Olsen was the son of Norwegian immigrants and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended Brown University, and achieved a Phi Beta Kappa and a masters in science in 1908.[3] He later met his wife, Thula Crismon (1896–1957) in Salt Lake City, Utah while teaching science. He had five children, but one died at birth. His first son and first child was Bob Gillham Olsen, named after his father's pen name born 1919, his first daughter and second child was Zora Louise Olsen born 1923, their second daughter and third child was Joyzelle Kaza Olsen born in 1929, and their fourth child and second son was Kenneth Crimson Olsen born 1937.
He moved to California and started the Olsen Advertising Agency,[3] all the while writing stories for magazines like Amazing Stories.[4] He built a home in Beverly Hills. Olsen often wrote humorous science fiction in Amazing Stories, from 1927 to 1936. He was one of the first writers to use the phrase "space marine".[5] His large hobby granted him fame through the world of science fiction in his day, but that was not enough to support a family. Ray Bradbury, just a teenager at the time, visited Bob Olsen often for mentorship, friendship, as well as simply a sharing of ideas.[6]
Olsen's novelette "Captain Brink of the Space Marines " was the cover story in the November 1932 Amazing StoriesOlsen's novelette "The Space Marines and the Slavers" was the cover story in the December 1936 Amazing Stories
^Ash, B. (1978). Who's who in science fiction. Taplinger Publishing Company. p. 159. ISBN978-0-8008-8279-2. Retrieved February 12, 2018. Bob Olsen. An early pulp writer whose full name was Alfred Johannes Olsen Jr. He was born in the US in 1884. Olsen made his debut in Gemsback's Amazing in 1927 with 'The Four-Dimensional Roller-Press', the first of a series of amusing tales on the fourth dimension. He also wrote a number of mystery stories with a scientific slant. He died in 1956.
