When 19 year old Wynne Whiteford sold "Beyond the Infinite" to Adam and Eve magazine in 1934, A. Bertram Chandler and Arthur C. Clarke were still a decade away from selling their first stories. At that time a dozen or so other Australian authors had managed to participate in the explosion of SF creativity and wonder taking place overseas, but young Wynne found that scene too daunting. After selling "Automaton" to The Bulletin in 1935 he gave up writing SF for twenty years and concentrated on earning a living.

When Wynne returned to fiction it was 1952. Chandler and Clarke were now promising newcomers in SF and, of the Australian authors of the thirties, only North was still active. Wynne was now writing crime fiction and he sold stories to Australian Journal, Squire and Saint.