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Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.
This month we're talking about women of science fiction.
These women inspire us to imagine impossible worlds, alien creatures, and fantastical inventions, revealing our deepest fears and hopes for the future.
Today we're talking about a woman who pulled inspiration for her dystopian and speculative stories from headlines and books she was reading and experiencing in her own time.
She infused political and social messages into her writing by focusing on characters like mothers and housewives, who were also grappling with the horrors and whims of a high-tech future.
Meet Judith Merrill.
Judith was born on January 21, 1923, in Boston.
Her writing roots reach back to her childhood.
When she was seven years old, Judith published her first poem in a summer camp newspaper.
At 15, though, she quit.
She realized her mom wanted her to be a writer, so she rebelled.
When she was around 13 years old, the family moved to the Bronx.
High school for Judith was a time of political exploration, debate, and analysis.
She was a socialist and liked to argue with another student who was a communist.
Eventually, she found Trotskyism.
Judith met her husband, Dan Zisman, at a Trotskyist youth picnic.
And in 1940, they got married.
She credited Dan with sparking her interest in science fiction.
In 1942, he was drafted into the Navy.
That same year, Judith got pregnant and gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Merrill.
Judith would later use Merrill's name to make up her pen name.
When Danny was shipped off to the war, Judith found herself on her own, a young mother living
in New York City.
In New York, Judith met the Futurians, a group of rebellious, mostly male, mostly leftist writers who were obsessed with sci-fi.
They wanted to set a new and modern standard for the genre.
Judith claimed that she went into sci-fi writing because it was a genre that allowed for political dissent.
Writers could highlight socially conscious themes during the post-war era, using the lens of the future to critique the present.
But her first published story wasn't science fiction.
It was printed in Crack Detective magazine by one of her fellow Futurians in 1945.
She wrote to her husband in celebration.
Hereafter, in addressing your wife, you will kindly restrain yourself to the use of the official title, Oh, Most Revered High and Worshipful Professional Hack Writer.
The letter may have been a little sarcastic, but she really was excited about getting published. She went on to write sports stories for pulp magazines.
She didn't know or care much for sports, but it made her money.
Judith struggled at times with having to be both a mother and a writer.
She wrote and did research to make money to support herself and her family.
All the while, she felt the pull of her young kids' demands on her time.
In 1948, Judith published her first sci-fi story, which was titled That Only a Mother.
The story is told from the perspective of a woman living a few years in the future, as World War III rages on.
Her husband is off to fight while she works through her final moments of pregnancy.
She stresses about mutations, which are increasingly common in the post-nuclear age.
And she worries about the news reports of fathers killing their children when they're born with mutations.
When she gives birth, she assures her husband the baby's perfect.
The infant may have grown teeth and learned to speak a little early, but nothing to be worried about.
SPEAKER_00: When her husband finally returns for leave, he meets his new daughter and discovers she was born without any limbs.
Judith originally wrote the short story as part of a bet with an editor.
He said that women couldn't write sci-fi good enough to get published in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine.
He was wrong.
On the heels of her success with her first sci-fi short story, Judith published her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth, in 1950.
That same year, her second daughter, Anne, was born.
Judith's novel also deals with the threat of nuclear war from the perspective of a young mother and housewife. While the book didn't garner much fanfare on release, it did get a review in the New York Times. A few years later, it was adapted into a TV drama called Atomic Attack.
In the 1950s, Judith became known for the science fiction anthologies she edited.
She was one of the very few prominent women editors of her time.
She also co-founded and served as a board member for the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference, which is still held today.
While Judith's professional career took off, she was dealing with some turbulence in her personal life.
In 1953, she and her second husband divorced.
She would go on to marry once more and went through a handful of custody battles.
Judith also grew uncomfortable with the power she wielded as an editor.
It put her on a different level, one she wasn't fond of.
That, coupled with the political reality of the U.S. in the late 1960s, led her to spend a year in England.
And then she immigrated to Canada.
In Canada, Judith joined the staff of Toronto's Rockdale College, an experiment in alternative education offering free tuition and cooperative living space.
She also kept up her anti-war activism, helping to organize the Committee to Aid Refugees for Militarism.
In 1970, Judith donated her personal collection of books and literature to the Toronto Public Library, calling it the Spaced Out Library.
Now it's known as the Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy.
It contains more than 70,000 volumes.
On September 12, 1997, Judith died from heart failure.
Always an editor, she left behind a draft of her memoir and a thorough set of instructions.
Her granddaughter published the book for her in 2002.
The next year, it won a Hugo Award.
And in 2013, Judith was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
All month we're talking about women in science fiction. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram, at Womanica Podcast.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
