This Crowded Earth

5 April 1917 – 23 September 1994

**Robert Albert Bloch** was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of German-Jewish Americans. During the 1930s, he was an avid reader of Weird Tales magazine and H. P. Lovecraft in particular. He wrote to Lovecraft, who responded with advice on writing, and Bloch sold his first published short story, "The Feast in the Abbey" to Weird Tales when he was just seventeen. He continued to write for Weird Tales and went on to become one of its most popular authors, while also contributing to other magazines. In 1946, his first published novel, The Scarf, was released. He received the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1959 for “That Hell-Bound Train” (1958). Also in 1959, he published one of his best-…