If Paul W. Fairman’s name is known, it is likely as an editor or the ghostwriter who wrote several of the juvenile novels published under Lester del Rey’s name when the latter author suffered from writers block. However, he had his own career as an author and Marvin W. Hunt commented, his “novels deserve the attention of science fiction enthusiasts not only because his books display the requisite technological prescience of good science-fiction, but especially because they are well written.”

Fairman was born on August 22, 1909 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Fairman began publishing in the February 1947 issue of Mammoth Detective with the story “Late Rain,” and in 1950 he published his first science fiction story, “No Teeth for the Tiger” in the February issue of Amazing Stories. Between 1951 and 1953, he occasionally used the housename Ivar Jorgensen, and in 1954, the film Target Earth was based on Fairman’s story “Deadly City,” which appeared under that pseudonym.  He also used the pseudonyms Robert Eggert Lee and the housename E.K. Jarvis, which was also used by Robert Moore Williams.

In 1952, James L. Quinn hired Fairman to help him create rivals to the magazines Fate and Other Worlds. The results were the nonfiction magazine Strange, which looked at the bizarre and mysterious in the world, and If, which published science fiction. Fairman became the editor of both magazines. His knowledge of the field, however, was limited and neither magazine had an auspicious start, with Strange being cancelled after only four issues. If tended to look back to an older form of science fiction, ignoring what was being done by the newer magazines in the field. After the fourth issue, Fairman was fired and Quinn began editing If.

Fairman landed on his feet at Ziff-Davis, where he worked as an Associate Editor of Fantastic Adventures. Although he briefly left Ziff-Davis in 1954, he returned the following year and when Howard Brown left the company in 1956, Fairman became editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic. He also oversaw the launch of the magazine Dream World, which had been started by Browne. He also launched Amazing Stories Science Fiction Novels, which lasted a single issue and published the novelization of the film 20 Million Miles to Earth, by Henry Slesar. It lasted a single issue.

Despite the magazines he edited, Fairman was more interested in writing than editing and he began to let his assistant handle more and more of the editorial work. At the end of 1958, he stepped down as editor of Amazing and Fantastic to edit Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and his assistant, Cele Goldsmith, took over the job of editor of the two speculative fiction magazines.

In addition to the previously mentioned adaptation of “Deadly City” into Target Earth, Fairman’s story “The Cosmic Frame” was adapted into the 1957 film Invasion of the Saucer Men and a decade later as the television movie Attack of the Eye Creatures. He also had stories adapted for The Twilight Zone and General Electric Theatre.

Fairman died in October, 1977 in Newark, New Jersey.

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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.