Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster is the pen name of a renowned American novelist named Willam Fitzgerald Jenkins, who was popular for writing alternate history and science fiction literature. His areas of work were mainly based on the horror fiction, fantasy, pulp fiction, science fiction, western fiction, and mystery fiction genres. Throughout the years of his career as a writer, Leinster had written and published over 1,500 articles and short stories, hundreds of television plays and radio scripts, and 14 film scripts.

The best place to start is the Burl series, the earliest of Murray Leinster's multi-book series: it opens with The Mad Planet (1920) and runs to 3 books across 1920–2013, ending with Nightmare Planet (2013). Murray Leinster's other series stand alone, so they can be read in any order.

Murray Leinster has 215 books catalogued in this guide, published between 1918 and 2026. 36 of them belong to 5 named series — the largest being the Astounding Stories of Super-Science series with 20 books — and 179 are standalone titles, collections or anthologies.

Read each series in publication order — the numbered entries in each series follow the year each book first appeared. Murray Leinster's series do not depend on one another, so they can be started in any order; by start date they are Burl (1920–2013, 3 books), Astounding Stories of Super-Science (1930–1931, 20 books) and Med Service (1957–1966, 8 books), plus 2 more.

This guide splits Murray Leinster's 215 books into 5 named series and 179 titles that stand alone or appear only in collections: Astounding Stories of Super-Science (20 books, 1930–1931); Med Service (8 books, 1957–1966); Burl (3 books, 1920–2013); Land of the Giants (3 books, 1968–1969); Time Tunnel (2 books, 1966–1967).