BINDER, Eando

   Most famous of the joint pseudonyms used by the brothers Earl Andrew Binder (1904-1965) and Otto Oscar Binder (1911-1975), though they both used other pseudonyms as well; after about 1940, when Earl became inactive as a writer, Otto continued to sign himself EB, so that some EB books are collaborative and some by Otto alone. Together, the brothers also wrote 11 stories as John Coleridge and one as Dean D. O'Brien. Alone, Otto also wrote as Gordon A. Giles and, later, as Ione Frances (or Ian Francis) Turek, did some work under the house name Will GARTH, and finally published a couple of novels under his own name. A third brother, Jack, an illustrator, did much of the early drawing on CAPTAIN MARVEL, which was regularly scripted by Otto.The two brothers' best-known works were all published as by EB, beginning with "The First Martian" for AMZ in 1932. The Adam Link series, by Otto alone, is EB's most important work in the sf field: Adam Link, a sentient ROBOT, narrates his own tales, quite feelingly. Most of his story appears in Adam Link - Robot (1939-42 AMZ; fixup 1965); uncollected stories, also from AMZ, are "Adam Link Fights a War" (1940), Adam Link in the Past (1941 AMZ; 1950 chap Australia) and "Adam Link Faces a Revolt" (1941). Link is highly anthropomorphic; though Isaac ASIMOV's somewhat more austere sense of the nature of robots and robotics was soon to establish itself in the sf field as an almost unbreakable convention, the Adam Link sequence is an important predecessor, significantly treating its robot hero (and his wife, Eve Link) with sympathy. The brothers' other main series, the Anton York tales, all collected in book form as Anton York, Immortal (1937-40 TWS; fixup 1965), tells how Anton and his wife achieve IMMORTALITY and live with it. Also as EB, the brothers published less interesting magazine serials in the 1930s which were only gradually to see book publication. Notable among them are Enslaved Brains (1934 Wonder Stories; rev 1951 Fantastic Story Quarterly; 1965) and Lords of Creation (1939 Argosy; 1949); in the latter, Overlords rule Earth but are resisted with ultimate success. As Gordon A. Giles, Otto wrote a series for TWS 1937-42 (the last story as by EB) in which a spaceship from Earth explores the Solar System, finding Martian pyramids on each planet; known as the Via series (after their individual titles, which always begin with "Via"), these stories were assembled as Puzzle of the Space Pyramids (fixup 1971) as by EB. Alone and in collaboration, Otto wrote a large number of additional stories that were not part of any sequence; appearing in the PULP MAGAZINES 1933-42, these were typical of the field before the revolution in quality symbolized (and in part caused) by the arrival of John W. CAMPBELL Jr at ASF. After 1940, Otto did script work on both Captain Marvel and SUPERMAN comics, and late in life he published under his own name a graphic-novel version of Jules VERNE's The Mysterious Island (graph 1974). Though his fiction production decreased, he did considerable nonfiction work as well as taking on editorial tasks. He became interested in UFOS. He began publishing sf stories again, briefly, 1953-4, but a significant proportion of the books published in the 1960s and 1970s contain material from before WWII.

   JC

   Other works: The Cancer Machine (1940 chap); Martian Martyrs (c1942 chap) and The New Life (c1942 chap), both as by John Coleridge; The Three Eternals (1939 TWS; 1949 chap Australia); Where Eternity Ends (1939 Science Fiction; 1950 chap Australia); Dracula * (graph 1966) with Craig Tennis; The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker * (1967) as OOB; the Saucer series comprising Menace of the Saucers (1969) and Night of the Saucers (1971); The Impossible World (1939 Startling Stories; 1970); Five Steps to Tomorrow (1940 Startling Stories; 1970); The Double Man (1971); Get Off My World (1971); Secret of the Red Spot (1971); Terror in the Bay (1971) as Ione Frances Turek; The Mind from Outer Space (1972); The Forgotten Colony (1972) as OOB; The Hospital Horror (1973) as OOB; The Frontier's Secret (1973) as Ian Francis Turek, associational.

   See also: ADAM AND EVE; COMICS; DC COMICS; EC COMICS; THRILLING WONDER STORIES; TIME PARADOXES.