Loomis, Noel
Entry updated 14 August 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1905-1969) US author and editor, active in the magazine field for some time, publishing work under his own name and as Benjamin Miller, and a book as by Silas Water. Though his first novel, Murder Goes to Press (1937), was a thriller, he was most successful as an author of Westerns. In his first sf novel, City of Glass (July 1942 Startling; exp 1955), based on his first sf story, three men are time-warped into a desolate Far Future on Earth; "Iron Men" (Winter 1945 Startling) is a sequel. A second novel, The Man with Absolute Motion (1955) as by Silas Water, is likewise set in a desolate venue. In this case the Universe is paralysed by interminable – perhaps not intentionally comic – bureaucratic delays and is also running out of energy; the concept of Entropy is invoked, albeit in scientifically illiterate terms. After saving the Universe with considerable help, the eponymous hero takes an Eve figure back to a depopulated Earth (see Adam and Eve), and plans to breed. [JC]
Noel Miller Loomis
born Wakita, Oklahoma: 3 April 1905
died San Diego, California: 7 September 1969
works
- City of Glass (New York: Double-Action Pocketbook, 1955) [first version published in July 1942 in Startling: pb/Kelly Freas]
- The Man with Absolute Motion (London: Rich and Cowan, 1955) as by Silas Water [hb/hb/Ron Turner]
- The Man with Absolute Motion (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2010) as Noel Loomis [dos: pb/Alex Schomburg]
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