Bensen, D R
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1927-1997) US editor and author, his novels being usually pseudonymous. The two anthologies he has edited, The Unknown: 11 Stories (anth 1963) and The Unknown Five (anth 1964), are both fantasy and (all but one story) compiled from Unknown. He was more important within the sf field for his editorship of Pyramid Books 1957-1967, a period during which that firm became a significant producer of sf novels in reprint and original forms. In 1968 he became executive editor of Berkley Books. He moved to Dial Press in 1975, directing their Quantum sf programme, and he also acted as consulting editor for Dell Books's sf line after 1977. He wrote one sf novel, And Having Writ ... (1978), a smoothly humorous tale set in an Alternate History engendered by the survival of the Aliens whose crash-landing has caused the Siberian Tunguska explosion of 1908. Thomas Alva Edison is elected president of the United States in 1908; H G Wells also makes an appearance. [JC]
see also: History in SF.
Donald Roynold [or Roynald] Bensen
born New York: 3 October 1927
died Croton-on-Hudson, New York: 19 October 1997
works
- And Having Writ ... (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978) [hb/Bill Tinker]
works as editor
- The Unknown: 11 Stories (New York: Pyramid Books, 1963) [anth: pb/John Schoenherr]
- The Unknown Five: Stories of Fantasy (New York: Pyramid Books, 1964) [anth: pb/John Schoenherr]
links
previous versions of this entry