Tenn's short novel "Medusa Was a Lady" was the cover story in the October 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures, but would not appear in book form (as A Lamp for Medusa) until 1968
William Tenn was the pseudonym of Philip Klass (May 9, 1920 – February 7, 2010), a British-born American science fiction author, notable for many stories with satirical elements.[1]
Biography
Born to a Jewish family[2] in London, Phillip Klass moved to New York City with his parents before his second birthday and grew up in Brooklyn, the oldest of three children. After serving in the United States Army during World War II as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by Bell Labs.
When Phil Klass retired, the couple moved to the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon in 1988, and Fruma took a job as an editor with Black Box Corporation. That same year, her first short story, "Before the Rainbow," was published in the anthology Synergy 3. In 1996, her second story, "After the Rainbow," won a Writers of the Future prize; the story was published in Writers of the Future, Vol. XII. In 2004, she entered a worldwide essay competition, the Power of Purpose Awards, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. Competing against 7,000 entrants from 97 countries, she won $25,000 for her essay, "Streets of Mud, Streets of Gold."[5]
Phil and Fruma Klass were members of the Pittsburgh Area Real Time Science Fiction Enthusiasts Consortium (PARSEC), and were frequent speakers at its local conference, Confluence.
He has published most of his fiction as William Tenn and much of his nonfiction as Phil (or Philip) Klass.[7][8] He is sometimes confused with UFO debunker Philip J. Klass, who was born six months earlier and who died August 9, 2005.
Klass was related to other writers, including his nieces, Perri Klass and Judy Klass, his nephew David Klass, and his brother Morton Klass.
He died on February 7, 2010, of congestive heart failure, and was survived by his wife Fruma, daughter Adina, and sister Frances Goldman-Levy.[9]
Writing
Klass published academic articles, essays, two novels and more than 60 short stories. He began writing while working at Bell Labs, and his radar lab experience prompted his first story, "Alexander the Bait", about a radar beam aimed at the Moon. It was published in Astounding Science Fiction (May 1946), and within months a Signal Corps lab bounced a radar beam off the Moon, making his story obsolete. He commented, "It was a bad story, just good enough to be published. Others in the same magazine were much better, so I really worked hard on my second one. I did as well as I knew how."
Some of the nonfiction articles in the trade periodical TWX Magazine have been attributed to Klass during his employment at Bell Labs, although most were published without by-lines.[10]
His second story, the widely reprinted "Child's Play" (1947), told of a lawyer who creates people with his Bild-A-Man kit, a Christmas gift intended for a child of the future. After publication in Astounding Science Fiction (May 1946), Tenn was soon hailed as the science fiction field's reigning humorist, and during the early 1950s, readers of Galaxy Science Fiction looked forward to issues featuring his satirical science fiction.
It would be too wide a generalization to say that every SF satire, every SF comedy and every attempt at witty and biting criticism found in the field is a poor and usually cheap imitation of what this man has been doing since the 1940s. His incredibly involved and complex mind can at times produce constructive comment so pointed and astute that the fortunate recipient is permanently improved by it. Admittedly, the price may be to create two whole categories for our species: humanity and William Tenn. For each of which you must create your ethos and your laws. I've done that. And to me it's worth it.
Tenn wrote two novels, both published in 1968. Of Men and Monsters is an expansion of his story "The Men in the Walls", originally in Galaxy Science Fiction (October 1963).[12]A Lamp for Medusa was published as a double novel with Dave Van Arnam's The Players of Hell. This novella was an expansion of his story "Medusa Was a Lady!" from the October, 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures.
Theater
In 1978, the University Readers at Penn State University presented a dramatization, directed by Joseph Wigley, of four of Tenn's short stories under the title Four From Tenn. The selected stories were "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", "Bernie the Faust", "The Tenants", and "My Mother Was a Witch".[13]
Pittsburgh's Malacandra Productions staged a nine-character play adapted by John Regis from the classic Tenn science fiction short story, "Winthrop Was Stubborn". Directed by David Brody for the Three Rivers Arts Festival, this production ran from June 2 through June 17, 2006.[14]
Works
The Evolution of William Tenn or Myself When Young (1939) although these stories first published in book form by the Pretentious Press in 1995
^White, Ken (April 2, 2004). "First Love". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved February 8, 2010. It was only while a grad student at Penn State in 1968 that Morrell found his direction. He was in a bookstore one day with his mentor, novelist Philip Klass (better known under his pseudonym, William Tenn), who pointed out the thriller section.
Stephensen-Payne, Phil and Gordon Benson Jr. William Tenn, High Klass Talent: A Working Bibliography. Galactic Central Publications, 1993. ISBN1-871133-39-4.