(Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at ...)
Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at the after effects of a nuclear war. A typical day in a Westchester suburb of New York for a family of four is shattered by a nuclear attack on New York City.
(Mars was no paradise. But to Dr. Tony Hellman, it meant a...)
Mars was no paradise. But to Dr. Tony Hellman, it meant a second chance for man - and to Hugo Brenner it meant a world to plunder. Tony was the leading member of Sun Lake Colony, a band of frontier-extending Earth people - intrepid space pioneers. Brenner was the planet's most powerful magnate, an operator who vast wealth was based on Earthmen's tragic addiction to the vicious drug, marcaine. When Brenner accused the Sun Lakers of stealing a hundred kilograms of the Martian drug, the colony was threatened with extermination unless the thief was found and the marcaine returned. Tony and his fellow colonists saw their second chance fading. Brenner's success would mean the end of their better world. Could the struggling colony survive the assaults of entrenched greed and persecution? The answer makes an absorbing science-fiction novel, one that has depth as well as action, human warmth as well as suspense and excitement.
(The seas were capable of great resources, including the e...)
The seas were capable of great resources, including the extraction of metal so civilization could grow. But civilization was still separated the “haves” and the “have not”. The domes under the water were a dangerous enough place to work. But when there were saboteurs about, things got a lot worse. For Lev Sloane, a valued technician, remaining politically neutral was no longer an option. Now he had to show the beautiful African, Dr. Vanderpoel, around the dome and keep safe. But from what direction was the danger coming? Sloane didn’t know.
(There was something on Mars that killed people! One exped...)
There was something on Mars that killed people! One expedition vanished without a trace. Out of another, only one man came back. That was Johnny Wendt--the only man who had seen Mars and lived. His knowledge could be decisive in the desperate East-West race for Space. But Johnny didn't know what it was that made Mars a death-trap, and he didn't know that he'd brought it back with him!
(Judith Merril was a pioneer of twentieth-century science ...)
Judith Merril was a pioneer of twentieth-century science fiction, a prolific author, and editor. She was also a passionate social and political activist. In fact, her life was a constant adventure within the alternative and experimental worlds of science fiction, left politics, and Canadian literature.
The Merril Theory of Lit'ry Criticism: Judith Merril's Nonfiction
(This volume collects Merril's nonfiction from The Magazin...)
This volume collects Merril's nonfiction from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Extrapolation, and her Year s Best anthologies. In these collected pieces, Merril works through and develops her definition of S-F and what makes S-F good. She chronicles changes within the genre, including the emergence of the New Wave. And she provides a history of the genre: its writers, its publishers, and its magazines.
Judith Merril was an American and later Canadian science fiction writer, editor and activist. Judith Merril was the principal pseudonym under which Judith Josephine Grossman published stories, novels, and criticism beginning in 1947.
Background
Judith Josephine Grossman was born on January 21, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. She moved to the Bronx after her freshman year in high school.
Her father Samuel Solomon ("Shlomo") Grossman, a columnist and drama critic for a Yiddish newspaper, had committed suicide when Judith was six, and her mother Ethel (Hurwitch) Grossman had accepted a job running a settlement house for juvenile offenders.
Education
Judith Merril graduated from Morris High School in the Bronx in 1939. In her mid-teens, Judith Merril pursued Zionism and Marxism.
Early in her career, Judith Merril worked as a research assistant and ghostwriter from 1943 to 1947. She began writing professionally, especially short stories about sports, starting in 1945, before publishing her first science-fiction story "That Only a Mother" in 1948 which became one of the most widely-anthologized science fiction stories since its initial appearance.
Merril collected her subsequent short fiction in "Out of Bounds" (1960), "Daughters of Earth" (1968), "Survival Ship and Other Stories" (1974), and "The Best of Judith Merril" (1976). Her first novel, "Shadow on the Hearth" (1950) - adapted for television in 1954 as Atomic Attack - was followed by "The Tomorrow People" in 1960. She also wrote two novels in collaboration with C. M. Kornbluth, "Gunner Cade" and "Outpost Mars"; both appeared in 1952 under the joint pseudonym Cyril Judd. Along with these works, Merril was a prolific reviewer and edited science-fiction anthologies including "Shot in the Dark" (1950), "England Swings SF" (1968), and the annual series "S-F: The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy" (1956-1968). Besides, Merril later co-founded and served on the board of the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference (1956-1960).
In 1968, after a year in England, she immigrated to Canada, joining the staff of Rochdale College in Toronto and helping to organize the Committee to Aid Refugees from Militarism (CARM). Her private book collection, donated to the Toronto Public Library in 1970 to form the "Spaced Out Library", became the nucleus of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy, now numbering over 70,000 volumes.
Merril became a Canadian citizen in 1976. In 1997 she became a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Author Emeritus.
Merril was among those who in 1968 signed an anti-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction.
Views
After becoming a Canadian citizen in 1976, Judith Merril became active in its Writers' Union. When the Union debated at its annual meeting whether people could write about other genders and ethnic groups, she exclaimed "Who will speak for the aliens?", which closed the debate.
Membership
Judith Merril was one of the few female members of the Futurians, a literary circle. From the mid-1970s until her death, Merril spent much time in the Canadian peace movement, including traveling to Ottawa dressed as a witch in order to hex Parliament for allowing American cruise missile testing over Canada.
Connections
Judith Merril married Dan Zissman in 1940, less than four months into a relationship that started when they met at a Trotskyist Fourth of July picnic in Central Park. Their daughter Merril Zissman was born in December 1942.
The Zissmans separated about 1945 and in 1946 Frederik Pohl, another Futurian, began living with her. After her divorce from Zissman became final in 1948, she married Pohl on November 25; however, they divorced in 1953. Married to Frederik Pohl, Judith Merril had a second daughter, Ann, in 1950.
In 1960 Judith Merril married Dan Sugrue, a Milford Science Fiction Writers’ union organizer, separating three years later.