Prolific science fiction writer who conceived alternative lives for figures including Emily Dickinson and Sigmund Freud

In 1965, Barry N Malzberg, who has died aged 85, decided that the career he sought as a literary writer was closed to him – the magazines were impenetrable, the control of editors at publishing houses absolute – and that science fiction, which he had read in his youth, was the path he would pursue into writing.

He made his first sale in sci-fi in 1967 under the name KM O’Donnell, and, in the seven years that followed, sold a further 2 million words – 23 novels and six short-story collections. At the end he felt he had succeeded too well and chose to retire, saying: “There is almost no room left for the kind of work which I try to do.”