During the 1960s and '70s, Kemp was also involved in publishing a number of erotic paperbacks, including an illustrated edition of the Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.
This publication led to Kemp being sentenced to one year in prison for "conspiracy to mail obscene material," but he served only the federal minimum of three months and one day.
[2][3] Born Finis Earl Kemp in the Old Crossett Camp, an old lumber camp on the Chemin-a-Haut Creek, located south of present-day Crossett, Arkansas, in 1929 to Finis Watson Kemp (11 July 1904 – 20 July 1999) (a lumberjack at the time of his birth) and Ruth Magnolia Underwood (19 Sept 1906-15 Sept 2000).
[8] However, Who Killed Science Fiction was actually the first SaFari Annual, part of a series of fanzines Kemp was publishing for SAPS, and the "controversy" was largely based on misunderstanding.
After a 37-year break, Kemp returned to editing fanzines with e*I*, which focuses on his memoirs of the science fiction world and is available online.
[11] In September 2013, after a campaign mounted by his son, Earl Terry Kemp, he was named to the First Fandom Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the 71st World Science Fiction Convention.
[12] According to his official death certificate Finis Earl Kemp died on February 29, 2020, at 12:48 at his Tecate, Mexico, residence of a pulmonary thromboembolism and was subsequently cremated.
[13]) During the 1960s and '70s, Kemp was involved in publishing erotic paperbacks through a company, Greenleaf Classics, where he was employed by William Hamling.
The story of their arrest and prison time was covered in Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife.
[19] Among the books Kemp edited in the 1960s were Banis's novel The Why Not and a series of gay pulp fiction spy parodies called The Man from C.A.M.P.
Rogue and the Greenleaf book operation under Kemp's direction employed and/or published a number of noted figures in science fiction, including Harlan Ellison, Frank M. Robinson, Algis Budrys, Robert Silverberg and many others.