Born in 1902, Stanley G. Weinbaum lived most of his short life in Milwaukee. Although he completed a degree in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1923, he turned to writing in his early twenties. Even though he is said to have started reading science fiction with the first issue of Amazing Stories in 1926, his first publication in the early 1930s was The Lady Dances, under the name Marge Stanley, a syndicated novel typical of the romantic and sophisticated fiction of the period. He did write two science-fiction novels, The Dark Other (1950, titled "The Mad Brain" in manuscript, but changed for posthumous publication) and The New Adam (1939), as well as an operetta, Omar, the Tent Maker, during these years, but his first published science-fiction work was the now famous "A Martian Odyssey," which appeared in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories when he was thirty-two.

The managing of...