John Steinbeck allowing Steinbeck to spend a full day on the set of "The Grapes of Wrath" and the next day on the set of "Of Mice and Men." In the 1930s and 1940s, Ed Ricketts strongly influenced Steinbeck's writing. Steinbeck frequently took small trips with Ricketts along the California coast to give himself time off from his writing and to collect biological specimens, which Ricketts sold for a living. Their joint book about a collecting expedition to the Gulf of California in 1940, which was part travelogue and part natural history, published just as the U.S. entered World War II, never
John Boyd (author) John Boyd (author) John Boyd was the primary pen-name of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch (October 3, 1919 – June 8, 2013), an American science fiction author. His best known work is his first science fiction novel, "The Last Starship from Earth", published in 1968. Boyd wrote eleven science fiction novels, five other novels, and one biography. The majority of his novels were published by US publisher Weybright & Talley, with later ones appearing from SF publishers. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He died on June 8, 2013. Boyd has written on science fiction, giving a definition of the genre as