Jim Lawrence
Jim Lawrence was an American writer born on October 22, 1918, in Detroit, Michigan. He had a diverse educational background, earning a B.A. from Wayne State University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Detroit Institute of Technology. After working in various jobs, including as a public school art teacher and safety engineer, Lawrence transitioned to writing in the early 1940s, gaining recognition for his contributions to radio scripts for popular shows such as The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. He is particularly known for revitalizing the Tom Swift franchise, taking over the series in the 1950s under the pseudonym Victor Appleton II, where he penned numerous novels that blended science with adventure, albeit often leaning towards fantasy.
In addition to the Tom Swift, Jr. series, Lawrence wrote under various pseudonyms, including Franklin W. Dixon for the Hardy Boys series, and he created the character Christopher Cool, Teen Agent. His writing also extended to novels that parodied the classic adventure genre. Later in his career, he authored text-based adventure games for Infocom. Jim Lawrence passed away in 1994, leaving behind a legacy that inspired many young readers, including some who would go on to innovate in the field of technology.
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Jim Lawrence
Writer
- Born: October 22, 1918
- Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
- Died: 1994
Biography
Jim Lawrence was born in Detroit, Michigan, on October 22, 1918, the son of Charles Lawrence, an engineer, and Pearl Best Lawrence. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then received a B.A. from Wayne State University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Detroit Institute of Technology, both in 1939. He married Marie Blum in 1939, and the couple eventually had six children. For several years Lawrence held a variety of jobs, including public school art teacher, factory worker, and safety engineer, until in 1941 he became a writer for a producer of short commercial films.
Lawrence became a full-time freelance writer in 1944, and beginning in 1949 concentrated mostly on radio scripts for Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, and other programs. He also worked on newspaper comic strips based on characters such as Joe Palooka, Buck Rogers, and, much later, James Bond. With the demise of radio drama in the early 1950’s, Lawrence in 1954 approached the Stratemeyer Syndicate, publishers of such long-running juvenile series as the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys, for a writing position. Given his background as an engineer, Lawrence seemed an ideal choice to take over the writing duties involved in producing the Tom Swift, Jr., series. While Stratemeyer’s other successful series were merely being updated during this decade, the technological explosion that followed World War II dictated that the series about boy inventor Tom Swift be totally recast into a series about his son. The pseudonym of the author of the original series, Victor Appleton, was updated into that of his supposed nephew, Victor Appleton II.
Lawrence began his stint as Appleton II with the fifth book in the series, Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (1954), with his personal favorite being Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar (1962). Initially the plots were supplied by Stratemeyer’s daughter or her staff; later on, after Lawrence became a Stratemeyer staff member in 1962, he conceived the plots for eleven of the twenty-four Tom Swift, Jr., novels he wrote before leaving Stratemeyer in 1971. The series attempted to be scientifically accurate, but in the end much of its “science” was indistinguishable from fantasy as Tom came up with new elements, materials, and inventions that were necessary to foil the villains.
Under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon, Lawrence helped to update several Hardy Boys novels in the 1950’s and returned to their adventures when another publisher purchased the name from Stratemeyer. In the 1960’s, he created the character of Christopher Cool, Teen Agent, for Stratemeyer. In the 1970’s, Lawrence produced three novels about the very un- Swifitian Peter Lance, the Man from Planet X, described as a “superstud and supersecret agent.” These novels, written under the pseudonym Hunter Adams, were The She- Beast (1975), Tiger by the Tail (1975), and The Devil to Pay (1977). Among Lawrence’s last writing projects were two text-based adventure games for Infocom in the 1980’s, Seastalker and Moonmist.
Lawrence died in 1994. While the adventures of Tom Swift, Jr., might seem crude and lacking in believability by the rigorous standards of true engineering-based science fiction, his exploits enkindled a sense of wonder in many of his readers. It is claimed that the series even inspired the creators of Apple Computers to dream of inventions beyond present capabilities.