Talk:Lester del Rey

message: I haven't the time to check right now, but there may be some info in https://slate.com/culture/2023/10/lester-del-rey-invention-fantasy-book-publishing.html that could be added to the wikipedia page about del Rey.
Kenguest (talk) 13:23, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slate article 

message: I note that 209.163.43.41 claims (in the edit summary, not in the article itself) that "Lester Del Ray was born Leonard Knapp. He had 1 sister, Sally and a brother named Leon. They all grew up in the St. Charles, MN. area. Leonard left and the siblings never knew of him till his death." That doesn't jibe with LDR's claimed background and is unsourced, so I, for one, would be wary about incorporating it into the body of the article. Anyone know the facts here? Thanks, BPK 16:18, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth name and background 

message: As the apparent root source of the "Leonard Stamm" report, I'd like to hedge a little.
My own source isn't anything Lester told me; in the one letter I have from him where he mentioned his original name (in the context of trying to talk me out of using a pen name) he said it was Ramon Alvarez, and the subject never came up in conversation.  After his death, however, I got a call from the lawyer handling his estate, who was trying to track down possible heirs and who had gotten my phone number from Lester's address book.  He told me that the Alvarez name was hooey, that Lester had been born Leonard [somebody].
I remembered the surname as something like "Stamm," and have reported that, but seeing someone else mention the name Knapp, I suddenly find myself thinking that that sounds right, moreso than Stamm does.  I think I may have misremembered the last name and gotten Stamm from seeing a Leonard Stamm mentioned in a completely different context.  I hadn't written the name down or anything; I had assumed at the time that this was, or would become, common knowledge.  I certainly never expected to be the sole source in fandom for the name.
For that matter, I didn't do anything to verify that the guy on the phone was really the lawyer for Lester's estate; why would I?  I took him at his word.
So please, don't consider me an authoritative source on this.  All I have is one half-remembered phone call.  Whoever gave the Leonard Knapp account sounds like they know more than I do.
-- Lawrence Watt Evans
:I removed the footnote citing Watt Evans, since he notes he is not authoritative.  I also removed the Prucher citation because it does not confirm or deny the statement regarding del Rey's lawyer's, which needs a citation. Shsilver 21:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leonard Stamm/Knapp 

message: I'm pretty sure the copyright date on this book is 1961, not 1982... I'll check my copy when I get home. FusionKnight 19:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just checked. Definitely 1961. Changing now. FusionKnight 22:57, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moon of Mutiny 

message: I'd like to propose adding a section on Pseudonyms. It might make the article a little cleaner/clearer to have it broken out and added to the table of contents. Thoughts? If there's no objection in a few days, I'll go ahead and do it. FusionKnight 16:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pseudonyms Section 

message: I was reading this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy-Lynn_del_Rey and I realized it says that Judy-Lynn del Rey was Lester's third wife, while this article says he was his fourth. I'm not sure which one is saying the true, that's why I haven't corrected it, but someone should (or at least the other in case the other one is wrong).
I'm sorry if I made any mistake, this is my first time doing this. Also, I'm not an english speaking person, so you'll have to excuse if I happen to make any mistake.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Locoturbi (talk • contribs) 06:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Judy-Lynn was his fourth wife, as stated in this article. His first was the one who died in a car crash in 1935; he married his second, Helen, in 1945; by the 1950s he was married to his third, Evelyn, who also died in a car crash. He met and married Judy-Lynn some years later. Since little was known about his early life until after his death, the first wife presumably didn't make it into the reckoning until then. I'll fix the Judy-Lynn del Rey article. BPK (talk) 16:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistency between articles 

message: In 1957, del Rey and Damon Knight co-edited a small amateur magazine named Science Fiction Forum. In response to a debate about symbolism within the magazine, del Rey accepted Knight's challenge to write an analysis of James Blish's story "Common Time" that showed the story was about a man eating a ham sandwich.[7]
Is this statement legit? It looks like vandalism. Damon Knight thought the story "Common Time" was about sexual intercourse.118.172.124.246 (talk) 11:19, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Knight thought that, yes; but it sounds to me as though del Rey was sceptical of the symbolic analysis and claimed it could be interpreted to be about anything.  I can see a snippet on books.google.com from Ketterer's Imprisoned in a Tesseract that makes it seem that "ham sandwich" is indeed correct. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 11:25, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "ham sandwich"??? 

message: One source given for our Ballantine biographies --both of them because I copied it from Ian to Betty-- says,
: In 1973, following the sale of the company to Random House, the Ballantines were fired and replaced by another husband and wife team, Lester and Judy-Lyn Del Ray, who turned Ballantine books toward Science Fiction with the DEL RAY imprint. Ian Ballantine returned in 1981 as a special consultant. 
Certainly that is unreliable --del Rey is mis-spelled, for one-- and it is now reflected in this biography only by my parenthetical note "(as a Random House property, post-Ballantine)". If the fact can be ascertained it will be good to say here that the del Reys replaced the Ballantines at Ballantine, and to say whether they rehired Ian Ballantine. 
--P64 (talk) 01:42, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: In 1977 both its fantasy and science fiction lines were relaunched under the Del Rey Books imprint, ...
--P64 (talk) 15:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ballantine Books 

message: === Frederik Pohl ===
Frederik Pohl covered the del Reys in his blog:
* "Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey" by Frederik Pohl, The Way the Future Blogs, November 3, 2009
Re Ballantine he recalls, "... after a while, he [Lester, now her husband] joined Judy-Lynn at Ballantine, and — no surprise to anyone who knew them — with Lester handling the fantasy side of the operation while Judy-Lynn continued with the sf, they were fabulously successful ..."
--P64 (talk) 18:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: Frederik Pohl covered the del Reys in his blog:
* "Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey" by Frederik Pohl, The Way the Future Blogs, November 3, 2009
Re Ballantine he recalls, "... after a while, he [Lester, now her husband] joined Judy-Lynn at Ballantine, and — no surprise to anyone who knew them — with Lester handling the fantasy side of the operation while Judy-Lynn continued with the sf, they were fabulously successful ..."
--P64 (talk) 18:20, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frederik Pohl 

message: http://www.nndb.com/people/208/000085950/ (Lester del Rey)
--P64 (talk) 18:31, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: NNDB

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018)