Henry FitzGerald Heard, commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books.
Heard was a guide and mentor to numerous well-known Americans, including Henry Luce and Clare Boothe Luce, and Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the 1950s and 1960s. His work was a forerunner of, and influence on, the consciousness development movement that has spread in the Western world since the 1960s.
Heard wrote fiction under the name H.F. Heard. This included three detective novels about Mr. Mycroft (implied to be Sherlock Holmes after his retirement). Mr. Mycroft and his friend, Mr. Silchester, appeared in three novels: A Taste for Honey, Reply Paid and The Notched Hairpin. The Great Fog and Other Weird Tales and The Lost Cavern and Other Tales of the Fantastic are collections of stories that include both science fiction and ghost stories.
