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Dyson Carter

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Dyson Carter

Herbert Dyson Carter (February 2, 1910 – December 15, 1996), known as Dyson Carter, was a Canadian scientist, lecturer, writer, and Communist propagandist and organiser who served as president of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society from 1949 to 1960.

During his fifty-year writing career, Carter produced hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, dozens of short stories, and 17 books including five novels. Many of his non-fiction books and articles popularized scientific ideas and discoveries or reported on medical advances. In the 1930s and 1940s, many of his articles appeared in popular magazines in Canada and the United States and three of his books were published by large commercial publishers in the United States and widely reviewed.

He occasionally used the pseudonym Warren Desmond for popular fiction that he would otherwise would not have been able to sell in the United States due to McCarthyism.

Carter was born in Saint John, New Brunswick to Gertrude and William R. Carter, members of the Salvation Army who had been sent from Britain first to Bermuda and then to Canada to work for the church. In 1912, the Carters became matron and superintendent, respectively, of the Provincial Detention Home for Juveniles in Winnipeg, where Dyson Carter would grow up and go to school. Carter had osteogenesis imperfecta, which made his bones brittle throughout his life and often required him to stay in bed or walk with crutches, or later use a wheelchair.

Carter received his Bachelor of Science in 1931 and his Master of Science degree in chemistry from the University of Manitoba in 1933 and subsequently worked as a university lecturer, a researcher and an engineering consultant in addition to his writing career.

Carter wrote in a number of genres including popular science, health, socialist realist fiction, romance, and biography.

His works included Sea of Destiny: the Story of Hudson Bay, Our Undefended Back Door (1940), a book that argued the Canadian north was susceptible to Nazi invasion and should be developed and militarized along the lines of the Soviet north in order to prevent such an eventuality, Night of Flame (1942), a novel set in a hospital that explored themes of class conflict, and Stalin's Life (1943), a hagiographical biography of Stalin.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Carter's articles were published in popular magazines such as Saturday Night, Star Weekly, and Maclean's and in various American publications such as the pulp magazine Argosy.

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