Forgotten Authors: John T. Phillifent
John T. Phillifent was born in Durham, England on November 10, 1916.
As with last week’s entry, Henry J. Kostkos, Phillifent worked as an electrical engineer.
Although Phillifent wrote some short fiction and three The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels under his own name, he also used the pseudonym John Rackham for the majority of his fiction. According to Phillifent, he reserved his own name for his best material.
His first published work was the Jupiter Equilateral, published by the Tit-Bits Science Fiction Library in 1954 under the Rackham name. He wouldn’t publish anything under his own name until the story “Point” appeared in the December 1961 issue of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.
Ian Sales described Phillifent’s Time to Live as “hackwork right from the first page.” He also comments that “the entire story feels like it was made up as Rackham wrote it.” Rich Horton describes Phillifent as “a pretty reliably producer of competent middle-range SF adventure.” A Blackgate article in which Horton looked at another of Phillifent’s novellas was entitled “When science fiction sucks.”
His final story, “The Halted Village,” published under the Rackham name, appeared in 1945 in New Writings in SF 25, edited by Kenneth Bulmer.
While many are familiar with Damon Knight’s definition of science fiction as “it means what we point to when we say it,” Phillifent coined Rackham’s Law, which states that science fiction “was unique in that it was invariably written by ‘the science-fiction method’ analogous to the ‘scientific method’ which…underpins all science.” Although Phillifent failed to define what the “science-fiction method” might actually mean.
Phillifent died on December 15, 1976 in London.
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.
I believe I read some of the “John Rackham” material back in the 1970s, but I had no idea the name was a pseudonym.
Thanks for this. I always enjoy your articles. Phillifent looks a great deal like Ted Kennedy. One note: New Writings in SF 25, edited by Kenneth Bulmer, was published in 1975 not in 1945.
That is a picture of Ted Kennedy. https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/07/16/ted-kennedy-never-grasped-magnitude-of-chappaquiddick/
The picture you have posted that you indicate is John Phillifent is a picture of Ted Kennedy from 1969.
One of Phillifent’s two daughters is confirmed as alive and working in Surrey as recently as 2022. Maybe Black Gate can get in touch with her and get an actual picture, with a little more time.
“John Rackham” sounds so familiar. I think I like his real name better, though; “Phillifent” isn’t something one sees everywhere.
If Rackham was actually Phillifent who was really Kennedy, then not only were his books double-psuedonymed, but they were also ghost written. Quite an accomplishment!
Phillifent wrote a couple SF novels under his own name which I think are pretty good. One, “Hierarchies”, was serialized in Analog in 1971 and later one half of an Ace double (with a nice Kelly Freas cover). I still have the issues of Analog so I need to dig them out and reread it. Also, a related novel, “Genius Unlimited” was published by DAW Books. Both are good and fast reads. And thanks again for bringing some attention to John T. Phillifent.