Christopher Anvil

Christopher Anvil was the pen name of Harry Christopher Crosby Jr. (1925-2009), an American science-fiction writer. After service as a military pilot, he began publishing stories in 1952 and became a mainstay of Astounding/Analog through the 1950s and 60s, building a reputation for idea-driven fiction in which resourceful humans out-think technologically superior aliens. Roughly a third of his output belonged to a loose Colonization sequence, and he is also remembered for the Interstellar Patrol stories and the novel Pandora's Planet, later collected with its sequels as Pandora's Legions. Fellow writer David Weber described an Anvil protagonist as someone who triumphs "by shooting the rapids, by caroming from one obstacle to another, adapting and overcoming as he goes." His novels and story collections, blending military detail with comic timing, remain in print through modern reissues.