Algis Budrys was one of the writers who made his name alongside such luminaries as Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick in the early-1950s boom in science-fiction magazines.

Budrys’s first two published stories, in 1952, were The High Purpose (in Astounding Science Fiction) and Walk to the World (Space Science Fiction). He went on to write more than 100 stories in the next decade. In Silent Brother (Astounding, February 1956), the hero finds an alien intelligence living in his mind, with mutually beneficial results for both of them and the entire human race.

Other exceptional stories from this period are The End of Summer (1954), Nobody Bothers Gus (1955), The Man Who Tasted Ashes (1959), The Distant Sound of Engines (1959) and Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night (1961). The Edge of the Sea (1958), a seminal first-contact story, narrowly missed out on winning a Hugo award.

Budrys’s first novel, False Night, published by the small New York firm Lion Books in 1954, tells of the slow recovery of the world after it has been devastated by a plague. In his second novel, Man of Earth (1958), circumstances force the weedy businessman protagonist, Allen Sibley, to buy himself a new, much-improved body and then light out for Pluto, but he ends up with a mind that does not belong to him or his alter ego.

Budrys’s Who? (1958) was greeted as one of the science-fiction genre’s most humane studies of dehumanisation. A US scientist is taken prisoner by the Russians after an explosion has severed one arm and almost destroyed his face. He is sent back with a metal face and a metal arm, and the Americans must ferret out the truth about this modern-day man in the iron mask — is he real or is he a Soviet plant sent to disrupt a vital project? A film version of Who? was released in 1973. Directed by Jack Gold, it starred Elliott Gould, Joseph Bova and Trevor Howard.

The Falling Torch (1959) is about the son of a human president-in-exile, who returns to an Earth ruled by “Centaurian” conquerors and foments a rebellion. It was perhaps Budrys’s wish-fulfilment fantasy — a Lithuanian boy, raised in America, returns to his homeland to free it from the Soviet yoke.

Rogue Moon (1960) is generally considered to be his best novel. Men are sent by a matter transmitter to the far side of the Moon, where they find an alien labyrinth that kills anyone that goes through it.

There was a long gap before his next novel, Michaelmas (1977). In it an artificial-intelligence network is linked to a TV personality, enabling him to control the very news he reports.

In his review Gene Wolfe said: “In flatly and persuasively denying the inevitable corruption of power, Michaelmas may well be the most optimistic book of the latter 20th century.”

Algirdas Jonas Budrys was born in Königsberg, Germany, (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1931. His family moved in 1936 to the US where his father was consul-general for the Lithuanian Government. Budrys was educated at Miami and Columbia universities. After graduation in 1951 he worked for a series of sci-fi publishing firms and magazines until in October 1961 he became editor-in-chief of Regency Books, a small but high-quality paperback firm. In 1963 he became editorial director of Playboy Press, the book-publishing arm of Playboy magazine. Then, after a stint with Commander Publications in 1966, he moved into public relations.

Budrys received the Edgar award of the Mystery Writers of America in 1966, the 2007 Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award for science-fiction scholarship, and was elected to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He is survived by his wife, Edna, and their four sons.

Algis Budrys, science-fiction writer and publisher, was born on January 9, 1931. He died of cancer on June 9, 2008, aged 77