Win Scott Eckert

Win Scott Eckert is an American author and editor, best known for his work on the literary-crossover Wold Newton Universe, created by author Philip José Farmer, but much expanded-upon subsequently by Eckert and others. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology and a Juris Doctor.

Creation of the "Wold Newton Universe" Win Scott Eckert first read Philip José Farmer's "fictional biography" Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, and become hooked by the concept of the Wold Newton family. In 1997, he coined the term "Wold Newton Universe" on his website, An Expansion of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe.

Farmer's original concept of the Wold Newton family was of a literary merging between novels, a crossover between multiple works, linking standout fictional characters into a deliberate family and coherent chronology. Farmer's two fictional "biographies" of the fictional characters Tarzan (Tarzan Alive) and Clark Savage, Jr. (Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life) proposed that the actual meteorite which landed in Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795, caused a genetic mutation in the occupants of a passing coach.

Their (fictional) descendants, therefore, became the stalwarts of fantastic fiction. Farmer's initial family trees include the names Sherlock Holmes, Lord Greystoke, A.J. Raffles, (Conan Doyle's) Professor Challenger, Sir Percy Blakeney, (Poe's) C. Auguste Dupin, Lord Peter Wimsey, Bulldog Drummond and Nero Wolfe; James Bond, Mr. Moto, Philip Marlowe, Kilgore Trout, Sam Spade, Professor Moriarty (A.K.A. Captain Nemo), Phileas Fogg, Wells' Time Traveller and Fu Manchu. for the lawsuit brought against Twentieth Century Fox over their similarities between their adaptation of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and an earlier screenplay entitled Cast of Characters. (Famously, this lawsuit proved to be another nail in the coffin of Alan Moore's disillusionment with the film industry – not least since many of the similarities between the two screenplays were not present in Moore's original work, and yet part of the allegation was directed squarely at him.)

Books Eckert is editor of, and a contributor to, the 2005 MonkeyBrain-published work Myths for the Modern Age: Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton Universe (originally titled: Creative Mythography: An Expansion of Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe ), collecting Farmer's little-seen stories and essays which expand upon the Wold Newtonian concept, alongside "contributions from Farmer’s successors—scholars, writers, and pop-culture historians—who bring even more fictional characters into the fold". Myths for the Modern Age was a 2007 Locus Award finalist for best non-fiction work.

In 2006, he wrote the foreword to Bison Books' new edition of Philip José Farmer's original Wold Newtonian work Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (Bison Books, 2006).

Eckert's two-volume Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World (Black Coat Press, 2010) uses literary/film/TV crossovers between members of the core Wold Newton family and other fictional individuals to create an expanded shared continuity called the Crossover Universe. In 2016, with Eckert's permission, Sean Lee Levin published two additional volumes expanding Eckert's Crossover Universe: Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World (Meteor House, 2016).

He is the coauthor with Philip José Farmer of the Wold Newton novel The Evil in Pemberley House, about Patricia Wildman, the daughter of a bronze-skinned pulp hero. Pat Wildman's adventures continue in Eckert's sequel, The Scarlet Jaguar. He has coedited three Green Hornet anthologies for Moonstone Books, and his tales of Zorro, The Green Hornet, The Avenger, The Phantom, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain Midnight, The Domino Lady, and Sherlock Holmes, can be found in the pages of various character-themed anthologies, Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, and in the annual series The Worlds of Philip José Farmer and Tales of the Shadowmen. A Girl and Her Cat (coauthored with Matthew Baugh), a new Honey West novel, was published in 2014.