Bernard Wolfe

Bernard Wolfe (1915-1985) was an American writer born in New Haven, Connecticut. He entered Yale University at sixteen and graduated in 1935 with a degree in psychology, then spent the following years writing for Trotskyist journals and serving as Leon Trotsky's bodyguard and secretary in Mexico in 1937, before working in the merchant marine and as a newsreel editor and magazine writer. His debut novel, Limbo (1952, published in Britain as Limbo '90), is considered one of the first science-fiction novels to follow the implications of cybernetics and artificial limbs to their logical extreme, and was later selected for David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels; J. G. Ballard credited it as an influence on his own writing. Wolfe went on to fictionalize Trotsky's assassination in The Great Prince Died (1959) and later taught at UCLA.