John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was born in 1903. After trying many jobs including farming and law, he started writing short stories for publication in 1925. He did well in America in the 1930s, writing under various pen names and graduated to churning out the staple written diet of every red blooded American male - the detective story. He was in both the Civil Service and the army during the war and returned to writing stories for the American market in 1946, concentrating on books that were released under the blanket theme of science-fiction. His books rarely dealt with the blam-blam type of space story but concentrated more on the issues surrounding his characters; his habit of often writing in the first person lent his stories a strong, personal feeling and his books quickly topped the best seller's lists.