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and the two met for the first time in 1938. Their first collaboration, "Quest of the Starstone," appeared in the November 1937 issue of Weird Tales. They were married in New York on June 7, 1940. |
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Kuttner and Moore proved compatible not only as husband and wife but as writing partners, and it is nearly impossible to determine what their respective contributions were to the torrent of fiction they produced from 1940 onward. When Kuttner was discharged from military service in 1943 for illness, he and Moore began writing prodigiously for the science fiction and fantasy magazines. So great was their output that they were compelled to use more than a score of pseudonyms, the best known being Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell. |
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Under his own name, Kuttner wrote wacky stories about human beings frustrated in their efforts to understand technology, several of which were collected as Robots Have No Tails (1952). Under her name, Moore wrote brooding tales of galactic empires in conflict, the best example of which is Judgment Night (1952). Under pseudonyms, they wrote stories that emphasized the persistence of human nature, for better or for worse, in futuristic and technologically sophisticated worlds. Their work did much to dispel the belief that characters were fated to play second fiddle to the ideas in science fiction. Their most famous Padgett story, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," inaugurated an entire branch of science fiction which proposed that children, unbiased by adult thought processes, could apprehend alternate forms of logic. As O'Donnell, they produced the time travel masterpiece "Vintage Season." Under dual bylines, they wrote psychologically complex fantasy novels that showed the influence of A. Merritt. So highly regarded and ubiquitous was their work in the 1940s that many readers assumed any story of merit by an unfamiliar name was a pseudonymous Kuttner-Moore collaboration. |
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By 1950 their science fiction output had slowed to a trickle and the couple enrolled at the University of Southern California, eventually obtaining their college degrees. They were embarked upon careers as script writers for Warner Brothers when Kuttner died of a heart attack on February 3, 1958. Moore continued writing for television and married businessman Thomas Reggie in 1963. She died after a long period of illness on April 4, 1987. |
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