P. Schuyler Miller

Peter Schuyler Miller
Born	(1912-02-21)February 21, 1912 Troy, New York
Died	October 13, 1974(1974-10-13) (aged 62) Blennerhassett Island, West Virginia
Pen name	P. Schuyler Miller, S. P. Miller
Occupation	Author and critic, technical writer
Genre	Science fiction

Peter Schuyler Miller (February 21, 1912 – October 13, 1974) was an American science fiction writer and critic.

Life[]

Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley, which led to a lifelong interest in the Iroquois Indians. He pursued this as an amateur archaeologist and a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.

He received his M.S. in chemistry from Union College in Schenectady. He subsequently worked as a technical writer for General Electric in the 1940s, and for the Fisher Scientific Company in Pittsburgh from 1952 until his death.

Miller died October 13, 1974 on Blennerhassett Island, West Virginia. He was on an archaeological tour to the "Fort Ancient culture" site west of Parkersburg at the time.

Works[]

Miller wrote pulp science fiction beginning in the 1930s, and is considered one of the more popular authors of the period. His work appeared in such magazines as Amazing Stories, Astounding, Comet, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Marvel Tales, Science Fiction Digest, Super Science Stories, Unknown, Weird Tales, and Wonder Stories, among others.

An active fan of others' work as well as an author, he is also known as an early bibliographer of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories in the 1930s, together with his friend John D. Clark.

Clark and Conan[]

Clark first encountered Robert E. Howard's fantasies of Kull, Conan and Solomon Kane in the magazine Weird Tales. He became an avid fan, and together with Miller he worked out an outline of Conan's career and a map of the world in Howard's invented Hyborian Age in early 1936 from the then-published stories. Miller sent this material to Howard, whose reply confirmed and corrected their findings. Their map became the basis of those that later appeared in the book editions of the Conan stories.^[1] Their revised outline, "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" was published in the fanzine The Hyborian Age in 1938.

Thus established as an authority on Conan, Clark was invited to edit and provide introductions for the first book editions of Howard's Conan stories, published by Gnome Press in the 1950s.^[1] Expanded versions of his and Miller's essay on Conan, retitled "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian", appeared in the Gnome volume The Coming of Conan in 1953 and (revised by de Camp) in the fanzine , vol. 2, no. 4, in 1959. It was the source of the linking passages between the individual Conan stories in both the Gnome editions and the Lancer paperback editions of the 1960s.

Clark and Miller's Hyborian Age map, together with Howard's own original, are the basis of those published in the Gnome, Lancer, and later editions of the stories.

Miller gradually shifted into book reviewing beginning in 1945, initially for Astounding Science Fiction and later for its successor, Analog. He began a regularly monthly review column in the former in October, 1951. As a critic he was notable for his enthusiasm for a wide coverage of the science fiction field. He was awarded a special Hugo Award for book reviews in 1963.

After his death his sister Mary E. Drake donated his extensive collection of papers, maps, books and periodicals, accumulated largely as a result of his review work, to the Carnegie Museum. They now form the basis of the P. Schuyler Miller Memorial Library at the Edward O'Neill Research Center in Pittsburgh.

Bibliography[]

Short fiction[]

Miller's's novelette "Tetrahedra of Space" was the cover story in the November 1931 Wonder Stories

Miller's's novelette "John Cawder's Wife" was the cover story in the May 1943 Weird Tales

"The Arrhenius Horror" was republished in a 1947 issue of Avon Fantasy Reader.

• "The Red Plague" (Jul. 1930)
• "Dust of Destruction" (Feb. 1931)
• "Through the Vibrations" (May 1931)
• "Cleon of Yzdral" (Jul. 1931)
• "The Man from Mars" (Sum. 1931)
• "The Arrhenius Horror" (Sep. 1931)
• "Tetrahedra of Space" (Nov. 1931)
• "Red Spot on Jupiter" (1931) (with Paul McDermott and Walter Dennis)
• "Duel on the Asteroid" (Jan. 1932) (with Paul McDermott and Walter Dennis)
• "Forgotten" (also known as "The Forgotten Man of Space") (Apr. 1933)
• "Red Flame of Venus" (Sep. 1932)
• "Jeremiah Jones, Alchemist" (May 1933)
• "Alicia in Blunderland" (1933)
• "The Atom Smasher" (Jan. 1934)
• "The Pool of Life" (Oct. 1934)
• "The Titan" (Win. 1934–35)
• "The People of the Arrow" (Jul. 1935)
• "The Chrysalis" (Apr. 1936)
• "The Sands of Time" (Apr. 1937)
• "Coils of Time" (May 1939)
• "Pleasure Trove" (Aug. 1939)
• "Spawn" (Aug. 1939)
• "In the Good Old Summertime" (Mar. 1940)
• "Living Isotopes" (May 1940)
• "The Flayed Wolf" (Jul. 1940)
• "Old Man Mulligan" (Dec. 1940)
• "Trouble on Tantalus" (Feb. 1941)
• "Bird Walk" (Apr. 1941)
• "Over the River" (Apr. 1941)
• "The Facts of Life" (May 1941)
• "Smugglers of the Moon" (May 1941)
• "The Frog" (Oct. 1942)
• "The Cave" (Jan. 1943)
• "John Cawder's Wife" (May 1943)
• "The Hounds of Kalimar" (Jun. 1943)
• "Gleeps" (Jul. 1943)
• "Fricassee in Four Dimensions" (Dec. 1943)
• "As Never Was" (Jan. 1944)
• "Cuckoo" (May 1944)
• "Plane and Fancy" (Jul. 1944)
• "Ship-in-a-Bottle" (Jan. 1945)
• "Ghost" (Jul. 1946)
• "The Thing on Outer Shoal" (Sep. 1947)
• "Daydream" (1949)
• "Status Quondam" (1951)
• "For Analysis" (Nov. 1958)

Verse[]

• "Man's Question" (Jun. 1931)
• "Meteor" (Aug. 1931)
• "Space" (Feb. 1933)

Novels[]

• Genus Homo (1941, rv.1950) (with L. Sprague de Camp)

Collections[]

• The Titan (1952)

Sources[]

• Moskowitz, Sam. Obituary, in Analog, February, 1975.
• Moskowitz, Sam (1975). A Canticle for P. Schuyler Miller.
• Obituary in Pennsylvania Archaeologist, Vol 46, no. 1/2.
• Catalogue of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Library of the Late P. Schuyler Miller (1977).

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to P. Schuyler Miller.

• P. Schuyler Miller at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• P. Schuyler Miller Collection at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas