Lightner, A M
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1904-1988) US author of much popular-science nonfiction under her married name, Alice L Hopf, beginning with Monarch Butterflies (1965), and of Children's SF and Young Adult fiction as Lightner, beginning with "A New Game" for Boys' Life in 1959. After The Pillar and the Flame (1928), a nonfantastic narrative poem, she began to publish sf novels with the undemanding Rock sequence of Space Operas comprising The Rock of Three Planets (1963), The Planet Poachers (1965) and The Space Ark (1968); several other efficient tales followed, though she came to general sf notice only with The Day of the Drones (1969), a Ruined Earth story set half a millennium after a nuclear World War Three. (This was actually her first-written novel; originally written for adults, but revised for publication as a juvenile.) As in Margot Bennett's The Long Way Back (1954), Black Africa has survived; the two young protagonists, sent north on an exploratory mission, discover that the white remnants of UK civilization have evolved into a hive society (see Hive Minds), and at a high cost save one (male) drone, who may (or may not) prove acceptable to the Black society back home; the ending is indeterminate (see Race in SF). Some later tales – like The Thursday Toads (1971), a Genetic Engineering tale involving Immortality – also sustain their more serious burdens. [JC]
Alice Martha Lightner Hopf
born Detroit, Michigan: 14 October 1904
died Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania: 3 February 1988
works
series
Rock
- The Rock of Three Planets (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1963) [Rock: hb/Denny McMains]
- The Planet Poachers (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1965) [Rock: hb/Denny McMains]
- The Space Ark (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1968) [Rock: hb/Denny McMains]
individual titles
- The Pillar and the Flame (New York: Harold Vinal, 1928) [poem: hb/Theodore Bolton]
- Doctor to the Galaxy (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1965) [hb/Irv Docktor]
- The Galactic Troubadours (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1965) [hb/Charles Molina]
- The Space Plague (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1966) [hb/Ken Longtemps]
- The Space Olympics (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1967) [hb/George Ford]
- The Walking Zoo of Darwin Dingle (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1969) [hb/]
- The Day of the Drones (New York: W W Norton and Company, 1969) [hb/Richard Cuffari]
- The Thursday Toads (New York: The McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971) [hb/]
- Star Dog (New York: The McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973) [hb/Donna Ruff]
- Gods or Demons? (New York: Four Winds Press, 1973) [hb/Bruce Waldman]
- The Space Gypsies (New York: The McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974) [hb/]
- Star Circus (New York: E P Dutton, 1977) [hb/Julia Noonan]
links
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