LIGHTNER, A(lice) M(artha)

(1904-1988)

   US writer and entomologist who began publishing her sf, all of which is for children, with "A New Game" for Boy's Life in 1959. Her first published novel, The Rock of Three Planets (1963) - its sequels were The Planet Poachers (1965) and The Space Ark (1968) - was followed byseveral other effective juveniles, though she came to general sf notice only with The Day of the Drones (1969), a post- HOLOCAUST story set half a millennium after a nuclear WAR. (This was actually her first-written novel; originally written for adults, it had been revised for publication as a juvenile.) As in Margot BENNETT's The Long Way Back (1954), Black Africa has survived. The two young protagonists, sent north on anexploratory mission, discover that the White remnants of UK civilization have evolved into a hive society (HIVE-MINDS), and at a high cost save one (male) drone, who may (or may not) prove acceptable to the Black society back home. AML also wrote a number of nonfiction books of dramatized natural science as Alice L. Hopf, her married name.

   JC

   Other works: Doctor to the Galaxy (1965); The Galactic Troubadours (1965); The Space Plague (1966); The Space Olympics (1967); The Thursday Toads (1971);Star Dog (1973); Gods or Demons? (1973); The Space Gypsies (1974); Star Circus (1977).

   See also: CHILDREN'S SF.