Pen name Temple Williams Name William Temple Nationality British Role Fiction writer | Period 1935–1970 Movies Four Sided Triangle | |
Born 9 March 1914
Woolwich, United Kingdom ( 1914-03-09 ) Genre Science fiction, Horror fiction Died July 15, 1989, Folkestone, United Kingdom Children Cliff Temple, Anne Patrizio Books Four‑Sided Triangle, The Three Suns of Amara, The Dangerous Edge, Battle on Venus, Martin Magnus on Venus Similar People Robert Silverberg, Terence Fisher, Paul Tabori | ||
Notable works Four Sided Triangle | ||
William Frederick Temple (9 March 1914 – 15 July 1989) was a British science fiction writer, best known for authoring the novel-turned-film Four Sided Triangle.
Temple was a member of the British Interplanetary Society, the editor of their journal Bulletin, and involved in science fiction fandom before writing.
Prior to World War II, Temple shared a flat in London with fellow science fiction fans Arthur C. Clarke and Maurice K. Hanson. Temple wrote a gently humorous, semi-autobiographical account of this time, called Bachelor Flat, in the 1940s but failed to find a publisher. It was eventually printed in the collection 88 Gray's Inn Road: A Living-Space Odyssey (2000).
His first published science fiction work was the SF-horror short story "The Kosso", published in the anthology Thrills (1935). He went on to publish other works in amateur and professional magazines over the next few years. Service in World War II interrupted his writing career. After the war, he wrote novels and resumed publishing work in magazines, at a steady rate until about 1970.
Temple's son, Cliff Temple, was a leading UK athletics journalist, writer, commentator, and coach; and his daughter, Anne Patrizio MBE is well known in the UK as a campaigner for the rights of LGBT people and their parents.
Works
His best-known work might be the novel which formed the basis for the film Four Sided Triangle, a 1949 novel which Groff Conklin called "brilliantly charactered and humanly real". P. Schuyler Miller praised its "warmly believable characters."
Temple also wrote space opera, such as his last novel The Fleshpots of Sansato (1968).
His science fiction novels include the Martin Magnus trilogy, published in hardcover by Frederick Muller Ltd: Martin Magnus, Planet Rover (1954), Martin Magnus on Venus (1955), and Martin Magnus on Mars (1956). The first two of these were re-published in paperback in 1970 by Mayflower Books Ltd.