- FARLEY, Ralph Milne
- Pseudonym of US writer and teacher Roger Sherman Hoar (1887-1963) for all his sf work except two 1938 stories published in AMZ as by Lt John Pease. He was educated at Harvard and had a remarkably varied career, whichincluded teaching such subjects as mathematics and engineering, inventing a system of aiming large guns by the stars, and serving as a Massachusetts state senator. His early work in the pulp-sf field was written in obvious imitation of Edgar Rice BURROUGHS and was contributed to The ARGOSY - notably his most famous series, the Radio Man series, featuring Miles Cabot, which began with The Radio Man (1924 Argosy; 1948; vt An Earthmanon Venus 1950) and continued with The Radio Beasts (1925 Argosy; 1964), The Radio Planet (1926 Argosy; 1964), "The Radio Man Returns" (1939 AMZ)and "The Radio Minds of Mars" (1955 Spaceway, part 1 only; part 2 in Spaceway 1969). Other "radio" stories - including novels which did notreach book form, such as "The Radio Flyers" (1929 Argosy) and "The Radio Gun-Runners" (1930 Argosy) - are out of series. The tales, at firstabsurdly boosted by The Argosy as scientifically accurate, are devoted to the adventures of Cabot, mostly on VENUS, the Radio Planet, and still have admirers. Along with another novel, The Hidden Universe (1939 AMZ; with "We, the Mist" as coll 1950), The Radio Man was later assembled as StrangeWorlds (omni 1953). RMF was a rough-hewn, traditional SENSE-OF-WONDER writer, and as a consequence became relatively inactive with the greater sophistication of the genre after WWII.JC/PNOther works: Dangerous Love (fixup 1946 chap UK); The Immortals (1934 Argosy; 1947 chap UK); The Omnibus of Time (coll 1950).
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.
