Jr. Sam Merwin

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on April 28, 1910, Samuel Kimball Merwin Jr. became an American writer and editor known for both mystery fiction and science fiction. He was the son of writer Samuel Merwin, and over a long career he built a reputation not just for his own stories and novels, but also for the way he influenced the magazines he edited.

Merwin is especially associated with the great age of pulp science fiction. He edited Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in the 1940s and early 1950s, and later worked on other magazines including Fantastic Story Quarterly, Science Fiction Quarterly, Dynamic Science Fiction, and Satellite Science Fiction. As an editor, he helped bring a more confident, imaginative tone to the field while also publishing fast-moving, accessible fiction.

As a writer, he worked across genres, from mysteries to speculative adventure. He died in Los Angeles, California, on January 13, 1996, but his name still turns up wherever readers explore classic magazine science fiction and the lively world of twentieth-century popular fiction.