OK the cover is amazing and nothing in the collection is that trippy, but yes it rules super hard. Judith Merril however still was first to do many things. While women in TV and film often choose male or non-gender specific names in those days it was not as common in the SF. Remember in the early days there were only a few places to publish at all. It might seem weird to modern members of the community that JM would care if JWC bought her work or not. When you read her stories you can see she would have been stupid not to. Campbell the notorious backward-thinking editor to buy her work. There is an infamous story that Merrill had to challenge John W. It is not that women were not writing SF, plenty was but without the contributions of CL Moore and Judith Merril, the path may not have been as ready for your Joanna Russ and Leguins. To call Merril a trailblazer is an understatement. This is a fine collection of feminist SF, and compared to the standards of today that definition might not be so obvious but one has to understand how male-dominated the scene was. Also because I really wanted to read the story Dead Center for reasons we will come back to. I ultimately choose this collection to get a wider look at her work. When making this purchase I debated between that novel and this collection.

Kornbluth but most of all I want to read her post-Atomic war novel from Shadow of The Hearth. I am very excited and interested to check out her novels co-written with C.M. Her line of books collecting the best of the Magazine of Fantasy and SF were foundational but it was her writing were here to talk about.

Her year’s best, and country-themed anthologies for England and Soviet SF were important. Her role as a founding member of two major NYC clubs The Futurians and the Hydra club predates her publishing that began in 1948. Since then reading several histories from Damon Knight, Boucher, and Malzberg further made the point Judith Merril is an important voice in SF. When Lisa gave us background on the story and author it was clear that JM was an important figure in the community and I needed to know more. In that collection which collected the best of the pulp era SF ranging from the 20s to the end of the 60s was a story from the 40s called “Only a Mother.” The story of fall-out sickened children of atomic wars was a brutal and powerful stand-out. A few stories into the anthology I knew I had to have her on the show. Early in the process of doing the show, I discovered the book the Future is Female edited by one of our most popular guests Lisa Yasek.

The first example was Tony Boucher whose name came up many times. In the time that I have been doing the Dickheads podcast and have taken learning the history of 20th century Science Fiction it has happened a few times.

S-F by Judith Merril