JENNISON, John W(illiam)

(? -?1969)

   UK writer, one of several who became active as mass-producers of genre fiction for UK paperback houses and who remained reticent about personal details during their careers. From about 1945 to the year in which it is thought he may have died, JWJ seems to have written over 100 novels under at least 40 pseudonyms, mostly thrillers and Westerns. He began to publish his routine but occasionally engaging sf with two novels as Edgar Rees Kennedy, Conquerors of Venus (1951) and The Mystery Planet (1952). Working for CURTIS WARREN, he then published: under the house nameNeil CHARLES, Para-Robot (1952); under the Gill HUNT name, Station 7 (1952) and Zero Field (1952); and under the King LANG name, Spaceline (1952). After Invasion from Space (1954) as Matthew C. Bradford, however, he ceased producing sf for some time, returning in the mid-1960s with the marginal Supercar in the Black Diamond Trail (1965) as JWJ. Generally as John Theydon, a name he had used since 1946 for non-sf tales, he thenpublished a sequence of STINGRAY tv ties - Stingray * (1965), Stingray: Danger in the Deep * (1965) as JWJ, and Stingray and the Monster * (1966)- a sequence of THUNDERBIRDS tv ties - Thunderbirds * (1966), Calling Thunderbirds * (1966), Thunderbirds: Ring of Fire * (1966), Thunderbirds: Lost World * (1966) as JWJ, and Lady Penelope: The Albanian Affair * (1967) - and a sequence of Captain Scarlet tv ties (CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS) - Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons * (1967; vt Captain Scarlet 1989) and Captain Scarlet and the Silent Saboteur * (1967). JWJ's last known sf book, again as Theydon, was another tv tie, The Angels and the Creeping Enemy * (1968).

   JC