Reynolds, John Murray
Entry updated 25 May 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1900-1993) US author, shipping company executive, US naval officer during World War Two, and copious contributor to Pulp magazines; reportedly writing some 150 stories in various genres. He began to publish work of sf interest with "The Devil-Plant" in Weird Tales for September 1928, and wrote three further stories for that magazine. His four-part sf serial "The Dark Planet" ran in Boys' Life from March to June 1935. "Puppets of the Murder Master" (Fall 1938 Bull's Eye Detective) features a Mad Scientist planning to take over the USA using a Ray that brainwashes and Hypnotizes. Reynolds's Tarzan-flavoured jungle tale "Ki-Gor – King of the Jungle" (Winter 1938-1939 Jungle Stories), published under his own name, launched the Ki-Gor sequence which was continued by others using the House Name John Peter Drummond; the first story was reprinted in the same magazine's Summer 1948 issue as "Ki-Gor, King of the Jungle" with the Drummond byline. Reynolds also contributed two sf novellas to Planet Stories [see Checklist below].
His novel The Private Life of Henry Perkins (1947) is a fantasy whose henpecked Cockney porter protagonist escapes the tiresomeness of mundane life via Timeslip dreams of the past and future, punctuated by conversations with Yahweh; unlike James Thurber's Walter Mitty in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (18 March 1939 The New Yorker), of which this tale is faintly reminiscent, he ultimately breaks free and makes a new life for himself. [DRL]
John Murray Reynolds
born New York: 29 May 1900
died Deerfield Beach, Florida: 6 July 1993
works
- The Private Life of Henry Perkins (New York: Thomas Y Crowell, 1947) [hb/]
collections and stories
- The Golden Amazons of Venus (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2010) [novella: ebook: first appeared Winter 1939 Planet Stories: na/]
- Goddess of the Moon (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2010) [novella: ebook: first appeared Spring 1940 Planet Stories: na/]
links
- Tellers of Weird Tales: John Murray Reynolds
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Project Gutenberg
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