Edwin Balmer

Edwin Balmer (1883-1959) was an American writer and editor best remembered for pioneering the catastrophe science fiction novel. Born in Chicago, he began as a newspaper reporter before rising to editor and later associate publisher of Redbook magazine, a post he held for over two decades. With Philip Wylie he co-wrote When Worlds Collide (1933) and its sequel After Worlds Collide (1934), in which a rogue planet destroys Earth and survivors flee to a new world; the first novel became the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1951 film produced by George Pal. Earlier in his career, Balmer collaborated with his brother-in-law William MacHarg on The Achievements of Luther Trant (1910), among the first detective story collections to feature psychological and forensic methods of crime-solving. He also worked in comics, co-creating the strip Speed Spaulding. Balmer's fiction helped establish disaster and collision narratives as a recurring science fiction theme.