MERRIL, Judith

(1923-)

   US-born writer and anthologist, in Canada from 1968. Born Josephine Grossman, she preferred the forename Judith; she became Judith Zissman by marriage, then changed her name to Merril before marrying Frederik POHL in 1949; they were divorced in 1953. She occasionally used the pseudonym Rose Sharon. JM was associated with the FUTURIANS fan group during and after WWII. Her first published sf was "That Only a Mother" for ASF in 1948. Her first novel, Shadow on the Hearth (1950; rev 1966 UK),tells the story of an atomic war in effectively understated fashion from the viewpoint of a housewife; one of the very best stories of nuclear HOLOCAUST, it was televised as Atomic Attack.JM wrote two routine novelsin collaboration with C.M. KORNBLUTH as Cyril JUDD: Outpost Mars (1952; rev vt Sin in Space 1961) is about the COLONIZATION of MARS, Gunner Cade (1952) about an era in which WAR is a spectator sport (GAMES AND SPORTS).Her best short stories, which usually feature protagonists passively caught up in world-changing events, and often hurt thereby, were a little ahead of their time. The neatly heart-rending "Dead Center" (1954) was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories: 1955 ed Martha Foley. Daughters of Earth (coll 1968 UK; cut vt A Judith Merril Omnibus:Daughters of Earth and Other Stories 1985 Canada) features 3 fine novellas: the title story (1953) is a family saga set on a colony world; "Project Nursemaid" (1955)-cut from the vt-concerns the problems of theadministrator of a space project which must adopt human embryos; "Homecalling" (1956) is a story of contact with an ALIEN being. TheTomorrow People (1960), an intense psychological mystery story, lacks the emotional resonance of her best early work. She published very little fiction after 1960. Her short-story collections, which overlap somewhat, are Out of Bounds (coll 1960), Survival Ship and Other Stories (coll 1974) and The Best of Judith Merril (coll 1976).JM began editing sf ANTHOLOGIES in the early 1950s with Shot in the Dark (anth 1950), Beyond Human Ken (anth 1952; with 6 of 21 stories cut 1953 UK; cut version vt Selectionsfrom Beyond Human Ken 1954 US), Beyond the Barriers of Time and Space (anth 1954), Human? (anth 1954) and Galaxy of Ghouls (anth 1955; vt Offthe Beaten Orbit 1959). She made her mark with the series of 12 "year's best" anthologies she began in 1956: S-F The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy (anth 1956); SF: 57 (anth 1957; vt SF TheYear's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Second Annual Volume 1957); SF 58 (anth 1958; vt SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Third Annual Volume 1958); SF 59 (anth 1959; vt SF The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: Fourth Annual Volume); The 5th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1960; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 5 1966 UK); The 6th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1961; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 1963 UK); The 7th Annual of The Year's Best S-F (anth 1962; vt The Best of Sci-Fi - Two 1964 UK); The 8th Annual of The Year's Best SF (anth 1963; vt The Best of Sci-Fi No. 4 1965 UK); The 9th Annual of The Year's Best SF (anth 1964; vt 9th Annual S-F 1967 UK); 10th Annual Edition The Year's Best SF (anth 1965; vt 10th Annual SF 1967 UK); 11th Annual Edition The Year's Best S-F(anth 1966); SF 12 (anth 1968; vt The Best of Sci-Fi 12 1970 UK); though announced, SF 13 never in fact appeared. The UK edns omit some editorial material and are numbered without regard to sense; The Best of Sci-Fi 3 (anth 1964 UK) ed Cordelia Titcomb Smith has no connection with the JMseries. A selection from the sequence was published as SF: The Best of the Best (anth 1967). JM was an unusually eclectic anthologist, habituallyusing stories from outside the SF MAGAZINES, thus helping to broaden the horizons of the genre; she campaigned in her anthologies and in her book-review column in FSF (May 1965-May 1969) for the replacement of the term "science fiction" by SPECULATIVE FICTION. She was the first US champion of the NEW WAVE (primarily associated with the UK magazine NEW WORLDS), which she attempted to popularize in England Swings SF (anth1968; cut vt The Space-Time Journal 1972 UK). She ed the first of the Tesseracts series (CANADA) of representative anthologies of Canadian sf, Tesseracts (anth 1985).Her book collection now forms the basis of the MERRIL COLLECTION OF SCIENCE FICTION, SPECULATION AND FANTASY, based in Toronto.

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   See also: DEFINITIONS OF SF; END OF THE WORLD; GENERATION STARSHIPS; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; SHARED WORLDS; SMALL PRESSES AND LIMITED EDITIONS; WOMEN SF WRITERS.