter works have remained accessible through Project Gutenberg and audiobook-style public-domain projects.

Peterson's best-known longer work is Rock the Big Rock (1970), described by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as his only full-length novel. Even though many details of his life remain hard to pin down, his stories still offer a vivid window into the imagination and energy of twentieth-century pulp science fiction.