John Kippax

Who is John Kippax?

John Kippax was the pen name of English science fiction writer John Charles Hynam, author of many short stories and the Venturer Twelve series of space opera novels.

Hynam was killed on the afternoon of 17 July 1974 when a lorry hit his car at Werrington, a few miles outside Peterborough. He left a wife, Phyl, and a daughter, Jennifer - who a week before gave birth to his first grandchild, a son, an event which he was awaiting with eager anticipation.

In the postscript to "Where No Stars Guide", published posthumously in 1975, Hynam's literary collaborator and close personal friend Dan Morgan wrote: "John had a larger-than-life physical and psychic presence. Likeable, eccentric, egocentric, kind, brusque, take your pick from the thesaurus to describe him, he was all of these and more. A man of enormous enthusiasms, he died as lived, at full speed".