Reuben (Reuben Robert) Merliss

Born in New York in 1915, Reuben Robert Merliss was an American writer remembered as both a physician and a novelist. Library and bookselling records link him to novels including The Year of the Death and Consider the Season: A Novel of the Making of a Doctor, while Project Gutenberg also lists his science-fiction story The Stutterer under the name R. R. Merliss.

The surviving public record is a little scattered, but the broad outline is consistent: he was born on March 20, 1915, and died in 1987, with several sources placing his later life in Beverly Hills, California. His work suggests a writer especially drawn to medicine, history, and the psychological pressures people face under extreme circumstances.

Because detailed biographical sources are limited, much of his life outside his published work is not easy to confirm online. What does come through clearly is the unusual mix of careers behind his books: Merliss wrote with the perspective of someone who knew the medical world from the inside, and that gives his fiction its particular flavor.