Jefferson Howard Sutton (July 25, 1913– January 31, 1979) was an American writer who wrote 23 books of science fiction, war, political and juvenile fiction.
Biography
Sutton was born on July 25, 1913, in Los Angeles, California. He began work at fourteen as an office boy in the editorial department of the ''
Los Angeles Examiner
The ''Los Angeles Examiner'' was a newspaper founded in 1903 by William Randolph Hearst in Los Angeles, California. The afternoon ''Los Angeles Herald-Express'' and the morning ''Los Angeles Examiner'', both of which had been publishing in the ...
'', where both he and his father worked for many years. He was a staff photographer and writer with
International News Photos from 1937 to 1940.
Sutton was in the
United States Marine Corps from 1932 through 1936 and reenlisted at the outset of World War II, serving with the
2nd Marine Division
The 2nd Marine Division (2nd MARDIV) is a division of the United States Marine Corps, which forms the ground combat element of the II Marine Expeditionary Force (II MEF). The division is based at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina ...
in the South and Central Pacific areas. His novel ''The River'' owes much to his experience on
Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal (; indigenous name: ''Isatabu'') is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of Solomon Islands, located in the south-western Pacific, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomon Islands by area, and the seco ...
. He married
Eugenia Geneva Hensen on February 1, 1941, and they had two children: Christopher and Gale.
Sutton did not immediately turn to writing after the war, but worked in a number of jobs, including as an assistant to
San Diego Mayor
Harley Knox. After receiving his master's degree in
experimental psychology
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
at
San Diego State University, he worked as a research engineer in
human factors engineering in the aerospace industry. He then worked in editorial public relations for
General Dynamics
General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Uni ...
, an experience he used when writing his novel ''The Missile Lords'' a few years later. As a human factors engineer working for
Convair, he explored man's adaptation to machines and established his business as an editorial consultant to industry. Several years later he returned to writing.
Writing
Sutton began publishing fiction in 1958. Throughout his writing career he remained a free-lance editorial consultant to aerospace industries and published articles in related professional magazines. He published 23 novels in more than 10 languages, including a number of science fiction, war, political, and juvenile books. In one of his interviews he said that writing came naturally to him. He wrote that his greatest interest had always been people and the settings in which they function. As a writer, he focused on subjects related to his earlier work – space, astronautics, war, newspapers – and on science fiction. Among his books about space exploration are ''Bombs in Orbit'' (1959), ''Spacehive'' (1960) and ''Apollo at Go'' (1963). Sutton's 1963 fictional look at the first Apollo crewed lunar landing prophetically set the historic event in July 1969 although he did get the date wrong by a week, July 8 instead of the July 20 date that the real
Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.
Jean Sutton helped edit fifteen of her husband's novels, starting with his first fiction book ''First on the Moon'' (1958). They first collaborated as coauthors on the juvenile book ''The Beyond'' (1968). They published some juvenile books as coauthors, ''The Programmed Man'', ''Lord of the Stars'' and others. Three of them, ''Apollo at Go'', ''Beyond Apollo'' and ''The Programmed Man'', were Junior Literary Guild selections.
References
External links
Jeff SuttonSan Diego State University – Special Collections & University Archives
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sutton, Jefferson Howard
1979 deaths
1913 births
Writers from Los Angeles
20th-century American writers
20th-century American male writers