Richard W. Dodson (1915-2008), from Kirksville, Missouri, was an avid science fiction enthusiast and had a strong interest in science while in high school. He later enrolled in the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena to study as an assistant to Linus Pauling. He graduated in 1936 with a B.S. in chemistry and then went to Johns Hopkins University where he received a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Because his research involved radioactive materials he joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory to work on the Manhattan Project in 1943. After World War II he returned to Cal Tech, and then joined the Chemistry Department at Columbia University, eventually earning a full professorship. Other accomplishments include working for the Brookhaven National Laboratory as chair of the Chemistry Department and serving on the General Advisory Committee for the Atomic Energy Commission.

Dodson's early interest in both science and science-fiction connected him to E. E. (Edward Elmer) "Doc" Smith (1890-1965). Smith, known as the father of the "Space Opera", was a chemist. He graduated in 1914 from the University of Idaho with two degrees in chemical engineering and eventually completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with a food engineering focus in 1918 from George Washington University. While working on his degrees he started writing his first science fiction work Skylark of Space. Though he completed it in 1919, it was not published until 1928. Some of his most famous works include The Skylark of Space, and the Lensmen series, and they were published in the periodicals Amazing Stories" and Astounding Stories. As the father of the "space opera," he was one of the first science fiction authors to write about interstellar travel. He became the inspiration for other science fiction authors such as Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, and John W. Campbell, Jr.

Correspondence between Richard Dodson and other notable science fiction writers include Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961), Abraham Merritt (1884-1943), Julius Schwartz (1915-2004), and others in the publishing and science fiction industries. Clark Ashton Smith was a poet and author of exotic pulp fiction, and wrote the "Immortals of Mercury" in 1932. Abraham Merritt was a journalist and editor in addition to an author of science fiction. Julius Schwartz was a science fiction fan who lived in New York City and helped organize the first World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in 1939. Schwartz became an influential editor at D.C. Comics in the mid-1950s. Dodson also corresponds with "George Zambock" a pseudonym for Allen Glasser, a well known science fiction fan.