Charles Nuetzel was born in San Francisco, California, the son of artist Albert Nuetzel. He started writing in 1960, and after 100 rejected manuscripts, his published science-fiction story was "A Very Cultured Taste" in Jade Magazine #1. Although his passion was to write science fiction stories, he was advised to write for adult pulp magazines, and he also go into writing adult novels. He wrote all eight of the "Scorpion" series of erotic pulp novels published by N.A.C. Publishing in the 1960s, under seven different pseudonyms. In fact, he owned the publishing house: N.A.C. are his own initials in reverse order. In the late 1960s, he established Powell Sci-Fi, a book packaging company (Neutzel wrote or purchased fiction, did the layout and cover design, sent it to the printer, and passed it on to book distributors) which published one paperback novel a month in the 1960s, before it went out of business. His father, a commercial artist, created the artwork for many of the book covers. Neutzel used Powell to reprint, in expanded form, many of his own erotic pulp novels, but he was more interested in bringing out quality science fiction stories with the Powell SciFi line. He published several of his own science fiction novels under his own name as well as several notable authors such as A. E. van Vogt and Harlan Ellison. He is credited as one of the creators of the "sword and planet" style of science fiction. He has written over 70 paperback originals and hundreds of short stories under many pen names, and packaged over 45 novels.