Pauline Ashwell

Pauline Whitby (1926 - 23 November 2015) was a British science fiction author who wrote under the pseudonym Pauline Ashwell. She also wrote under the name Paul Ash. She took her pen names from Ashwell, Hertfordshire, near her birthplace of Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Career Ashwell's first published work was a children's fantasy book, Little Red Steamer (Methuen, 1941) and her first science fiction story, "Invasion from Venus", published when she was only 16 years old. It appeared in the July 1942 issue of an obscure British science fiction magazine, Yankee Science Fiction, under the name Paul Ashwell.

She was discovered by science fiction editor John W. Campbell, who published her debut novel, Unwillingly to School, under the name Pauline Ashwell in the January 1958 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell also published her story Big Sword in the October 1958 of Astounding under the name Paul Ash. Though she lost to Poul Anderson's The Longest Voyage, Richard A. Lupoff included her story in his series What If? Stories That Should Have Won The Hugo as one of three stories by women who debuted in the 1950s that he thought should have won those awards. Other than Rats in the Moon in the November 1982 issue of Analog, she published nothing between 1966 and 1988.