Harry Bates (author)
| Harry Bates | |
|---|---|
| Born | Hiram Gilmore Bates III October 9, 1900 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Died | September 1981 (80) New York |
| Pen name | Anthony Gilmore, H.G. Winter, A.R. Holmes |
| Occupation | editor, author |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1930–1953 |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Notable works | "Farewell to the Master" |
| Notable awards |
First Fandom Hall of Fame 1976 |
Hiram Gilmore "Harry" Bates III (October 9, 1900 – September 1981) was an American science fiction editor and writer. His short story "Farewell to the Master" (1940) was the basis of the well-known science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
Harry Bates was born Hiram Gilmore Bates III on October 9, 1900 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began working for William Clayton in the 1920s as the editor of adventure pulp magazines. When Clayton proposed a period adventure magazine, Bates suggested several alternatives that he said would be easier to edit, and Astounding Science Fiction was the result. Bates, who was not a fan of science fiction, edited the magazine from its inception in January 1930 until March 1933, when Clayton went bankrupt and the magazine was sold to Street and Smith. During that time, he edited other magazines for Clayton, including Strange Tales, intended to compete with Weird Tales.
Bates believed the science fiction stories of the time were poorly written: "Amazing Stories! Once I had bought a copy. What awful stuff I'd found it! Cluttered with trivia! Packed with puerilities. Written by unimaginables! But now at the memory I wondered if there might be a market for a well-written magazine on the Amazing themes." Bates wrote that the "science fiction of the early writers had little relation to science of the scientists." What science fiction writers did was to "extrapolate" and not "relate" because "almost all of what is called science fiction is fantasy and nothing else but."
In 1964, Bates recalled his editorship of Astounding: "Long ago I was a party to the genesis of a magazine which persisted through thirty years and thirty millions of words. ... Astounding was a living being. I served it in its infancy and childhood, Orlin Tremaine brought it through youth and adolescence, John Campbell guided it through adulthood and maturity."
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