author
P. F. Costello
A pen name tied to the lively world of mid-20th-century pulp science fiction, this byline appeared on fast-moving magazine stories full of strange ideas and adventure. Behind it was part of a wider tradition of house names and shared pseudonyms that shaped the genre’s magazine era.
1 Audiobook
The devil downstairs
by P. F. Costello
About the author
P. F. Costello was not a single well-documented public literary figure so much as a science-fiction magazine byline used in the pulp era. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction identifies it as one of the many Ziff-Davis house names, and the Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists it as an alternate name used by several writers, including William P. McGivern, Rog Phillips, Chester S. Geier, and at times others.
That history makes the name interesting in its own right. In the 1940s and 1950s, pulp magazines often published fiction under shared pseudonyms or editorial house names, which means stories credited to P. F. Costello can reflect more than one authorial voice. The result is a byline associated with a broad slice of classic magazine science fiction rather than a single personal career.
Because the name was shared, biographical details are limited and sometimes overlap with the writers behind it. One of the better-known authors associated with the pseudonym is Rog Phillips, a prolific American science-fiction writer and editor from the magazine era.