Peter Schuyler Miller was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer and critic.

Life

Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley

Mohawk Valley

The Mohawk Valley region of the U.S. state of New York is the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack Mountains and Catskill Mountains....

, which led to a life-long interest in the Iroquois

Iroquois

The Iroquois , also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse", are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America...

 Indians. He pursued this as an amateur archaeologist and a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.

He received his M.S. in chemistry from Union College in Schenectady. He subsequently worked as a technical writer for General Electric in the 1940s, and for the Fisher Scientific Company in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 from 1952 until his death.

Miller died October 13, 1974 in Blennerhassett Island

Blennerhassett Island

Blennerhasset Island, an island on the Ohio River below the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, is located near Parkersburg in Wood County, West Virginia, USA....

, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

. He was on an archaeological tour to the 'Fort Ancient Civilization' site west of Parkersburg at the time.

Works

Miller wrote pulp science fiction beginning in the 1930s, and is considered one of the more popular authors of the period. His work appeared in such magazines as Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...

, Astounding, Comet

Comet

A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...

, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Marvel Tales

Marvel Tales

Marvel Tales is the title of three American comic-book series published by Marvel Comics, the first of them from the company's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics...

, Science Fiction Digest, Super Science Stories

Super Science Stories

Super Science Stories was an American pulp science fiction magazine published by Popular Publications from 1940 and 1943, and again from 1949 to 1951. Popular launched it under their "Fictioneers" imprint, which they used for magazines paying writers less than one cent per word...

, Unknown

Unknown (magazine)

Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and...

, Weird Tales

Weird Tales

Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

, and Wonder Stories

Wonder Stories

Wonder Stories was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, when his media company Experimenter Publishing went...

, among others.

An active fan of others' work as well as an author, he is also known as an early bibliographer of Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

's "Conan

Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...

" stories in the 1930s, together with his friend John D. Clark

John D. Clark

John Drury Clark, Ph.D. was a noted American rocket fuel developer, chemist, and science fiction writer and fan. He was instrumental in the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and influenced the writing careers of L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, and other authors.- Life and...

.

Miller gradually shifted into book reviewing beginning in 1945, initially for Astounding Science Fiction and later for its successor, Analog. He began a regularly monthly review column in the former in October, 1951. As a critic he was notable for his enthusiasm for a wide coverage of the science fiction field. He was awarded a special Hugo Award

Hugo Award

The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...

 for book reviews in 1963.

His extensive collection of papers, maps, books and periodicals, accumulated largely as a result of his review work, was donated to the Carnegie Museum after his death by his sister Mary E. Drake. They now form the basis of the P. Schuyler Miller Memorial Library at the Edward O'Neill Research Center in Pittsburgh.

Short Fiction

• "The Red Plague" (Jul. 1930)
• "Dust of Destruction" (Feb. 1931)
• "Through the Vibrations" (May 1931)
• "Cleon of Yzdral" (Jul. 1931)
• "The Man from Mars" (Sum. 1931)
• "The Arhennius Horror" (Sep. 1931)
• "Tetrahedra of Space" (Nov. 1931)
• "Red Spot on Jupiter" (1931) (with Paul McDermott and Walter Dennis)
• "Duel on the Asteroid" (Jan. 1932) (with Paul McDermott and Walter Dennis)
• "Forgotten" (also known as "The Forgotten Man of Space") (Apr. 1933)
• "Red Flame of Venus" (Sep. 1932)
• "Jeremiah Jones, Alchemist" (May 1933)
• "Alicia in Blunderland" (1933)
• "The Atom Smasher" (Jan. 1934)
• "The Pool of Life" (Oct. 1934)
• "The Titan" (Win. 1934-35)
• "The People of the Arrow" (Jul. 1935)
• "The Chrysalis" (Apr. 1936)
• "The Sands of Time" (Apr. 1937)
• "Coils of Time" (May 1939)
• "Pleasure Trove" (Aug. 1939)
• "Spawn" (Aug. 1939)
• "In the Good Old Summertime" (Mar. 1940)
• "Living Isotopes" (May 1940)
• "The Flayed Wolf" (Jul. 1940)
• "Old Man Mulligan" (Dec. 1940)
• "Trouble on Tantalus" (Feb. 1941)
• "Bird Walk" (Apr. 1941)
• "Over the River" (Apr. 1941)
• "The Facts of Life" (May 1941)
• "Smugglers of the Moon" (May 1941)
• "The Frog" (Oct. 1942)
• "The Cave" (Jan. 1943)
• "John Cawder's Wife" (May 1943)
• "The Hounds of Kalimar" (Jun. 1943)
• "Gleeps" (Jul. 1943)
• "Fricassee in Four Dimensions" (Dec. 1943)
• "As Never Was" (Jan. 1944)
• "Cuckoo" (May 1944)
• "Plane and Fancy" (Jul. 1944)
• "Ship-in-a-Bottle" (Jan. 1945)
• "Ghost" (Jul. 1946)
• "The Thing on Outer Shoal" (Sep. 1947)
• "Daydream" (1949)
• "Status Quondam" (1951)
• "For Analysis" (Nov. 1958)

External links