Mack Reynolds
Mack Reynolds, born Dallas McCord Reynolds on November 11, 1917, in Corcoran, California, was an influential American writer known for his contributions to science fiction and speculative fiction. Raised in a politically active family, his father’s socialist beliefs and passion for speculative literature deeply influenced Reynolds’s own worldview and writing. After working briefly in various jobs, including as a navigator during World War II, Reynolds began his writing career in the late 1940s, initially finding success in the mystery genre before transitioning to science fiction.
In 1949, he moved to Taos, New Mexico, where he shifted his focus to the burgeoning science fiction market, publishing numerous short stories and novels throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His writing often included elements of humor and satire, exploring themes of social science and politics through a speculative lens. Reynolds published over four dozen books in his career, with notable works addressing topics like socioeconomic policies, the implications of technology, and racial politics. He spent his later years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he continued to write until his death on January 30, 1983. Reynolds’s legacy endures in the science fiction community, reflecting his unique blend of social consciousness and imaginative storytelling.
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Mack Reynolds
Writer
- Born: November 11, 1917
- Birthplace: Corcoran, California
- Died: January 29, 1983
- Place of death: San Luis Potosí, Mexico
Biography
Dallas McCord Reynolds (who was known to his readers as Mack Reynolds) was born on November 11, 1917, in Corcoran, California. He was the son of Verne LaRue and Pauline (McCord) Reynolds, who moved to upstate New York when their son was young. Reynolds attended public schools in Kingston, New York, and shortly after graduating from high school he began writing for a local newspaper, The Catskill Mountain Star, rising quickly to editor. Between 1937 and 1940 he also wrote and edited for the Oneonta News.
Mack’s father, who had been named for Jules Verne and whose political and social beliefs had been shaped partly inspired by his reading of Edward Bellamy’s utopian fantasy Looking Backward (1887), had run for president on the Socialist Labor Party ticket in 1928 and 1932. He passed on both his politics and love of speculative fiction to his son who, in 1940, served as secretary to John Aiken, the Socialist Labor Party candidate for president. Reynolds would also serve as an organizer and lecturer for the Socialist Labor Party from 1946 to 1949, and socialist philosophy would shape much of the fiction he wrote.
Reynolds worked briefly for the California Shipbuilding Corporation and IBM in the early 1940’s. With the outbreak of World War II, he attended Marine Officers’ Cadet School and served as a navigator in the Asian theater. Upon his return from the war in 1946, he made his first fiction sale to Esquire. In 1947, he married Helen Jeanette Wooley, with whom he would have three children. Helen agreed to support him for two years while he tried to make a living as a writer, and Reynolds began turning out fiction for the mystery and detective market.
In 1949, Reynolds moved with his family to Taos, New Mexico, where Mack befriended Frederic Brown, another mystery and detective writer, who convinced Reynolds to shift his output, as Brown had, to the burgeoning postwar science-fiction market. Reynolds sold thirty-five science fiction stories that year, the first of them, “Isolationist,” appearing in the April, 1950, issue of Fantastic Adventures. The following year, he published his first novel, The Case of the Little Green Men, which mixed sci-fi and mystery elements.
Reynolds became a familiar presence in science-fiction magazines of the 1950’s, writing short stories of speculative social science, often laced with humor and satire. The best of these were collected in The Best of Mack Reynolds (1976), and some were later expanded into novels. Reynolds also began writing for the flourishing men’s magazines market, and in 1955 secured the post of foreign editor for Rogue magazine, which he held for 1965. He traveled the globe for his job and the insights he gained from experiencing different societies and cultures firsthand fed back into his fiction writing.
More than four dozen books bearing Reynolds’s byline appeared in the 1960’s and ’70’s, most giving original twists to standard science-fiction themes. Planetary Agent X (1965) inaugurated a seven-novel series in which he explored the impact of socioeconomic policies on a galactic empire. The Computer War (1967) and The Computer Conspiracy (1968) were early speculations on the dark side of computer technology. A series of novels beginning with Blackman’s Burden (1972) explored themes of colonization and racial politics in a science-fiction context.
In the 1970’s, in affiliation with the Eidos think tank, sponsored by the American Academy of Science, Reynolds wrote a series of novels, beginning with Looking Backward, From the Year 2003 (1973), extrapolating the future of human civilization in the twenty-first century. Reynolds wrote a significant amount of work in collaboration. He lived the last thirty years of his life in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Reynolds died on January 30, 1983, in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.