McCLARY, Thomas Calvert

(?1909-1972)

   US speechwriter and ghostwriter whose sf appeared in ASF in the 1930s under his own name and under the pseudonyms Thomas Calvert, Miles Cramer and Calvin Peregoy - the latter for the Doctor Conklin seriesin ASF in 1934-5. For Unknown he wrote "The Tommyknocker" (1940). Basic to his two sf novels, Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot (1934 ASF; 1944) and Three Thousand Years (1938 ASF; 1954), is the theory, reminiscent ofBuckminster Fuller (1895-1983), that a small scientific elite unhindered by the opportunism of businessmen and politicians could keep the world running in decency and comfort. Both are worked out in post- HOLOCAUST settings, intentionally and instantaneously precipitated in the former by means of a ray which obliterates all memory and in the latter by the transition of all lifeforms to a state of SUSPENDED ANIMATION. In both books the idealistic theory is set up only to be exploded.

   JE/RB/PN