HUNTER, Evan

   Once the main pseudonym and now the adopted legal name of the US writer born S.A. Lombino (1926-), who remains best known as Ed McBain, under which byline he has written at least 50 laconic police procedurals as well as some action-detections in the John D. MACDONALD mould. As EH he is most famous for novels like The Blackboard Jungle (1954), and his later career has had little to do with sf, most of his work in the genre appearing - under his own name and as Richard Marsten and Hunt Collins - in the 1950s. This early output included a number of magazine sf stories, published1953-6-some of which were assembled in The Last Spin (coll 1960 UK) and Happy New Year, Herbie (coll 1963) - and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The BIRDS (1963). His first three sf novels were juveniles: the protagonist in Find the Feathered Serpent (1952) utilizes his father's TIME-TRAVEL device to return to - and to participate in - the founding ofthe Mayan empire; Rocket to Luna (1953), as by Richard Marsten, puts students on the first trip to the Moon; and Danger: Dinosaurs! (1953), as by Marsten, again takes its heroes by time-travel into an exciting era. His first adult sf novel, Tomorrow's World (1954 If as "Malice inWonderland" as by EH; exp 1956; vt Tomorrow and Tomorrow 1956), as by Hunt Collins, takes a somewhat satirical look at a future dominated by organized DRUG addicts. In a marketing decision somewhat at odds with EH's normal practice, the book was later published unchanged (1979 UK) as by Ed McBain: it is certainly not in the McBain style. Nobody Knew They WereThere (1971) is set in 1974, but is a tale of campus violence only marginally displaced into sf. The plot of Ghosts (1980), one of his extensive series of 87th Precinct police-procedural novels as by Ed McBain, surprisingly hinges on parapsychological manifestations (ESP), tothe detriment of its merit as a detection. EH's long inactivity as an sf writer has been the genre's loss.

   JC

   See also: LEISURE; PULP MAGAZINES.