Sam Merwin, Jr. comments:

Although I have done more work in other fields, SF has been my favorite field since the mid-1950s. I have never sought to re- or in-form the world via such fiction, but have sought to entertain and, perhaps, to increase understanding through the introduction of speculative thought. I consider SF to be the other side of the IF.

Sam Merwin wandered into the science fiction field from another area of literature and apparently was never totally at home in science fiction, much like Erle Stanley Gardner, Howard Browne, and John D. MacDonald. Like Browne, Merwin achieved a notable career as a science fiction magazine editor.

Although Merwin has expressed a pro forma fondness for science fiction, most of his early works and the majority of his novels were mysteries. His first novel, a mystery called Murder in Miniatures, was published in 1940 (antedated, however, by at least one science fiction short story). His science fiction novels, for the most part, read more like mysteries than science fiction. They are grounded in the present and on Earth, with realistic settings and many details of architecture, weather, clothing, food, and drink.

Merwin repeatedly used such themes as time travel and parallel worlds. But in his time-travel novels, such as The Time Shifters or Killer to Come, he brought the time travelers to the present rather than moving contemporary figures into past or future eras. In his parallel-reality novels, such as The House of Many Worlds and Three Faces of Time, the alternate present-era images are not greatly different from conventional reality.

Favorite themes in Merwin's...