A smart, witty and capable engineer of mainstream entertainments, Nicholas Meyer began his career as a Hollywood publicist before turning to literary pursuits and a popular novelist, screenwriter and director. Meyer made his TV debut as a writer (and earned an Emmy nomination) with "The Night That Panicked America" (ABC, 1975), a recreation of the Orson Welles' famed Mercury Theater radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" on Halloween in 1938.

Seguing into features, e wrote the screen adaptation of his best-selling latter-day Sherlock Holmes novel "The Seven Percent Solution" (1977) and