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Jennison, John W

Entry updated 18 March 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1911-1980) UK author, one of several who became active as mass-producers of genre fiction for UK paperback houses and who remained reticent about personal details during their careers. From about 1945 to the year in which it is thought he may have died, Jennison seems to have written over 100 novels under at least forty pseudonyms, mostly thrillers and Westerns; he began to publish routine but occasionally engaging sf with two novels as Edgar Rees Kennedy, Conquerors of Venus (1951) and The Mystery Planet (1952). Working for Curtis Warren, he then published: under the House Name Neil Charles, Para-Robot (1952); under the Gill Hunt name, Station 7 (1952) and Zero Field (1952); and under the King Lang name, Spaceline (1952).

After Invasion from Space (1954) as Matthew C Bradford and The Yellow Planet (1954) as by George Sheldon Browne, however, he ceased producing sf for some time, returning in the mid-1960s with the marginal Supercar in the Black Diamond Trail (1965) as Jennison. Generally as John Theydon, a name he had used since 1946 for non-sf tales, he then published a sequence of Stingray television Ties beginning with Stingray (1965); a sequence of Thunderbirds television Ties beginning with Thunderbirds (1966) and Thunderbirds: Lost World (1966), a Lost World tale under his own name; and a sequence of Captain Scarlet television Ties (see Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons) – Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967; vt Captain Scarlet 1989) and Captain Scarlet and the Silent Saboteur (1967). Jennison's last known sf books, again as Theydon, were ties to a further Gerry Anderson television series, The Secret Service: The Secret Service: The Destroyer (1969) and The Secret Service: The VIP (1969), featuring rays that act as Disintegrators or cause Miniaturization. [JC]

John William Jennison

born London: 1 July 1911

died Exmouth, Devon: 8 April 1980

works

early singletons

series

Stingray

Thunderbirds

Captain Scarlet

Secret Service

later singletons

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