Author Jim Harmon wrote numerous science fiction stories for digests from the early 1950s, and wrote and edited several monster mags in the 1960s and 1970s. He was best known for his series of books on the Golden Age of Radio which began with publication of The Great Radio Heroes in 1967.
Harmon was born in Mount Carmel, Illinois, on April 21, 1933. Many of his early stories were published in the pages of such digests as Amazing Stories, Galaxy Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and If. Represented by Forry Ackerman as his agent, he also penned western and mystery tales. He also began writing adult erotica in the early 1960s, often teaming with Ron Haydock, on such titles as The Man Who Made Maniacs (1961), Wanton Witch (1961), Silent Siren (1962), and Ape Rape (1964).
Harmon and Haydock scripted and appeared in Ray Dennis Steckler’s cult film The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters. He also wrote articles and fiction for Paul Blaisdell, Bob Burns, and Haydock’s magazine Fantastic Monsters of the Movies in the early 1960s.
He followed up his 1967 volume on radio with other books on radio and popular culture including The Great Radio Comedians (1970), Jim Harmon’s Nostalgia Catalogue (1973), The Great Movie Serials (1973) with Don Glut, The Godzilla Book (1986), Radio & TV Premiums: A Guide to the History and Value of Radio and TV Premiums (1997), and Radio Mystery and Adventure and Its Appearances in Film, Television and Other Media (2003). He was also an early collector and trader of recordings from the era.
He served as West Coast editor for Marvel Comics’ Curtis magazine Monsters of the Movies, a short-lived rival to Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland, which ran for nine issues, including an annual, from 1973 to 1974. Many of his earlier short stories were reprinted in the 2004 collection Harmon’s Galaxy, and his sci-fi novel, The Contested Earth, which he had originally written in 1959, saw print with several of his short stories in a volume in 2007.
He was also an editor and writer for the anthology series It’s That Time Again in the early 2000s, that collected short fiction featuring old-time radio heroes in new adventures. Harmon contributed the tales Tom Mix and the Mystery of the Bodiless Horseman, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Duplicate Daughter, The Avenger and the Maker of Werewolves, and Jack Armstrong and the Horde of Montezuma.
Harmon died of a heart attack in Manhattan, New York, on February 16, 2010, at age 76.
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