Lester del Rey

Career 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),

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). 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. He retired from the publishing house in February 1992.

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. 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". 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."

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".

Death Lester del Rey died on May 10, 1993, at New York Hospital at the age of 77 after a brief illness.

Awards Del Rey was awarded the 1972 E. E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the "Skylark") by the New England Science Fiction Association for "contributing significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities that made the late "Doc" Smith well-loved by those who knew him". He also won a special 1985 Balrog Award for his contributions to fantasy, voted by fans and organized by Locus magazine. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 11th SFWA Grand Master in 1990, presented 1991. The Runaway Robot (1965) The Infinite Worlds of Maybe (1966) Rocket from Infinity (1966) The Scheme of Things (1966) Siege Perilous (1966) Tunnel Through Time (1966) Prisoners of Space (1968)

Short fiction collections ... And Some Were Human (1948) Robots and Changelings (1957) The Sky Is Falling and Badge of Infamy (1966) Mortals and Monsters (1965) Gods and Golems (1973) The Early del Rey (1975) The Early del Rey: Vol 1 (1976) The Early del Rey: Vol 2 (1976) The Best of Lester del Rey (1978) War and Space (2009) Robots and Magic (2010)

Nonfiction Rockets Through Space (1957) Space Flight, General Mills, Inc. 1958, 1957; Golden Press, 1959 The Mysterious Earth (1960) The Mysterious Sea (1961) Rocks and What They Tell Us (1961) The Mysterious Sky (1964) The World of Science Fiction, 1926–1976: the History of a Subculture (1979)

As editor The Year After Tomorrow with Carl Carmer and Cecile Matschat (1954) Best Science Fiction of the Year #1–5 (1972–1976) Once Upon a Time: A Treasury of Modern Fairy Tales with Risa Kessler (1991)