Roman Frederick Starzl, who wrote as R.F. Starzl was born in Le Mars, Iowa on December 10, 1899 to John V.N. Starzl and Margaret (née Theisen). His grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Austria in 1895, along with their five children, including Starzl’s father.  While the family settled in Le Mars, Iowa, John moved to Chicago, where he owned a pharmacy. Around the time he married Margaret, John moved back to Le Mars and bought a German language newspaper, Der Herold, which he renamed Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper. Starzl began working as reporter for his father and claims he began writing for the pulp magazines in order to raise enough capital to acquire the newspaper and the printing press, a goal he achieved in 1934 when he became a partner in the Globe-Post, becoming the sole owner and publisher in 1940.

Starzl served in the army during World War I, serving for about eight and half months. Upon his return to the U.S., he spent a year at Northwestern University before finding a job in the advertising department of the Chicago Tribune. He worked there from 1920 until 1923, when he returned to Le Mars, began working for his father, and married Anna Laura Fitzgerald on November 14. Anna was a nurse from  They had one son, Thomas, who was born in 1926. Anna died in 1947 and on July 27, 1948, Starzl married Rita Gertrude Kenaley.

He began publishing science fiction in 1928 when “Out of the Sub-Universe” appeared in the Summer issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly. He published about 26 stories by 1935 when “World Tube Murders” appeared in the November issue of New Mystery Adventures. During that time, he collaborated with Everett C. Smith on  two stories: “The Metal Moon” in 1931 and “The Martian Cabal” the following year. He also collaborated with Festus Pragnell on “The Venus Germ” in 1932.

In 1934, he participated in “The Cigarette Characterizations” that appeared in the July 1934 issue of Fantasy Magazine. Six authors, including Starzl, Jack Williamson, Donald Wandrei, Frank Belknap Long, P. Schuyler Miller, and Arthur J. Burks each wrote a description of a person smoking a cigarette and the readers were invited to guess which author wrote each description.

Raymond Z. Gallun, who began publishing a year after Starzl, wrote to Starzl in 1934, and Starzl sent back a response, “Your attempt to write to a science fiction author has misfired, because I’ve just quit,” indicating that his interest in writing science fiction really was merely to earn the money to buy into the Le Mars Globe-Post. During the six years in which he published fiction, Starzl had seen approximately twenty stories published, including the influential “Out of the Sub-Universe.” His final story, “Dimension of the Conquered,” appeared in the October 1934 issue of Astounding Stories.

Despite, or perhaps because, he only wrote science fiction as a means to an end, Starzl researched the field extensively. In 1931, he published an article in Author and Journalist in which he detailed the market for science fiction and fantasy, including the payment rates, editors, and the types of stories each was looking for. He wrote other, similar articles for magazines over his active years.

In addition to science fiction, Starzl had stories published in mainstream magazines, such as Collier’s, and he also published nursing stories under his first wife’s maiden name. He was also interested in actual space flight, being a member of both the German Rocket Society and the American Rocket Society.

Starzl suffered a stroke in 1962 and for the following two years, his wife, Rita, took over his position at the Le Mars Globe-Post.

In 1968, Starzl’s printing plant was destroyed in a fire. The next year, Starzl sold the Le Mars Globe-Post to his competitor, the Le Mars Daily Sentinel. Starzl’s brother, Frank, also entered the newspaper business, eventually becoming the head of Associated Press, changing the spelling of his last name to Starzel.

Starzl and Anna’s son, Thomas, would become a doctor and performed the first human liver transplant. He was listed at #213 in the article “1,000 Years, 1,000 People: Ranking the Men and Women Who Shaped the Millennium,” and has a medical research building named in his honor at the University of Pittsburgh as well as an honorary street name: Thomas E. Starzl Way.

R.F. Starzl died in Le Mars on April 8, 1976 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Le Mars, Iowa.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-two-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.