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Hawton, Hector

(1901-1975) UK author and humanist, at one time managing director of the Rationalist Press Association; he wrote mostly detective thrillers between about 1934 and 1957. The Col. Max Masterson sequence – Tower of Darkness (1950), Blue-Eyed Buddha (1951), Black Emperor (1952) and The Lost Valley (1953) – verges on sf, the final volume being a Lost-Race tale set in the Himalayas, where Soviet intervention via one-man helicopters (see Inventions) threatens world peace. Operation Superman (1951) is an old-fashioned yarn about a man whose Intelligence has been much heightened by shock-treatment experiments during World War Two in a Nazi concentration camp (see Holocaust Fiction). As John Sylvester, Hawton wrote two sf novels for adolescents, Master of the World (1949) and The Flying Saucer (1952). [JC/PN]

Hector Hawton

born Plymouth, Devon: 7 February 1901

died London: 14 December 1975

works

series

Col. Max Masterson

• Tower of Darkness (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1950) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
• Blue-Eyed Buddha (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
• Black Emperor (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1952) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/]
• The Lost Valley (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1953) [Col. Max Masterson: hb/Maben]

individual titles

• Master of the World (London: Ward, Lock, 1949) as by John Sylvester [hb/Day]
• Operation Superman (London: Ward, Lock, 1951) [hb/]
• The Flying Saucer (London: Ward, Lock, 1952) as by John Sylvester [hb/R J Jobson]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 14:55 pm on 24 October 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/hawton_hector>