Arthur Porges

James Porges worked at the Bell Telephone Company in Chicago, and had four sons: Leonard, Irwin, Arthur, and Walter.

The publication of this story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began the working relationship between Porges and the editor Anthony Boucher.

A noted author himself, Boucher helped Porges get his work published, and during the 1950s influenced his writing style a great deal.

Perhaps his best-known story, "The Ruum" deals with a human who is chased by an indestructible alien machine designed to capture specimens and keep them in suspended animation.

Porges also wrote at times under pseudonyms such as Peter Arthur, Pat Rogers, Maxwell Trent, Abel Jacobi, and Derek Page.

Porges read the works of such authors as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, O. Henry, Thomas Henry Huxley, Samuel Johnson, G. K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens and Edgar Wallace.