Writing career
Del Rey first started publishing stories in pulp magazines in the late 1930s, at the dawn of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction. He was associated with the most prestigious science fiction magazine of the era, Astounding Science Fiction, from the time its editor John W. Campbell published his first short story in the April 1938 issue: "The Faithful", already under the name Lester del Rey. The December 1938 issue featured his story "Helen O'Loy" which was selected for the prestigious anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. By the end of 1939 he had also placed stories in Weird Tales (edited by Farnsworth Wright) and Unknown (Campbell),[5] which featured more horror and more fantasy respectively.
During a period when del Rey's work was not selling well, he worked as a short order cook at the White Tower Restaurant in New York. After he married his second wife, Helen Schlaz, in 1945, he quit that job to write full-time.
In 1952, his first three novels were published in the Winston juvenile series, one of which (Rocket Jockey) appearing in an Italian-language edition in the same year.[5] In the 1950s, del Rey was one of the main authors writing science fiction for adolescents, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton. During this time some of his fiction was published under multiple pseudonyms, including Philip St. John and Erik van Lhin.[2]
He continued publishing novels, as well as short fiction, both under his primary pseudonym Lester del Rey as well as a number of other pen names, at a fast pace through the 1950s and the early sixties. His novel writing slowed down toward the end of the sixties, with his last novel, Weeping May Tarry (written with Raymond F. Jones) appearing from Pinnacle Books in 1978.
Editor and critic
After meeting Scott Meredith at the 1947 World Science Fiction Convention, he began working as a first reader for the new Scott Meredith Literary Agency, where he also served as office manager.[1][6][7]
He later became an editor for several pulp magazines and then for book publishers. During 1952 and 1953, del Rey edited several magazines: Space SF, Fantasy Fiction, Science Fiction Adventures (as Philip St. John), Rocket Stories (as Wade Kaempfert), and Fantasy Fiction (as Cameron Hall).[8] During this period he also edited several anthologies, notably editing the "Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year" series from 1972 to 1976.
Del Rey was most successful editing with his fourth wife, Judy-Lynn del Rey, at Ballantine Books (as a Random House property, post-Ballantine) where they established the fantasy and science fiction imprint Del Rey Books in 1977.[9] He retired from the publishing house in February 1992.[10]
In 1957, del Rey and Damon Knight co-edited a small amateur magazine named Science Fiction Forum. During a debate about symbolism within the magazine, del Rey accepted Knight's challenge to write an analysis of the James Blish story "Common Time" that showed the story was about a man eating a ham sandwich.[11] After science fiction gained respectability and began to be taught in classrooms, del Rey stated that academics interested in the genre should "get out of my ghetto".[12][13] Del Rey said that "to develop, science fiction had to remove itself from the usual critics who viewed it from the perspective of [the] mainstream, and who judged its worth largely on its mainstream values. As part of that mainstream, it would never have had the freedom to make the choices it did — many of them quite possibly wrong, but necessary for its development."[14]
Starting in September 1969, he wrote the "Reading Room" review column for If, and following the demise of If in 1974, switched to writing the review column for Analog Science Fiction and Fact titled "The Reference Library".
Del Rey was a member of a literary banqueting club, the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. Del Rey was the model for "Emmanuel Rubin".[15]
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