The Remarkable Life of Judy-Lynn Del Rey

Do you know why Del Rey imprint is named Del Rey? It’s an interesting story.

On May 25, 1977 Star Wars was released and altered the cultural landscape forever. It flung the doors and revealed a glittering cosmos, and suddenly science fiction wasn’t just a little genre hiding in a corner. Don’t get me wrong, Star Trek was already a thing, but this wasn’t people in pristine uniforms contemplating the ethics of conversing with alien species. This was space magic and high stakes set in a gritty universe, where smart people shot first. Children learned what an android was, adults imagined themselves as Jedi knights, and the world’s love affair with space opera began. It was a watershed moment.

Few people realize it now, but prior to its release, Star Wars was this odd side project, a B movie, and most people didn’t think it would amount to much. Although the film had its early champions like Spielberg and Alan Ladd, Jr., then-president of 20th Century Fox, the board of the studio dismissed the film. Even Lucas himself thought it would fail. In fact, his wife cried when she saw it, and the two of them went to Hawaii on vacation during the premiere. He learned of the film’s success because Ladd called him and told him to turn on the TV, where Walter Cronkite did a feature on it, complete with footage of massive lines of moviegoers that stretched around the block.

But our story doesn’t start in 1977. It starts a year earlier, when the novelization of Star Wars, credited to Lucas and ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster, landed on the desk of an editor at Ballantine Books. Her name was Judy-Lynn del Rey.

Judy-Lynn del Rey started her career as an editorial assistant at Galaxy, one of the most prominent science fiction magazine of 1960s. She rose through the editorial ranks to the position of the managing editor, and eventually Ballantine Books poached her in 1973. Ballantine Books, in turn, was bought by Random House, and Judy-Lynn found herself in the position of a senior editor.

One of her first decisions was highly controversial. Every publishing imprint values its top earners. Among Ballantine authors, one of such bestselling writer was John Norman. Even in 1970s, Norman was a highly divisive figure. A philosopher professor turned writer, he created a fictional world of barbarians that mostly focused on women being enslaved, abused, and treated like property. It sold but it was also vile. Judy-Lynn cut him loose. His work didn’t align with the direction she saw the imprint going.

Imagine, you’ve become the senior editor, as a result of a new merger, and the first thing you do is let go of your cash cow. The pressure to deliver must’ve been immense.

It’s 1976. By now Judy-Lynn followed that opening act with Star Trek Log series, a 10 novel series that was based on Star Trek: The Animated Series, and it is doing well. Judy-Lynn finds the novelization of Star Wars submitted to her, reads it, and realizes it will be a hit. Not only does she buy it, she makes its own sub-imprint for it. She commissions Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who did the conceptual art for Star Wars, to do the cover. She pushes the book.

It’s February 1977, three months before the premier, and Star Wars the book has sold out its initial 500,000 unit print run. In the next three month, it would continue to sell like hotcakes, moving over 4 million copies before the film ever saw the light of day. So when STAR WARS blasted onto the scene with a triumphant orchestral fanfare, the foundation of its success was already laid out.

Judy-Lynn del Rey went on to spearhead her own imprint, Del Rey Books. She and her husband, Lester del Rey, developed the fantasy line that brought us some of the most foundational works of the last century. Below is the small selection of her accomplishments:

• She relaunched Princess Bride that was struggling so much, it was about to go out of print. The new edition had such a premium feel that the book rebounded. Without her, there would never be a movie.
• She brought us Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara and Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
• She published Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy
• She published the Dragons of Pern. Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon became the first science fiction novel ever to hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
• Under her guidance, Del Rey became so successful, that it produced 65 bestsellers between years of 1970-1990, which was more than every other SF/F publisher combined. The dominance of the imprint was so apparent, the competitors referred to their titles as Death Rey Books.

And yet, despite this amazing record, Judy-Lynn wasn’t recognized by her peers for her achievements during her life. The professional side of SF/F can be extremely cliquish and standoffish, and they looked down on her because of her commercial success. She left too soon, dying in 1986 from a sudden brain hemorrhage, and when the community attempted to honor her posthumously with a Hugo, her husband refused to accept it, because it was “too late.”

Here she is, accepting a rare award.

If you would like to know more, you can watch a short documentary of her life here, on PBS. Judy-Lynn del Rey was living with dwarfism, and the documentary features actors with dwarfism for the voice-over roles.