WINTERBOTHAM, Russ(ell Robert)

(1904-1971)

   US newspaperman and writer, active as an author of sf and Westerns, as the creator of at least 60 Big Little Books (DIME-NOVEL SF; JUVENILE SERIES) - including tales about Maximo the Amazing Superman (all 1941) - and as the author of various COMIC strips throughout his career (he retired in 1969), initiating Chris Welkin, Planeteer in 1951 and scripting it into the 1960s. He published his first sf story, "The Star that Would not Behave", with ASF in 1935, and contributed most prolifically to the genre before WWII. After concentrating on work for Whitman Publishing Company (generator of the Big Little Books and otherseries for children), he returned to sf writing from 1952 and was again noted as a prolific author of unambitious work, soon publishing his first novel, The Space Egg (1958), about an INVASION of Earth; several other sf adventures followed, including The Other World (1963) as by J. Harvey Bond, and Planet Big Zero (1964), as by Franklin Hadley.

   JC

   Other works: The Red Planet (1962); The Men from Arcturus (1963); The Puppet Planet (1964); The Lord of Nardos (1966).