Raymond Z. (Raymond Zinke) Gallun

Born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Raymond Zinke Gallun was an American science fiction writer whose career began remarkably early: his first stories were published in 1929, when he was still in his teens. He became one of the notable pulp-era writers who helped popularize science fiction in the 1930s, contributing stories that blended big interplanetary ideas with an accessible, human touch.

Gallun's life was not confined to the writing desk. Accounts of his career note that he left college after a year and spent time traveling and working a wide range of jobs before World War II. That restless experience seems to fit the wide horizons of his fiction, which frequently explored space travel, alien worlds, and futures shaped by both danger and wonder.

He later published novels including People Minus X and The Planet Strappers, and his shorter work was gathered in The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun. Though he is less widely known today than some of his contemporaries, he remains an important figure in early American science fiction, remembered for helping carry the genre from its rough-and-ready beginnings toward a broader sense of possibility.