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Hamling, William L

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Editor.

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(1921-2017) US author and editor; active as an sf fan in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he published a number of stories, the first of which, "War with Jupiter" with Mark Reinsberg, appeared in Amazing Stories in 1939. Most of his stories were written as William Lawrence Hamling, his full name. Hamling later went to work for Ziff-Davis under Raymond A Palmer, and was managing editor of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures 1948-1951; in 1949 he once used the Ziff-Davis House Name Alexander Blade. In 1951 he became editor and publisher of Imagination, having bought the title from Palmer; his story "Patrol" (October 1952 Imagination) appeared there as by Richard H Nelson. He added a companion magazine, Imaginative Tales, and continued both until late 1958. In 1955 he started an early men's magazine, Rogue, which published a significant amount of sf and also nonfiction columns by sf authors (see Slick for more).

In the late 1960s Hamling's publishing company Greenleaf Classics, which specialized in erotic novels, ran badly foul of US pornography laws for publishing an illustrated edition of a Congressional investigation of pornography, an offence for which he was imprisoned along with his co-publisher Earl Kemp, compiler of the influential fan-publication, Who Killed Science Fiction?: An Affectionate Autopsy (anth 1960 chap), and other works. Greenleaf Classics and its associated imprints (Adult Books, Candid Reader, Companion Books, Ember Library, Idle Hour Books, Late House Library, Leisure Books, Nightstand Books, Pleasure Readers and Regency Books) published over fifty titles of sf pornography; they are listed in The Science Fiction Collector 4 (July 1977) edited by J Grant Thiessen and in Donald H Tuck's The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968, Volume 3: Miscellaneous (1982). Greenleaf published several of the early works of Harlan Ellison. In 2004 Hamling was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame at that year's Hugo award ceremony. [MJE/PN/DRL]

William Lawrence Hamling

born Chicago, Illinois: 14 June 1921

died Palm Springs, California: 29 June 2017

works

about the publisher

  • Kenneth R Johnson. "Science Fiction Pornography" (July 1977 The Science Fiction Collector #4) [pp4-18: mag/]

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