Vale, Rena
Entry updated 11 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1898-1983) US scriptwriter, active in the Communist Party until 1938, later an investigator for the California State Assembly Committee on Un-American Activities, and author who began publishing sf with the novella The Shining City (May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly; 2012 dos), and with her first novel, The Red Court [for subtitle see Checklist] (1952), whose negative analysis of Communism and its planned takeover of America – including the use of fluoridation to tame recalcitrant populations (see Paranoia; Pseudoscience) – ventures into the Near Future. She subsequently restricted herself to novels, like Beyond the Sealed World (1965), based on «Beyond These Walls» (unpublished due to Shasta: Publishers' bankruptcy), a Dystopia set in a Ruined Earth America, where a sterile society locked in Keeps is contrasted with the barbarous culture in the wastelands outside. Taurus Four (1970) combines Satire with Space Opera in a story containing hippies lost on another planet, a sociologist and an alien Invasion. In The Day After Doomsday: A Fantasy of Time Travel (1970) twelve selected survivors of a nuclear Holocaust are lectured by their Secret Master saviours, the Forerunner race from another planet which had bred humans on Earth in the first place. [JC]
see also: Cities; Post-Holocaust.
Rena Marie Vale
born Yavapai County, Arizona Territory: 30 January 1898
died Tucson, Arizona: February 1983
works
- The Red Court: Last Seat of National Government of the United States of America: The Story of the Revolution to Come through Communism (Detroit, Michigan: Nelson Publishing, 1952) [pb/nonpictorial]
- Beyond the Sealed World (New York: Paperback Library, 1965) [a previous version of this title, «Beyond These Walls», was sold to Shasta: Publishers just before that firm's bankruptcy: pb/]
- Taurus Four (New York: Paperback Library, 1970) [pb/]
- The Day After Doomsday: A Fantasy of Time Travel (New York: Paperback Library, 1970) [pb/Richard Powers]
- The House on Rainbow Leap (New York: Pocket Books, 1973) [pb/]
- The Shining City (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2012) [dos: first appeared May 1952 Science Fiction Quarterly: pb/Milton Luros]
links
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