J. F. Bone

J. F. Bone — full name Jesse Franklin Bone — was an American science fiction writer and veterinarian, born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1916 and active in the genre from the late 1950s until his death in 2006. He served in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps and later taught veterinary medicine, publishing his first story, "Survival Type," in Galaxy in 1957 while still working in that field. His best-known novel, The Lani People (1962), follows a genetically engineered, catlike humanoid species used as indentured labor, using pulp-adventure trappings to probe questions of exploitation and personhood that recur through his other fiction. In the 1970s he contributed three novels — Legacy, The Meddlers, and Gift of the Manti — to Roger Elwood's Laser Books line. His frequently reprinted story "Triggerman" imagines a nuclear war narrowly averted by a case of mistaken identity. A posthumous collection, Jesse F. Bone Resurrected, gathered his scattered short fiction in 2011.