Edmund Cooper

Born in Marple, near Stockport, Cheshire, Cooper left school at the age of 15. He became engaged at 16 to a teacher four years older than he was, and married her three years later. He worked as a labourer, then a civil servant, and in 1944 he joined the Merchant Navy. After the war he trained as a teacher, and began to publish verse, then short stories, then novels. Deadly Image, the first novel to appear under his own name, was completed in 1957 and published in 1958 in the United States. (The novel was published in the UK later in 1958 in a variant form and under its better-known title The Uncertain Midnight.) The Uncertain Midnight was adapted without authorisation for Swiss television in 1969. His short story The Brain Child (1956) was adapted as the movie The Invisible Boy(1957), which featured the return of Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. Cooper reviewed science fiction for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1982. Also published as Richard Avery.