Les Cole

Les Cole, born Lester Hines Cole in 1926, was part of American science-fiction fandom as well as a working writer. Fancyclopedia records that he co-chaired SFCon, the 1954 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, with Gary Nelson, and that he was active in the Elves, Gnomes and Little Men's Science Fiction and Chowder Society.

His fiction appeared in magazines from the 1950s onward, including work published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He also wrote with and alongside his wife, Esther "Es" Cole; the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that the joint pseudonym Colin Sturgis was used by Les Cole and Melvin Sturgis.

Later, he became known to many readers for the Sea Kings novels, a series set in the Late Bronze Age around Minoan Crete and the eastern Mediterranean. Reader biographies on Goodreads describe him as having studied geology and worked as a chemist, technical writer, and copywriter, interests that seem to fit the careful research behind his historical fiction. He died in 2019.