Peter Bryant
Bio: The reputation of Peter George (1925-1966) rests largely on his novel Red Alert and the screenplay of the film it inspired, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying, which George co-authored with Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern. A pessimistic Englishman deeply committed to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1950s, George had been a lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. He drew on first-hand knowledge of the new age of nuclear defense in writing the novel, which at first he felt compelled to publish under a pseudonym. With interest in such stories peaking around the release of Stanley Kramer's film version of On the Beach in 1959, the film rights to Red Alert were sold that year, only to be handed off from producer to producer until Stanley Kubrick bought them in 1962, reportedly for as little as $3,500.
In the beginning, George collaborated on the film's script with Kubrick; Southern's involvement and the satirical overhaul of the story came later. George disliked the ironic tone of Kubrick's film, though he wrote a new novelization of it that he dedicated to the director. The threat of nuclear catastrophe continued to obsess him. He would later write a novel about life after nuclear war entitled Commander-I and was at work on a novel entitled Nuclear Survivors when he committed suicide in 1966.
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