Philip Wylie books

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Non-Fiction

Standalone Novels

When Worlds Collide Reading Order

Philip Wylie was one of the more versatile American writers of the mid-twentieth century. He published over forty books between 1928 and his death in 1971, ranging from science fiction to social commentary to fishing stories. His novel Gladiator (1930), about a man with superhuman strength, is sometimes cited as an influence on the creation of Superman. When Worlds Collide (1932) became one of the defining disaster stories of its era and was adapted into a well-known 1951 film.

His non-fiction was equally notable. Generation of Vipers (1942) attacked what Wylie saw as American complacency and hypocrisy, coining the term “Momism” to describe what he considered the destructive over-influence of American mothers. The book was controversial and widely read. His later novels like Tomorrow! (1954) and Triumph (1963) dealt with nuclear war, while his Crunch and Des fishing stories built a devoted readership in a completely different genre. Wylie resists easy categorization, which is both his strength and the reason he’s less well remembered than more narrowly focused contemporaries.