Murray Leinster Books In Order

Publication Order of Med Service Books

Publication Order of Time Tunnel Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Burl Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Murray Leinster is the pen name of a renowned American novelist named Willam Fitzgerald Jenkins, who was popular for writing alternate history and science fiction literature. His areas of work were mainly based on the horror fiction, fantasy, pulp fiction, science fiction, western fiction, and mystery fiction genres. Throughout the years of his career as a writer, Leinster had written and published over 1,500 articles and short stories, hundreds of television plays and radio scripts, and 14 film scripts. Leinster was born on June 16, 1896, in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. His father, George Jenkins, worked as an accountant, while his mother, Mary Jenkins, was a housewife. Even though both of Leinster’s parents were from Virginia by birth, the family moved to Manhattan in 1910.

Leinster started his career by doing freelance work prior to the First World War. He was a little short of his 20th birthday in 1916 when he succeeded in publishing his first short story, The Foreigner, in the literary magazine called The Smart Set. Leinster went on to publish 10 more stories in the same magazine over the course of the next 3 years. During the War, Leinster was enlisted to work in the U.S. Army and the CPI until 1918. In those times, he has already started appearing in the pulp magazines such as Snappy Stories, Breezy Stories, and Argosy. Leinster’s stories continued to appear in Argosy up to the 1950s. During the 1920s, a diversification of pulp magazines into several particular genres had begun and Leinster also followed suit by selling a few jungle stories, westerns, mystery stories, horror stories, detective stories, and romances to Danger Trails, West, Black Mask, Weird Tales, Mystery Stories, Love Story Magazine, etc. Leinster used the pseudonym of Louisa Carter Lee to publish all these stories.

The first sci-fi story written by Leinster, The Runaway Skyscraper, was published in Argosy’s 1919 issue. Throughout the 1930s, Leinster wrote and released science fiction serials and stories in Astounding Stories and Amazing Stories magazines. Meanwhile, he continued to feature in other genres as well. Leinster was among the early writers of the stories of parallel universe. His visions of extraordinary time oscillations were believed to have a great impact on other writers. His 1945 novella titled ‘First Contact’ is credited to be one of the first universal translators in the sci-fi genre. In 2000, the heirs of Leinster had sued the Paramount Pictures for infringement over the movie, Star Trek: First Contact, however, it got dismissed later. Leinster is considered to be among the few writers of science fiction from the 30s, who lived in the higher writing standards era of John W. Campbell as he published more than 3 dozen stories under the editorship of Campbell. The final story that Leinster released in Analog magazine was his 1966 book called Quarantine World, which was published after 36 years of his first appearance in its 1930 issue.

His 1946 story called A Logic Named Joe is known to describe a computer in fiction for the first time. Today, many critics believe that the author was decades ahead of time in thinking about the Internet. Leinster envisioned logics in the society for providing communication, data access, commerce, and entertainment. One of his characters in the story is seen saying that logics are civilization. Leinster served in the OWI department of the US Army in World War II. Following the War, his name and stories had become widely popular. He felt that the name Leinster had helped to sell numerous copies of his story and so, he began using other pen names like Will F. Jenkins, William Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald Jenkins, etc. Leinster continued with his publishing work throughout the 50s and 60s, making appearances in various literary magazines. In 1956, he won the Hugo Award for the story, Exploration Team. Several other works of Leinster’s career included tie-in fiction work based on a few sci-fi TV series. Leinster was married to Marry Mandola, a resident of New York. They had married each other in 1921 and had 4 daughters. Leinster breathed his last in Gloucester, Virginia on June 08, 1975.

A popular series written by author Murray Leinster is known as To the Stars series. This series is comprised of three books in total released between 1953 and 1957. Each of the three books consists of science fiction stories depicting the efforts of man to enter into outer space. The main characters mentioned by Leinster in this particular series include Joe Kenmore, Mike, Haney, Moreau, Arlene Gray, The Chief, etc. The debut book of this series is entitled ‘Space Platform’. It was released in 1953. At the story’s start, it is mentioned that young Joe Kenmore is hired to work at Bootstrap and carry installations of pilot gyros. He thought that the Platform’s installations would be a regular job and had no idea that he would get involved in sabotage, murder, and love. After a while, he learns that several ruthless agents have been hired to destroy the project. In order to save the dream of traveling into space and make it come true, Joe Kenmore joins hands with The Chief, Mike, and his beautiful lover to fight against the ruthless agents. He fears that they won’t be able to cause much resistance by fighting with bare hands, but the other members of the team motivate him to have self-belief. They go on to save the mission and also launch space vessel into space.

Another well-written book of the series is called ‘Space Tug’. It was also published in 1953. This book features the central characters as Joe Kenmore and Haney. At the book’s start, Joe and Haney are shown orbiting the Earth on the Space Platform. The two-step out of the Platform to carry out some maintenance work and accidentally get locked out. Joe hears a closing airlock sound and turns towards Haney in desperation and fear. The two realize that they have no other way of getting back inside the Platform. Through their transparent helmets, they see the look of disbelief and horror on each other’s face. They hold themselves on to the Platform tightly from outside and know that they would get lost in space if they lose contact. What worries them even more is the fact that there was only 30 minutes of oxygen left with them. In their desperation, they begin to look for ways to get inside before they consume the remaining oxygen and die of suffocation away from home in space.