Stanley Mullen

Born in Colorado Springs in 1911, Stanley Mullen studied writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder and also trained in drawing, painting, and lithography at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where he became a professional member in 1937. He was active not only as a writer but also as an artist and museum worker, with a series of his paintings of Indian ceremonial dances entering the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum.

Mullen wrote more than thirty science fiction and fantasy stories, beginning in the late 1940s, and became especially associated with pulp magazines including Planet Stories. He also edited and published The Gorgon, a small-press magazine that reflected his interest in imaginative literature and fandom. Some of his fiction appeared under alternate names, including Lee Beecher and John Peter Drummond.

Alongside his shorter fiction, he published books such as Moonfoam and Sorceries and the novel Kinsmen of the Dragon. He died in 1974, but his career still stands out for the unusual way it joined visual art, literary craft, and the energetic world of early speculative small-press publishing.