June 27 2009 will be Will F. Jenkins Day in Virginia:
WHEREAS, as Murray Leinster, he was one of the founders of American science fiction with his story “The Runaway Skyscraper,” which was published on February 22, 1919, in Argosy magazine; and he was one of the few pioneers of the genre who continued to publish regularly when the nature of science fiction changed after World War II; and
WHEREAS, “First Contact,” written by Murray Leinster in 1945, is one of the most anthologized stories in the history of science fiction, and “A Logic Named Joe,” written in 1946 by Will F. Jenkins, was the first science fiction story to envision a computer network similar to the Internet; and
WHEREAS, Murray Leinster won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “Exploration Team” in 1956; was the guest of honor at the 21st Worldcon in 1963; and was awarded a Retro Hugo Award posthumously in 1996 for Best Novelette for “First Contact,” which was the first science fiction story to present the dramatic scenario of the first meeting between earthlings and aliens; and
[…]
RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly designate June 27, 2009, as Will F. Jenkins Day in Virginia in recognition of the author’s creative genius and his numerous literary achievements; and, be it
RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates post the designation of this day on the General Assembly’s website.
As will be clear from the above, Will F. Jenkins was equally well known, if not more so as Murray Leinster. He was writing science fiction before there was a genre called that and kept on writing well into the 1960ties. Much of his writing seems to be out of print these days, but the 1978 Del Rey edition of The Best of Murray Leinster should be easily found secondhand. It contains most of the stories name checked in this resolution.