author

Richard Maples

A mid-century science fiction writer whose surviving work feels like a hidden pulp-era find. Best known today for just a handful of stories, he wrote eerie, fast-moving tales about aliens, fear, and human weakness.

1 Audiobook

The Scapegoat

The Scapegoat

by Richard Maples

About the author

Richard Maples appears to have been an American science fiction writer active in the 1950s. The clearest confirmed record of his work comes from magazine and public-domain listings: "The Frightful Ones" appeared in Imagination: Stories of Science and Fantasy in November 1954, and "The Scapegoat" appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction in June 1956.

His known output is very small, which gives his work an unusual, almost mysterious place in genre history. Modern catalog and archive sources consistently link him with those stories, and "The Scapegoat" was later adapted for the radio series X Minus One, helping preserve his name for later science fiction fans.

Very little reliable biographical information about his life has surfaced in the sources available here, so it is safest to remember him through the fiction itself: tense, imaginative stories from the great era of magazine science fiction.