Lester Del Rey at Minicon 8 (1974)

Lester Del Rey (1915-1993) was born today, June 2.

Most people today would think of Del Rey books if they recognized the name Del Rey at all.

But Lester Del Rey did more than have his name as an imprint of Ballantine Books. One must ask the question why he would be selected to have his name on a imprint in the first place.

In reality, it wasn’t jsut Lester who founded the imprint. He shared that honor with his wife Judy-Lynn Del Rey.

I don’t remember when I first became aware of him as a writer. I do recall the first book of his I read. It was the science fiction book club edition of The Early Del Rey. This was a single volume. In mass market paperbacks, it was published in two volumes.

Much of what I’m going to write will be based on that.

But first I want to make a few remarks about “The Early”, if you can even call it a series. There were four volumes featuring Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson, and Lester Del Rey. The Pohl and Williamson volumes were thin, while the Asimov and Del Rey volumes were thick. They had two volume paperback editions. As far as I know, there were no paperback editions for Williamson and Pohl. Of the four, Williamson didn’t get an book club edition.

The format was for the authors to write biographical material describing how they came to be writers and discuss their early stories. Stories that had been reprinted in a collection of the author or were novel length weren’t included but were mentioned.

There was also a book call The Early Long, but that was a subtitle. I don’t think it was part of this series, since I don’t think it was published by Doubleday. If there were any other volumes in this series, I’m not aware of it.

Del Rey relates a familiar tale, told by many writers. He was disgusted by a story he read in one of the pulps and told his girlfriend of the time that. She challenged him to do so. My copy of the book is in a box somewhere, so I can’t verify that my memory is correct, but he took up the challenge and sold “The Faithful” to John W. Campbell, Jr., who published it in the April 1938 issue of Astounding.

The Early Del Rey documents Lester Del Rey’s writng up until 1951. It included a number of excellent stories. Some were urban fantasy, although not of the sexy kind that goes under that heading today. Many of his stories were published in Unknown/Unknown Worlds.

My favorite story from that volume was “My Name is Legion”. It’s about a scientist who devises a punishment for Hitler that is definitely something he deserves.

Many of them have been reprinted in other anthologies or in War and Space or Robots and Magic, the two large retrospectives published by NESFA Press.

I bought The Best of Lester Del Rey when the Science Fiction Book Club offered it a few months later. Then I began hunting for his other collections and novels in used book stores. This was years before you could go online and use a search engine.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Del Rey. He passed away about the time I started attending conventions. He was known for his arguments. I have heard that one time he was winning an argument so he switched sides to keep the argument going.

He was a frequent guest on an all night radio show in New York. I think the host was went by the moniker of Long John Nebel if my  memory serves. Lester also used to pass out business cards that simply said: Lester Del Rey, Expert.

At Del Rey books, my understanding is that Judy-Lynn handled the science fiction and Lester handled the fantasy. She edited the Stellar series of original anthologies.

I heard someone on a panel once say that they had seen a list of things Lester looked for when he wanted to establish. The perosn, and I don’t remember who this person was, said two things about the list. It would produce a successful fantasy line. And he disagreed with everything on the list.

I have looked for years and have never seen a copy of that list. If anyone knows the list I’m talking about and can point me to a copy, I would greatly appreciate it.

Two of the fantasy series that Lester bought were Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books and Terry Brooks Shannara series. He also published Kurtz Deryni books, although Lin Carter had bought the first three for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line.

I still look for Del Rey paperbacks from the 1970s when I’m browsing used bookstores. Not everything the Del Reys published was to my  taste, but like early imprinting on ducklings, they made an indelible impression on me.