Raymond King Cummings was born on August 30th, 1887 in New York. He is considered one of the "founding fathers" of science fiction. Cummings was nothing if not prolific, penning more than 750 works for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales and literary publications such as Argosy. Cummings generally wrote under his own name but also as Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings and Gabriel Wilson (a joint pseudonym with his second wife, writer Gabrielle Wilson). Cummings is credited with being the first to write of such notions as artificial gravity, invisibility cloaks and paralyzer rays—many of these concepts appeared in novel-length "space operas" and serializations.