He worked under the pseudonyms Reg Keeland and McKinley Burnett when edited into UK English.
Murray was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in Oakland, Manila, Mexico City, and San Diego.
[citation needed] He attended Stanford University on a General Motors National Scholarship and made his first trip to Europe in 1963 to study at Stanford-in-Germany in Beutelsbach near Stuttgart.
His first paid published translations, two Norwegian science fiction stories by Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd in an anthology of European SF from DAW Books, appeared in 1976.
After seven years working in technical translation, editing, and foreign-language typography, Murray founded Fjord Press with Susan Doran and was editor-in-chief from 1981 to 2001 (Marin County, Berkeley and Seattle), publishing mainly Scandinavian and German fiction in translation as well as a few American and British titles.