Charles Runyon was born in Sheridan, Missouri, and was raised on his parents' farm. He found a love of writing at an early age, and in high school was already preparing to be a professional writer. He ran away from home at age 16 to work on a ranch in West Texas. He served with the U.S. Army in the Korean War. He married in 1957, and he and his wife honeymooned travelling on a motorcycle in Mexico, an experience he later used in his novel The Death Cycle (1963). His first published short story, “First Man in a Satellite” appeared in Super Science Fiction in 1958. When his short stories started selling, he quit his job to become a full-time writer, and wrote his first novel, The Anatomy of Violence (1960), in a borrowed lakeside cabin. When it was finished he took his family to the West Indies, then returned to New York. He wrote both science fiction and crime fiction, but when his brother was murdered in 1967, he lost his love for crime fiction and focused primarily on science fiction. After the publication of The Gypsy King in 1980, he took a break from writing, and earned a Master's degree in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. He currently lives in Texas.