Richard Tooker was born in Farina, Illinois on July 3, 1902 to George Lattimer Tooker and Laura J. (nee Switzer) Tooker. His family eventually left the small town of 600 people to move to North Dakota and also lived in Minneapolis.

After graduating from prep school, he took a job as an editor of Westerns before serving for two years as a private in the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1920s. As with many authors he worked a variety of jobs, including as a musician, journalist, cowboy, railroad clerk, bank clerk, and a farmer. By the 1930s, he had settled in Phoenix, which would be his permanent home.

His first short story was “Planet Paradise,” published as by Dick Presley Tooker was written when he was only fifteen, but did not appear until the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales. His only other publication in the 1920s was the novel The Day of the Brown Horde, published by Payson & Clarke in 1929. It would be reviewed in both Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories and later an excerpt would be reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

The majority of his work appeared in the 1930s, with 1932 seeing the publication of the juvenile novel The Dawn Boy, which, like The Day of the Brown Horde was a story that looked back at the origins of humanity. His second short story, Tyrant of the Red World,” would appear in the August 1932 issue of Wonder Stories. He also published one story, “The Last Swarm,” under the name Henry E. Lemke.

With four stories and a novel under his belt (one of which was published under a different name), in Fall of 1933, Tooker was one of the authors William L. Crawford advertised as appearing in the inaugural issue of Unusual Stories, which was published in March of 1934. In Crawford and D. R. Welch’s Science Fiction Bibliography published in 1935, they wrote, “In one respect, it is almost a blessing that the magazine failed: ‘When the Waker Sleeps’ is probably the “worst concoction, ever feisted on a long suffering public. In contrast, Richard Tooker’s story stands out all the more as a masterpiece, The all too brief fragment of the first pages of ‘Tharda’ can only give one a hint of the beauty of that delicately written fantasy worthy of A. Merritt at his best.” The excerpt from “Tharda” was apparently the only part of the novel that was ever published.

By the end of the thirties, he had published a total of three novels and seventeen short stories. He had also spent much of the decade running an agency which helped other authors develop their manuscripts, and occasionally ghost writing their works.  Henry Kuttner is known to have reached out to Tooker for help, although Tooker  apparently turned him down. He also worked as a subeditor for Fawcett.

Following World War II, Tooker only had two science fiction publications. His story “Mongrovian Caravan” appeared in the Fall 1944 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories and “The Ultimate City” was published by Hugo Gernsback in the April 1953 issue of Science Fiction +. There are reports that he was working on another story, with assistance from Richard Lupoff, at the time of his death.

In the 1960s, he was working as a deputy county clerk in Phoenix. One of his jobs was to issue marriage licenses and he issued one to himself in 1964 when he married Jane Katherine Ashley, who had previously been married to William Adams. They eventually had one son. Even if he hadn’t published science fiction since 1953, he was still writing and publishing essays. His final one may have been “What Do You Really Know About Sex,” in the March 1969 issue of the men’s magazine Cad.

Tooker died on September 28, 1988 and is buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.

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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.