Gateway Essentials: Henry Kuttner
Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles, in 1915. As a young man he worked for the literary agency of his uncle, Laurence D’Orsay, before selling his first story, ‘The Graveyard Rats’, to Weird Tales in early 1936. In 1940, Kuttner married fellow writer C. L. Moore, whom he met through the ‘Lovecraft Circle’, a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft. During the Second World War, Kuttner and Moore were regular contributors to John W. Campbell‘s Astounding Science-Fiction, and collaborated for most of the 40’s and 50’s, publishing primarily under the pseudonyms Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell. In 1950 Kuttner began studying at the University of Southern California, graduating in 1954. He was working towards his masters degree but died of a heart attack in 1958, before it was completed.
If you’d like to see the sort of work that made Kuttner an influential figure to no less a writer than Ray Bradbury, we recommend starting with his Gateway Essentials:
You can find more of Henry Kuttner’s work via his Author page on the SF Gateway website and read about him in his entry in The Encylopedia of Science Fiction.
