Bio:Ralph Williams

Below (in boldface) is a letter from the son of this author (followed by the SF Site response in italics). The letter currently appears on the SF Site (see the link on the "Ralph Williams-Summary Bibliography" page). I've reproduced it in its entirety in case it's someday removed from the website.

Please note that the letter states that Ralph Williams was 45 years old when he died in 1959. Assuming this was not a rounded figure and was his exact age, we still don't know if he died before or after his birthday that year. This means his date of birth in ISDFB should be entered as 1913/1914 but that would be interpreted by the software as "unknown" so the earlier of the 2 possibilities (1913) was arbitrarily chosen.

Ralph W. Slone, aka Ralph Williams

'''I guess you never know what you'll catch while surfing. I put in "Ralph Williams Science Fiction" in my search engine as a lark and came across this site. Ralph William Slone was my father who died in a fishing accident in 1959. My father was never college-educated, but he was a brilliant man, a renaissance man, the kind they don't make much of anymore. He was the father of 13 children, living in Homer, Alaska, when he went down with my brother in a severe storm in the Kachemak Bay.'''

'''He worked for the C.A.A. as a station manager and earned as much gill-netting for two weeks in the summer as he did the rest of the year on government pay. He was a multi-talented author of science fiction, humour, outdoors action, philosophy and communications theory. He was a hunter, a fisherman, could fix nearly anything, and could argue about anything with just about anybody -- particularly his supervisors. He also had adult-onset diabetes.'''

'''He had long-running correspondence with John Campbell, who published his first story, "Emergency Landing," in 1939. My father wrote SF because he found he could do it rather easily and he could make pretty good money at it. His agent was Scott Meredith. He died at age 45 and there is no doubt in my mind that he had many productive years ahead of him, which he would have used to spin stories for the enjoyment of SF fans.'''

David R. Slone

Thanks for the sharing your memories with us, and for the insight into the man.