Born to a
Jewish family in
London, Phillip Klass moved to
New York City with his parents before his second birthday and grew up in Brooklyn, . After serving in the
United States Army during
World War II as a combat engineer in Europe, he held a job as a technical editor with an Air Force radar and radio laboratory and was employed by
Bell Labs. Phillip and Fruma Klass married in 1957, and they moved in 1966 to
State College, Pennsylvania, where he taught English and comparative literature at
Penn State University for 22 years. His students who would go on to professional careers as writers included
Rambo creator
David Morrell, screenwriter
Steven E. de Souza, technology writer
Steven Levy and crime novelist
Ray Ring. Phil's wife, Fruma Klass (1935-2026), grew up in
New York City and graduated from the
Bronx High School of Science and
Brooklyn College to work as a lab technician, a medical editor and a Harper & Row copy editor. At Penn State, she was a writing instructor and a copy editor for the
Penn State University Press. When Phil Klass retired, the couple moved to the
Pittsburgh suburb of
Mt. Lebanon in 1988, and Fruma took a job as an editor with
Black Box Corporation. That same year, her first short story, "Before the Rainbow", was published in the anthology
Synergy 3. In 1996, her second story, "After the Rainbow", won a Writers of the Future prize; the story was published in
Writers of the Future, Vol. XII. In 2004, she entered a worldwide essay competition, the Power of Purpose Awards, sponsored by the
John Templeton Foundation. Competing against 7,000 entrants from 97 countries, she won $25,000 for her essay "Streets of Mud, Streets of Gold". Phil and Fruma Klass were members of the Pittsburgh Area Real Time Science Fiction Enthusiasts Consortium (PARSEC) and were frequent speakers at its local conference, Confluence. Phil Klass was a Guest of Honor at
Noreascon 4, the 2004
World Science Fiction Convention. He was the Author Guest of Honor at
Loscon 33 at the LAX Marriott in Los Angeles in 2006. He has published most of his fiction as William Tenn and much of his nonfiction as Phil (or Philip) Klass. He is sometimes confused with
UFO debunker
Philip J. Klass, who was born six months earlier and who died August 9, 2005. Klass was related to other writers, including his nieces
Perri Klass and Judy Klass, his nephew
David Klass, and his brother
Morton Klass. He died on February 7, 2010, of congestive heart failure, and was survived by his wife Fruma, daughter Adina, and sister Frances Goldman-Levy. ==Writing==