The Wind Between the Worlds

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lester del Rey (1915–1993) was one of the ten or twelve writers most closely associated with John W. Campbell’s “Golden Age” 1940’s Astounding Science Fiction. His most famous story is probably the 1938 robot romance “Helen O’Loy”, his best the 1942 novella “Nerves”, a prescient documentary of catastrophe in a nuclear plant, expanded in the 1950’s to novel length. Del Rey was among the early group of prominent Campbell writers who Horace Gold pursued for Galaxy; “The Wind Between the Worlds” was his second contribution to the magazine. (His first was the time paradox story “It Comes Out Here” which appeared a month earlier, it was a Campbell reject long lost which del Rey reconstructed from memory.)

Del Rey, noted for his humanistic and often sentimental work, published a controversial religious (or anti-religious) novella, “For I Am A Jealous People” in Fred Pohl’s 1956 Star Short Novels and slowly drifted from magazine fiction to juvenile novels (some of them ghosted by Paul Fairman) in the late 50’s. His editorial background (the short-lived Space Science Fiction in 1952 and an earlier term at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency) led him in the mid-seventies to become one of the two founding editors, with his wife Judy-Lynn of Ballantine’s Del Rey Books where he became a powerful editor of some very successful fantasy novels. (Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara was an early discovery.) Judy-Lynn died in 1986 at the age of 43, at the top of her career, Lester slowly drifted into semi- and then full retirement and died a recluse. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1991.