Hans Otto Storm

Who was Hans Otto Storm?

Hans Otto Storm was a German American writer, novelist and radio engineer. His reputation quickly faded into obscurity after his early death, but in the 1940s received some positive praise from the legendary literary critic Edmund Wilson.

Storm was born in Bloomington, California to German parents who were refugees fleeing anti-socialist fervor in Germany following the failed Revolutions of 1848. He studied engineering at Stanford University and went into the newly emerging field of radio. He traveled in south and Central America, including long spells in Nicaragua and Peru. He served two years with an American Army Hospital during WWI. He died of accidental electrocution December 11, 1941, a few days after Pearl Harbor, while rushing to complete a large radio transformer for the Army Signal Corps in a laboratory in San Francisco.

His first novel, Full Measure, is about industrial expansion and is strongest on the subject of radio engineering and equipment. It "received mildly positive reviews but sold little over a thousand copies." His next novel, Pity the Tyrant is about an American engineer who becomes involved in a Peruvian revolution.