Kris Neville

Born in St. Louis in 1925, Kris Neville was an American science fiction writer who began publishing in 1949. He became a familiar name in leading genre magazines of the 1950s, especially The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and is still best remembered for Bettyann, a novella many readers and critics have singled out as his signature work.

Neville's career took an unusual turn. Alongside his fiction, he worked for many years as a technical writer focused on plastics technology and co-authored specialized books on epoxy resins. That mix of literary imagination and technical expertise gave his work a distinctive flavor: playful and thoughtful, but often grounded in practical detail.

Although he never became as widely known as some of his contemporaries, Neville has remained a respected figure among science fiction readers. His body of work, produced mostly from the late 1940s into the 1970s, has kept its reputation for originality and intelligence, and later commentators have argued that he deserves to be rediscovered by a wider audience.