THE PLANET STRAPPERS started out as The Bunch, a group of student-astronauts in the back room of a store in Jarviston, Minnesota. They wanted off Earth, and they begged, borrowed and built what they needed to make it. THE PLANET STRAPPERS got what they wanted -- a start on the road to the stars -- but no one brought up on Earth could have imagined what was waiting for them Out There! (Goodreads)
Raymond Zinke Gallun (March 22, 1911 – April 2, 1994) was an American science fiction writer. He was among the stalwart group of early sci-fi pulp writers who popularized the genre. He sold many popular stories to pulp magazines in the 1930s. "Old Faithful" (1934) was his first noted story. "The Gentle Brain" was published in "Science Fiction Quarterly" under the pseudonym Arthur Allport. His first book, People Minus X, was published in 1957 by Simon & Schuster, followed by The Planet Strappers in 1961 (Pyramid). The Ballantine collection issued in 1978, The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun, provides a selection of his early work. Gallun was honored with the I-CON Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985 at I-CON IV; the award was later renamed The Raymond Z. Gallun Award.