Eric Frank Russell was born on January 6, 1905, near Sandhurst, Berkshire, England. His father was an instructor at the Royal Military College so the young Eric spent several years in Egypt and Sudan, where his father was sent to work in the British military bases. This gave him the opportunity to get to know different languages and cultures but also the military bureaucracy, elements which later used in his works.
As an adult, Eric Frank Russell settled in Liverpool, where he had some jobs before being hired by a construction company. He married Ellen and in 1934 the couple had a daughter, who was named Erica because she was born on January 6 like her father.
In the ’30s, American magazines arrived in Liverpool on the ships coming into the port premises. Eric Frank Russell became interested in science fiction and joined its local fandom then started writing stories of this genre using various pseudonyms.
In 1937, Eric Frank Russell managed to publish the novella “The Saga of Pelican West” in the American magazine “Astounding”. In a short time, he became famous in the USA with various stories. In some of them, you already saw the influence of the works of Charles Fort, who in previous decades had collected news about events he considered paranormal. Russell also wrote a number of articles about those themes.
In 1939, Eric Frank Russell published his first novel, “Sinister Barrier”, which marked the debut of the magazine “Unknown”. The basic idea was one of those inspired by Charles Fort, who believed that human beings were the property of someone else.
During World War II, Eric Frank Russell served in the RAF, the British Air Force. However, according to biographical notes written years later, he actually worked for military intelligence. These are statements that are not supported by official documents but it’s known that at that time secrecy was remarkable.
Despite the war, in 1941 he published his story “Jay Score”, the first in a series that has an android as its protagonist. In subsequent years he wrote some sequels, which were collected in the anthology “Men, Martians and Machines”.
Eric Frank Russell never stopped writing completely in those years, but only in 1948, he published another novel, “Dreadful Sanctuary”, serialized in the magazine “Astounding”. In 1963, he published a new revised version that had a different ending.
In 1953, Eric Frank Russell published the novel “Sentinels from Space”. It contains various elements typical of the author in the use he makes of characters with superpowers, more sophisticated compared to pulp magazines’ science fiction.
Some similar themes appear in his 1955 novel “Call Him Dead”. Again there are characters with superpowers but the story is in many ways a detective story that shows the influence of American hard-boiled novels.
After writing stories that generally had dramatic tones, Eric Frank Russell started writing others in which humor prevailed, especially against bureaucracy. That’s the central theme of his 1955 story “Allamagoosa”, which won the Hugo Award. It was followed in 1956 by the novella “Plus X”, in 1957 by the novel “Wasp” and in 1962 by his most famous novel of this kind, “The Great Explosion”.
The last novel by Eric Frank Russell was “With a Strange Device” (1964), which again has connotations of detective story and even of spy story. After publishing another story in 1965, he stopped writing, for reasons never clarified.
Eric Frank Russell died on February 28, 1978. In the following years, he received several posthumous awards such as the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, a libertarian science fiction award, for his novel “The Great Explosion” in 1985, the introduction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000, and the retro-Hugo award in 2001 for his novelette “Dear devil”.
Today Eric Frank Russell seems a bit forgotten but has contributed greatly to the success of British science fiction with John Wyndham. He managed to use very classic themes such as characters with superpowers in a way that at the time was innovative. The mix of genres and themes of his stories still makes them interesting, also because they’re well written and the dramatic ones are full of suspense.
