author
Neil R. Jones
1909–1988
A pioneer of early space opera, Neil R. Jones imagined cryonically preserved bodies, cyborg explorers, and machine civilizations long before those ideas became science-fiction staples. His enduring Professor Jameson stories helped shape later visions of robots, immortality, and humanity’s far-future adventures.
5 Audiobooks
Doomsday on Ajiat
by Neil R. Jones
The Jameson Satellite
by Neil R. Jones
Spacewrecked on Venus
by Neil R. Jones
The death's head meteor
by Neil R. Jones
The return of the tripeds
by Neil R. Jones
About the author
Neil Ronald Jones (May 29, 1909–February 15, 1988) was an American science-fiction writer who worked as a New York State unemployment insurance claims investigator until retiring in 1973. His first published story, “The Death’s Head Meteor,” appeared in Air Wonder Stories in January 1930 and is credited as the first English-language science-fiction story to use the word “astronaut.”
Jones is best known for the Professor Jameson series, which began with “The Jameson Satellite” in Amazing Stories in 1931. The stories follow a scientist whose body is preserved in space for forty million years before his brain is placed in a mechanical body by the cyborg Zoromes, opening the door to a life of exploration across the universe.
His work explored ideas of cryonics, robotic beings, cyborg identity, and future history decades before they became familiar themes. The Professor Jameson stories influenced readers including Isaac Asimov and Robert Ettinger; Jones continued writing space-opera stories through 1951, with several collections appearing in the 1960s.