Donald Malcolm is a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 author of science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and fact who was active as a writer from the mid 1950s until the mid 1970s. Some of his nonfiction was written under the pen name Roy Malcolm.

Malcolm's work was published in the magazines New Worlds

New Worlds (magazine)

New Worlds was a British science fiction magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971...

, Nebula Science Fiction, Astounding Science Fiction

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...

, the anthology series New Writings in SF

New Writings in SF

New Writings in SF was a series of thirty British science fiction anthologies published from 1964 to 1977 under the successive editorships of John Carnell from 1964 to 1972 and Kenneth Bulmer from 1973 to 1977. There were in addition four special volumes compiling material from the regular volumes...

, and the anthologies Out of This World 4 (1964), Lambda I and Other Stories (1965), and Starfield (1989). His reviews appeared in the magazine Vector.

Much of Malcolm's short fiction falls into two sequences, the "Preliminary Exploration Team" and the "Dream Background" stories. Neither series has been collected. His novels, both published by Laser Books

Laser Books

Laser Books was a line of 58 paperback science fiction novels published from 1975 to 1977 by Canadian romance powerhouse Harlequin Books. Laser published three titles per month, available by subscription as well as in stores. The books were limited to 50,000-60,000 words. They were numbered as a...

, have been described as "routine."

Short stories

• "Defence Mechanism" (1957)
• "The Long Ellipse" (1958)
• "The House of Lights" (1958)
• "Lone Voyager" (1958)
• "The Stuff of Dreams" (1959)
• "Complex" (1959)
• "Almost Obsolete" (1959)
• "The Pathfinders" (1960)
• "The Winds of Truth" (1960)
• "Test Case" (1960)
• "The Other Face" (1961)
• "Yorick" (1962)
• "Twice Bitten" (1963)
• "Dilemma with Three Horns" (1964)
• "Beyond the Reach of Storms" (1964)
• "Potential" (1965)
• "First Dawn" (1965)
• "The Big Day" (1971)
• "A Strange and Terrible Sea" (1974)
• "The Enemy Within" (1975)
• "Between the Tides" (1976)
• "For Some Dark Purpose" (1989)

Articles

• "A Tenth Planet?" (1955)
• "Is Bode's Law a Coincidence?" (1955)
• "Lunar Observatory" (1956)
• "Whose Moon?" (1956)
• "Halley - The Man and the Comet" (1957)
• "Satellites and the I.G.Y." (1957)
• "Moons of Jupiter" (1958)
• "First Breakthrough" (1958)
• "Who Rules in Space" (1958)
• "Fallacies in Science Fiction" (1963)

Reviews

• " 'The Deep Reaches of Space' by A. Bertram Chandler" (1964)
• " 'The View From the Stars' by Walter M. Miller" (1965)
• " 'Raiders from the Rings' by Alan E. Nourse" (1965)

General references