Nerves

eForeword

Lester del Rey’s great novel of uncontrollable nuclear reactor breakdown in an atomic planet appeared in shorter form in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine in 1942, then was expanded to book length for publication in 1956. With precision and cold reality — and with brilliant prescience — del Rey describes an atomic accident which threatens the planet, an uncanny and accurate prefiguring of the crises of Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. Indisputably the major work of a science fiction Grand Master, Nerves retains a frightening immediacy and contemporaneity.

Lester del Rey (1915–1993) was an important writer and equally important editor of science fiction. His first story, Helen O’Loy, published in Astounding in 1938 about a female android who seduced her inventor continues to be anthologized. Lester del Rey went on to become one of the significant contributors to John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction in the WW II years, which have come to be called the “Golden Age”. Nerves, the 25,000 word novella which was expanded 15 years later into the novel of the same title is considered the high point of his work although The Runaway Robot and other juveniles written for Winston in the early 1950’s were influential, as was his apostosaic novelette, FOR I AM A JEALOUS PEOPLE (1956) which depicted God as an enemy of humanity. An experienced magazine editor (SPACE SCiENCE FICTION) and critic (for ANALOG in the 1970’), del Rey became with his wife, Judy-Lynn, publisher of Ballantine’s newly-established del Rey science fiction and fantasy subsidiary, Del Rey Books. Under their guidance Del Rey became the most successful publisher of science fiction and fantasy in their history, del Rey publishing the first works of Terry Brooks and other significant writers. Awarded the SFFWA Grand Master trophy (one of only 17 to date) in 1991, Lester del Rey died in 1993 in New York City, shortly after his retirement.

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