George O. Smith

George Oliver Smith (April 9, 1911 – May 27, 1981) (known also by the pseudonym Wesley Long) was an American science fiction author. He is not to be confused with George H. Smith, another American science fiction author.

Biography Smith was an active contributor to Astounding Science Fiction during the Golden Age of Science Fiction of the 1940s. His collaboration with the magazine's editor, John W. Campbell, Jr. was interrupted when Campbell's first wife, Doña, left him in 1949 and married Smith.

Smith continued regularly publishing science fiction novels and stories until 1960. His output greatly diminished during the 1960s and 1970s when he had a job that required his undivided attention. He was awarded the First Fandom Hall of Fame award in 1980.

He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers.

Writing career Smith wrote mainly about outer space, with such works as Operation Interstellar (1950), Lost in Space (1959), and Troubled Star (1957).

He is remembered chiefly for his Venus Equilateral series of short stories about a communications station in outer space. Most of the stories were collected in Venus Equilateral (1947), which was later expanded with the remaining three stories as The Complete Venus Equilateral (1976).

His novel The Fourth "R" (1959) – re-published as The Brain Machine (1968) – was an examination of a child prodigy, a digression from his concern with outer space.