page_title: Judith Merril
section_title: American science fiction writing and editing
hierarchical_section_title: Judith Merril / American science fiction writing and editing
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover, Dynamic Science Fiction, March 1953
context_page_description: Judith Josephine Grossman, who took the pen-name Judith Merril around 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist, and one of the first women to be widely influential in those roles.
  Although Judith Merril's first paid writing was in other genres, in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.
context_section_description: Under her married name Merril edited a five-page SF fanzine dated May 1945, including a letter "On Ezra Pound" by Don Zissman [sic]. She edited, and published with Larry Shaw and Dan Zissman, a 20-page fanzine dated January 1946, Science*Fiction No. 1, including an editorial by her entitled "The Hills and the Heights". ISFDB notes, "A single issue fanzine from Judy Zissman (aka Judith Merril). It was clearly intended to continue, and many of the contents of the next issue are described, but a 2nd issue was never released—likely as a result of the collapse of her marriage to Don Zissman."
  Judith Merril began writing professionally, especially short stories about sports, starting in 1945, before publishing her first science-fiction story in 1948. A number, but by no means all, of her contributions were to magazines edited by fellow ex-Futurians. She was a co-founder of the Hydra Club in this period. Her story "Dead Center" (F&SF, November 1954) is one of only two stories taken from any science fiction or fantasy magazine for the Best American Short Stories volumes edited by Martha Foley in the 1950s. Groff Conklin described her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth, as "a masterly example of sensitive and perceptive story-telling". Boucher and McComas praised it as "a sensitively human novel, terrifying in its small-scale reflection of grand-scale catastrophe". P. Schuyler Miller found it a "warm, human novel" comparable to Earth Abides.
  Her second child Ann Pohl was born in 1950; she and Pohl separated in 1952 and their divorce was finalized the next year, during which she also lived with Walter M. Miller for six months. Her third marriage came in 1960, devolved into separation in 1963, but never reached a final divorce. Ann Pohl's daughter, Merril's granddaughter Emily Pohl-Weary, writes young adult fiction including science fiction and is a professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She also co-authored Merril's biography after the latter's death, using access to her drafts, notes and letters.
  Merril began editing science fiction short story anthologies in 1950—especially a popular "Year's Best" story-anthology series that ran from 1956 to 1967—and published her last in 1985. In her editorial introductions, talks and other writings, she actively argued that science fiction should no longer be isolated but become part of the literary mainstream. Early in her editing career, Anthony Boucher described her as "a practically flawless anthologist".
  She also had an important role as Books Editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF) from 1965 until 1969.
  According to science fiction scholar Rob Latham, "throughout the 1950s, Merril, along with fellow SF authors James Blish and Damon Knight had taken the lead in promoting higher literary standards and a greater sense of professionalism within the field." In particular they established the annual Milford Writers' Conference in Milford, Pennsylvania, where Merril then lived [as did Knight and his wife Kate Wilhelm]. Manuscripts were workshopped at these avid gatherings, thus encouraging more care in the planning of stories, and a sense of solidarity was promoted, eventually leading to the formation of the Science Fiction Writers Association." However, "disaffected authors began griping about a 'Milford Mafia' that was endangering SF's unique virtues by imposing literary standards essentially alien to the field."
  One anthology project Merril began in the early 1960s under contract to Lion Books in Chicago was aborted, but inspired her publisher's editor Harlan Ellison to go forward with his own version of the project, which yielded Dangerous Visions (Doubleday, 1967). As an initiator of the New Wave movement, she edited the 1968 anthology England Swings SF, whose stories she collected while living in England for a year.
  In 1966 Ellison wrote an episode entitled "The Pieces of Fate Affair" for The Man from UNCLE using the names of friends as characters.  One of these was a THRUSH agent who was also a literary critic named "Judith Merle" played
caption: Another Merril–Kornbluth collaboration, the novelette "Sea-Change", was the cover story for the second issue of Dynamic Science Fiction in 1953. It has apparently never been reprinted.
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