Maurice Kimpton Hanson
From The Space Library
Maurice Hanson would become the mathematician for the British Interplanetary Society's Lunar Spacecraft Committee in the late 1930s. He would also found Novae Terrae, a fanzine for science fiction enthusiasts which would run in parallel with the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in the last three years before World War II.
This brief autobiography of Hanson appeared in Futurian War Digest Issue 37 (Vol. 5, Number 1) Oct. 1944
"Born 1918, went to the same school as D. R. Smith. Lived in the Midlands until 1937 and then migrated to London. After the chance acquisition in 1932 of a Clayton ASTOUNDING, by 1936 had accumulated about 90% of the magazines published since 1926 and ever since then have felt that I had enough to be going on with. Started publishing fan-magazine NOVAE TERRAE in 1936, which after a chequered career (including a threatened libel suit by John Russell Fearn!) eventually passed on the torch to NEW WORLDS after 29 issues. In London spent happy days at the Gray's Inn Road flat with Bill Temple & Arthur Clarke, being a civil servant by day, & attending BIS & SFA meetings, concerts, repertory cinemas & listening to other people's gramophone records by night. Came July 1939, call-up into the militia & the beginning of a (to date) five year peregrination which via France & Orkney has at the moment landed me within reach of JMR's 1000 volume collection. (Am firm supporter of first-in, first-out demobilization.)
"First youthful glow of enthusiasm for science-fiction has worn off by now but a more solid respect remains which fits into a. better perspective with a liking for George Eliot, Jane Austen, Arnold Bennett, P. G. Wodehouse & the NEW YORKER. Other interests - orchestral music, America (the America of THE GRAPES OF WRATH, fraternities, Frank Sinatra, & Huey Long), & the machinations of our politicians as recorded by the NEW STATESMAN."
