Andrew Porter reports that author and popular culture historian Jim Harmon died 16 February 2010. Born 21 April 1933 in Mount Carmel, Illinois, he published many sf stories in the 1950s and ’60s, but he was also known for his writing about the Golden Age of Radio (for which he was sometimes known as Mr. Nostalgia).
His stories appeared in magazines including Amazing Stories, Galaxy, If, and F&SF. Some of them were reprinted in Harmon’s Galaxy in 2004 (Richard A. Lupoff introduced the collection). He wrote only one sf novel, The Contested Earth (1959), but it wasn’t published until 2007, along with seven of his short stories.
Harmon talked about his sf writing career in his introduction to The Contested Earth, writing “This is a period piece, written during the last years of the pulp era. I was 26 in 1959, and some science fiction magazines were still in the old familiar pulp magazine style of about seven by nine inches, such as Science Fiction Quarterly… Due to a health problem, I had little formal education. But I read a lot and thought a lot and imagined a lot. I became a science fiction writer. The Contested Earth was my first science fiction novel. I had written a number of novelettes and short stories and sold a good number to the aforementioned SF Quarterly and more to one of the leading SF magazines, Galaxy. The editor there, H.L. Gold, was incredibly supportive of a teen-age writer. In one editorial, he referred to me as a ‘Vesuvius of flaming, literary lava.’ What more can be said after that! Yet he did not accept this novel. One reason (but only one) was that in those days novels were accepted almost exclusively by the leaders in the field like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, by both magazines and paperback and hardcover publishers. After a number of submissions back then, I stopped submitting this novel. As the years passed and the number of manuscript I kept got down to a single Stor-All box, I would go through these yellowing bundles of pages and throw some away—ones I had published and ones I thought I would never publish. Somehow, I decided to keep this novel ‘a little while longer.’ Finally, I encountered Fender Tucker and his wonderful endeavor, Ramble House, and got a go-ahead to put out The Contested Earth. I made changes in it, but mostly in writing style.”
Harmon also wrote westerns, and one horror novel, The Man Who Made Maniacs, which Epic Books published in 1961.
He was more successful when writing about radio, and specifically classic radio shows. His first book on the subject was the groundbreaking The Great Radio Heroes (1967), and followed it up with books such as The Great Radio Comedians (1970), Jim Harmon’s Nostalgia Catalogue (1973), The Great Movie Serials (1973), The Godzilla Book (1986), Radio & TV Premiums: A Guide to the History and Value of Radio and TV Premiums (1997), and Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearances in Film, Television and Other Media (2003).