E. Mayne Hull

Science fiction writer who published under the name E. Mayne Hull. She was the first wife of A. E. van Vogt, also a science fiction writer. She was born in Brandon, Manitoba. After working as a private secretary in Alberta, she moved back to Winnipeg where she met her future husband. Hull and van Vogt got married on May 9, 1939, shortly before his first story "Black Destroyer" was published. For most of her husband's writing career, Hull was his typist. After typing out many of his stories in the early 1940s, she began to get ideas for her own. Under her husband's guidance, she wrote several stories and one novel, all of which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction and Unknown Worlds; as well as several acknowledged collaborations with her husband. When the 'Artur Blord' stories, and The Winged Man serial, were novelised, it was done with the input of van Vogt himself who was then content [as he explains in his book Reflections of A. E. Van Vogt] to add his own name as co-author. It has been claimed, however, that all of her fiction was actually penned by her husband. Hull died of cancer on January 20, 1975.