Philip Wylie

Biography

Philip Gordon Wylie (1902–1971) was an American author, screenwriter, and social critic known for his provocative fiction and his sharp critiques of American culture. Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, to a Presbyterian minister, Wylie attended Princeton briefly before launching a prolific writing career. His novel Gladiator (1930) tells the story of Hugo Danner, a man with superhuman strength, and is widely cited as a major inspiration for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creation of Superman. Wylie was extraordinarily prolific and versatile, writing in genres from science fiction to fishing stories to social criticism. His most controversial work, Generation of Vipers (1942), coined the term "momism" and launched a fierce attack on American materialism, conformity, and sentimentality that became a bestseller and cultural flashpoint. He also wrote the co-authored novel When Worlds Collide (1933, with Edwin Balmer), adapted into a 1951 film, and The Disappearance (1951), exploring gender through a world where men and women suddenly cannot perceive each other. Wylie worked on the Manhattan Project and wrote about nuclear civil defense.