SFScope friend Andrew Porter alerts us to the death of author Stuart James Byrne, on 23 September 2011 (see this brief notice). Born 26 October 1913 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Byrne was a screenwriter and author of science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction. He published under his own name and the pseudonyms Rothayne Amare, John Bloodstone, Howard Dare, and Marx Kaye (a house pseudonym).

His first published story was “Music of the Spheres” in the August 1935 issue of Amazing Stories. In the next two decades, he published in Science Stories, Amazing, Imagination, and Other Worlds. He created the character of Michael Flanagan, the hero of three stories from Amazing under his John Bloodstone byline: “The Land Beyond the Lens,” “The Golden Gods,” and “The Return of Michael Flannigan.” The first two of these stories were collected as Godman! in 1970.

Ironically, one of his biggest claims to fame is a novel that was never published. In 1955, he wrote a new Tarzan novel called Tarzan on Mars. Editor Ray Palmer wrote an editorial about the book, “Tarzan Never Dies,” which appeared in Other Worlds Science Stories in November 1955. The novel itself was unpublished by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate would not permit its publication.

He received writing credits on two episodes of Man Into Space (1959 and 1960), as well as for the 1971 western The Deserter and the 1972 sf movie Doomsday Machine.

The ERBZine has an autobiographical essay by Byrne, as well as a discussion of the unpublishable Tarzan novel and a lengthy bibliography of Bryne’s work at this link.

He was a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.