Keith Monroe

Keith Monroe (22 August 1915 – 30 August 2003) was an American author of children's science fiction and of books and magazine articles about Boy Scouting.

Monroe attended Stanford University and UCLA. He worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, for advertising and public relations firms, and for North American Rockwell. At times, he was a full-time freelance writer.

His work appeared in such magazines as Saturday Evening Post, New Yorker, |Harper's, Blue Book, Galaxy, Argosy, Boys' Life, and Scouting. His pseudonyms included Donald Keith, Rice E. Cochran, and Dale Colombo.

Scouting
Monroe was deeply involved with Scouting. He served as Scoutmaster for Troop 2 in Santa Monica, California from its founding in December 1945 until 1987.

He wrote articles for Scouting, the magazine for adult Scout leaders; merit badge instruction pamphlets; and fiction for Boys' Life. Under the name Rice E. Cochran, he published Be Prepared!, a humorous memoir of his experiences as a Scoutmaster.It was the basis for the 1953 movie Mister Scoutmaster.

Monroe was a recipient of the Silver Beaver Award.

Science fiction
Collaborating under the pseudonym Donald Keith with his father, Donald Monroe, Keith Monroe wrote the Time Machine series, originally published in Boys' Life between 1959 and 1989.

Donald Keith also contributed stories to Galaxy Science Fiction and Blue Book.

Using the pseudonym Dale Colombo, Keith Monroe published in Boys' Life a series about Scouts in space, featuring a protagonist named Ed Linden, set aboard the spaceship Magellan. These Scouts had been born in interstellar space during the decades-long journey from Earth to planets orbiting a distant star.