Philip Gordon Wylie (May 12, 1902 – October 25, 1971) was an American writer of works ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Early life and career Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Wylie was the son of Presbyterian minister Edmund Melville Wylie and the former Edna Edwards, a novelist, who died when Philip was five years old. His family later moved to Montclair, New Jersey. Wylie attended Princeton University from 1920–1923. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, Wylie's output included hundreds of articles, novels, serials, short stories, syndicated newspaper columns, and works of social criticism. He also wrote screenplays while in Hollywood, was an editor for Farrar & Rinehart, served on the Dade County, Florida Defense Council, was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and at one time was an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy, which led to the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of Wylie's major writings contain critical, though often philosophical, views on man and society as a result of his studies and interests in biology, ethnology, physics and psychology. At least nine movies were made from novels or stories by Wylie. He sold the rights for two others that were never produced. Wylie's wide range of interests defies easy classification, but his earliest work exercised great influence in 20th-century science fiction pulp magazines and comic books: Gladiator (1930) partially inspired the comic-book character Superman. The Savage Gentleman (1932) "Pulp historians point out that the themes of The Savage Gentleman are replicated to an uncanny degree in the pulp character Clark "Doc" Savage (1933) created by Lester Dent..." - Richard A. Lupoff When Worlds Collide (1933), co-written with Edwin Balmer, inspired Alex Raymond's comic strip Flash Gordon and was adapted as an eponymous 1951 film by producer George Pal. Wylie applied engineering principles and the scientific method quite broadly in his work. His novel The Disappearance (1951) is about what happens when everyone suddenly finds that all members of the opposite sex are missing (all the men have to get along without women, and vice versa). The book delves into the double standards between men and women that existed prior the women's movement of the 1970s, exploring the nature of the relationship between men and women and the issues of women's rights and homosexuality. During World War II,