Judith Merril

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Judith Josephine Grossman (January 21, 1923 - September 12, 1997), who took the pen-name Judith Merril about 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer and political activist.

Her first paid writing was in other genres, but in her first few years of writing published science fiction she wrote her three novels (all but the first in collaboration with C.M. Kornbluth) and some stories. Her roughly four decades in that genre also included writing 26 published short stories, and editing a similar number of anthologies.

She was born in Boston; after her father's suicide during her grade-school years, her mother found a job at Bronx House and moved them to the Bronx area of New York City. In her mid-teens, she pursued Zionism and Marx.

In 1939, she graduated from Morrows High School at 16, and rethought her politics under the influence of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. She married Dan Zissman the next year, less than four months into a relationship that started through Trotskyist activities. Their daughter Merril Zissman was born in December 1942. The couple separated about 1945; in 1946 Frederik Pohl began living with her. After her divorce from Zissman became final, she married Pohl, both during 1948.

She wrote for pay, especially short stories about sports, starting in 1945, before publishing her first science-fiction story in 1948.

Her second child, Ann, was born in 1950; in 1952 she separated from Pohl, and their divorce completed the next year, in which she also lived with Walter Miller for six months. Her third marriage came in 1960, devolving into separation, in 1963, but never a final divorce.

She began editing science fiction short story anthologies in 1950 -- especially a popular "Year's Best" story-anthology series of that ran from 1956 to 1967 -- and published her last in 1985.

In the late 1960s, citing what she called undemocratic suppression of anti-war activities by the U.S. government, she moved to Canada.

In 1970 she began an endowment at the Toronto Public Library for the collection of all science fiction published in the English language. This was initially named the Spaced Out Library, but renamed in her last years to the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy.

She became a Canadian citizen in 1976.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America made Merril its Author Emeritus for 1997.

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