At the exclusive Penn Club, Wyndham met a publisher (Sir) John Lusty, who guided him on the publication of his next novel. The dropping of the atom bomb, the beginning of the Cold War, and fears of Communism and nuclear war brought new intensity and fearful premonitions into science fiction. Wyndham was a corporal cipher operator in the Royal Signal Corps. From 1940 to 1943 Wyndham worked in censorship, and in 1944 he participated in the Invasion of Normandy. He wrote poetry and translated some French plays, but the science fiction market collapsed, when both science-fiction fans and writers were called up. Before World War II, Wyndham wrote as John Beynon and John Beynon Harris-Wyndham using several pseudonyms, derived from his own name.

This story was largely inspired by HG Wells, a literary idol. Wyndham’s first novel, The Secret People (1935), appeared intially in the English magazine Passing Show, and then as a book under the pseudonym John Beynon. He started to create a variety of short pieces and ‘The Lost Machine’ (1932), one of Wyndham’s most anthologized works, which was published first in Amazing Stories, is a predecessor to Isaac Asimov’s robot tales. His short stories from this period were signed as John Beynon Harris. Inspired by the magazine Amazing Stories, he wrote from 1930 to 1939 almost exclusively for the American magazines. He lived on the small amount of money his parents gave him and as a struggling author he poured out stories. He also tried other jobs relating to law, advertising, but turned to writing in 1925.

John attended a variety of private schools but left his education in 1921 to study farming. John along with his brother, Vivian Beynon Harris, who also became a writer, moved with their mother from place to place for the rest of their childhood. He lived in Edgbaston, Birmingham and at the age of eight he moved due to his parents’ separation. John Wyndham was born John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris in the town of Knowle, in Warwickshire England.

The secret people john wyndham