Wow. I didn’t realise that he had all this going on. The guy’s in his 90’s believe it or not. Thanks for the research and post. He comes across a little capricious in this interview, but I found him extremely warm, if very old school with his views on transactional sex in SE Asia, which I vocalised my view on. He was fine with my view also.
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Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey, and she quietly became one of the most powerful people science fiction has ever known.
And almost no one realised it while she was alive.
Born in 1943 with achondroplastic dwarfism, Judy-Lynn grew up in New York City spending hours inside public libraries, devouring science fiction while the world dismissed the genre as disposable entertainment for teenage boys. Where others saw pulp, she saw possibility. She saw futures being imagined before the world was ready to accept them.
She didn’t enter publishing with status or privilege. She started as an office assistant at Galaxy magazine, the most prestigious science fiction publication of the 1960s. Four years later, she was managing editor. Talent, instinct, and fearlessness moved her faster than hierarchy ever could.
In 1973, Ballantine Books hired her. At the time, science fiction and fantasy were publishing afterthoughts. Fantasy was considered commercially toxic unless the author’s name was Tolkien. Judy-Lynn believed that assumption was lazy, small, and wrong.
Her first major decision made that clear. She severed ties with one of Ballantine’s bestselling authors, John Norman, whose Gor novels sold well but were openly misogynistic. It was a financial risk. She took it anyway. She was not interested in building success on values she rejected.
Then came the moment that would quietly change pop culture forever.
In 1976, Judy-Lynn was offered the novelisation rights to a strange, untested space movie by a young director named George Lucas. Hollywood expected it to fail. Publishers passed. Executives shrugged.
Judy-Lynn said yes.
The Star Wars novelisation sold 4.5 million copies before the film even reached cinemas. She later called herself the “Mama of Star Wars,” and she wasn’t exaggerating. She had turned a risky idea into a cultural ignition point.
In 1977, she launched Del Rey Books with her husband Lester handling fantasy while she oversaw everything else. Their first original novel was The Sword of Shannara by an unknown writer named Terry Brooks. It became a phenomenon.
She went on to rescue The Princess Bride, reissuing a forgotten novel with bold design and relentless marketing. Without her intervention, there may never have been a film. She published The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey, the first science fiction novel to ever reach number one on the New York Times bestseller list. She championed Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant trilogy, convincing Ballantine to release all three volumes on the same day from a debut author. Unprecedented.
Competitors called her imprint “Death-Rey Books” because of how completely she dominated the market. Between 1977 and 1990, Del Rey Books placed sixty-five titles on bestseller lists. That was more than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.
Here is the truth.
Entire cultural revolutions can be shaped by people whose names are rarely spoken aloud.
And power does not always announce itself. Sometimes it edits quietly, chooses bravely, and refuses to follow rules that were never fair to begin with.
Despite her influence, Judy-Lynn was never nominated for a Hugo Award while she was alive. The men who praised her privately overlooked her publicly. In October 1985, she suffered a brain hemorrhage. She died four months later at just forty-two.
Only then did the Hugos vote to give her Best Professional Editor. Her husband refused to accept it. He said it came too late, and that Judy-Lynn would have rejected an award given only after her death.
Run Fact: Philip K. Dick called Judy-Lynn del Rey “the greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins,” the editor who shaped Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
The next time you read fantasy, watch Star Wars, or quote The Princess Bride, remember the woman who stood four foot one in an industry that underestimated her at every turn — and changed it anyway.
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From 2012
The Stone Roses have received support from an unlikely source this week – with American wrestler Hulk Hogan declaring his ‘love’ for the recently reformed Manchester band.
“I love the Stone Roses. They’re getting back together, right? That’s cool man, ” he said during an interview with The Sun newspaper. “I used to work out to some of their songs.”
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Hogan played bass in a band before he was famous. Unfortunately he couldn’t be at Spike Island as he was feuding with Earthquake at the time 
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