Austin Small

Austin James Small (25 July 1894 – 15 January 1929) was an English writer of thriller, detective, science fiction, adventure, romance, and western novels and short stories. Most of Small's titles appeared in Britain under the pen name Seamark, while his American publisher preferred using the name Austin J. Small. Several film plots were based on his stories. Small was born Austin Major Small in Luton, Bedfordshire on 25 July 1894. He later changed his name to Arthur James Small. He ran away to sea as a boy and travelled the world, serving in the Royal Navy during the First World War, where he was a champion heavyweight boxer. He met and was inspired to write by Jack London, and adopted the pen name “Seamark” to comply with Admiralty regulations. He began his literary career in the early 1920s publishing new westerns and detective stories in British pulp magazines.

In 1924 he produced a western novel, The Frozen Trail, and three romantic novels in 1925, before publishing Master Vorst a.k.a. The Death Maker (1926), a science fiction novel in which a secret society based in London develops a means of destroying the human species with the help of a bacteriological weapon. He went on to write half a dozen detective novels, another science fiction novel, and many short stories.

He was found dead in Kensington, London on 15 January 1929, from suicide by gas inhalation. Several of his works were not published until after his death, including his final science fiction novel The Avenging Ray (1930) in which a mad scientist intends to destroy the Earth using a death ray, and the title story in the collection Out of the Dark which features a wereleopard.