S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: HARRIS, John (Wyndham Parkes Lucas) Beynon
Aged: 65
Born: July 10, 1903
Where: Knowle, West Midlands, ENGLAND
Died: March 11, 1969
Where: _ _ _
Interred: _ _ _
Married: Grace Wilson
When: 1963
John B. Harris as John Wyndham
A British author, John Beynon Harris capitalized on the popular fad after WWII of SF stories that destroyed the Earth from space. John Wyndham was privately educated, worked in Civil Service, and was in the Army - Royal Signals, during the war. Before then, John had been writing mostly short stories with only two excursions into novels. After the war, Wyndham moved into writing mostly novels and became very successful.
Two of Wyndham's novels, The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), were made into movies, the latter retitled Village of the Damned and then sequeled with Children of the Damned.
Wyndham's novels were steady hits, still available from Penguin Books, and included The Kraken Wakes (1953), The Chrysalids (1955), and Trouble with Lichen(1960). His short stories were collected into Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956), The Seeds of Time (1956), and The Best of John Wyndham (1973) among others. Wyndham was one of those SF writers whose stories age well and tend to be themes of personal struggle and triumph rather than dated technical explorations.
The John Wyndham archive is housed at the Sydney Jones Library at the University of Liverpool, England.
PEN NAMES: John Harris, Johnson Harris, John Beynon, Lucas Beynon, & Lucas Parkes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
BIOGRAPHY: Science Fiction Writers, Scribners 1982
OBITUARY: The New York Times, Wednesday, March 12, 1969, p33
