Canadian author John Marlyn was born in Hungary on April 2, 1912. Came to Canada as an infant and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Worked as a script reader for a film studio in England during the depression-era 1930s. Returned to Canada before World War II and worked as a writer for the Canadian government in Ottawa. From 1963-1967 he taught creative writing at Carleton University. His first novel, Under the Ribs of Death (1957), won a Beta Sigma Phi award. Wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Vincent Reid. Died in the Canary Islands on November 16, 2005. Biographical information available in The Oxford companion to Canadian literature, 2nd ed., p. 742-743.