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The Remarkable Life of Judy-Lynn Del Rey

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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.

Beautiful portrait of Judy-Lynn Del Rey in a light dress holding an award
Judy-Lynn del Rey with First Fandom Hall of Fame Award at St. Louiscon.

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.

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Comments

  1. This is amazing. I had no idea! That documentary is going on my “to watch soon” list. Thank you.

  2. Thank you for this – I love hearing about those whose contributions are great, but who are overlooked. I remember in the 80s and 90s seeing Del Rey books at the book store and automatically deeming it worthwhile and hunting down the first book of the series.

    Have a great Monday!

  3. Thank you for the reminder! I used to go looking for Del Rey books at the book store, because I knew they would be good.

  6. Dragon riders of Pern was one of my first and favorite books, and they are the reason I fell in love with science fiction and fantasy in the seventies. It really saddens me that Judy-Lynn’s accomplishments were ignored until it was too late.

  7. I had no idea she was responsible for so many books that shaped my formative years! What a remarkable person!!

  9. Wow! Thanks for sharing this. Judy-Lynn del Rey was a total rock star to the fantasy/sci fi space. I had no idea! I have read so many of those books. She should have been recognized during her lifetime. The powers that be missed the boat on that one.

  10. I remember purchasing that Star wars novel….I also read all those books mentioned! Thank you for sharing this history….and now I am realizing that Del Rey was my favorite imprint growing up!

    Thank you again.,,

  11. Wow to Judy-Lynn del Rey.

    Thank you for letting us know how Del Rey books were founded. My mom had pretty much all the books mentioned in the post. I’ve read some of them in book form back in the day. Some of the copies were read so much that the spines were cracking.

    Star Wars was panned from the beginning from movie critics. I remember my parents and older siblings talking about this new sci-fi movie that we should go see on a Saturday night to see if the critics were wrong about it. This was in rural northeast Missouri. I was 5 when I saw it. The only scene my mom wouldn’t let me watch was when Luke’s aunt and uncle’s bodies were discovered after the stormtroopers killed them.

    • Funny how the “serious” critics almost always pan the “good stuff”. You’d think they were trying to be “relevant” or “important”. Or something.

    • What Innkeeper deal? I’m not sure what you are referring to, and I’m not aware of any Innkeeper deal being in the works.

      Just to clarify before rumors start, we are not working with Del Rey in any capacity. Del Rey is part of Penguin Random House. We are being published by Tor Publishing group.

  15. What everyone else said. I loved learning about this. Frustrated that she didn’t get her due in her lifetime, but I love the husband telling them, “too late.”

  16. Thank you for remembering her. Those of us who read the ‘books’, and became the geeks, are so happy she did what she did. Many of the books you mentioned played such a big part of my life. Such wonderful memories.

    Amazong woman.

  18. Amazing history. Like so many, I remember looking for DelRey books knowing they’d be good.

    Will look for the documentary. Appreciate you sharing. 😀

  19. Wow this means so much to me. As a teenager in the early 70’s I would crash the Science- fiction conferences at various universities and back then it was a panel of scientists made up of the campus best at one table and at the table across from them would be the authors of fiction all posturng and postulating about whatever topic they were onto.Asimov, Heinlein, Harrison, dozens of others and Del Rey was coming just out of the gate so to speak, I would sit there for hours following arguments and rationalizations at one table after the other. My idea of a really great time 🙂 And there was no dressing up, role play – we were there to meet authors whose work was blowing our little minds and to hear who got their science right, wrong or crazy. I was west coast and somehow never caught a glimpse of her and that is now a new regret because I had all the makings of a groupie and they ( the del Reys)would have fit my bill.

  20. Judy Lynn-Del Rey was an institution. Truly a national treasure. She’s been a hero of mine for decades.

  21. I remember growing up in the 80s and at times you would buy a book because it was published by Del Ray and almost always happy.

    She really shaped SFF in so many ways that are still relevant.

  22. Thank you for this, really interesting.

    Tangentially related – I realize now that I would LOVE a blog post on the the research rabbit holes you fall into, since you seem to do a lot of research for all your fantastic writing projects.

    Random factoids are a favorite of mine, seeing what you’ve discovered would be super fun!

      • I never knew moddable keyboards were interesting until you wrote a blog about them, so I’d be up for another interesting discovery!

      • You could write about the proper way to brush teeth and it would come out interesting and entertaining. BDH would love it and have a discussion about how it relates to them in the comments section. Everything offered to us is loved and appreciated. Things you find interesting enough to share will fascinate us and make us see glimpses into your thought process, which we will cherish.

      • I would as well. I love rabbit holes and random factoids. When you posted the story about the sniper from Finland that inspired a legend or (I think they gave him a scary name) I got chills and went down a rabbit hole myself. I enjoy learning those interesting nuggets!

        Also I love that del Rey ditched someone who wrote about women as cattle. We’ve have enough of that in our history. I could hug her for. That alone. Not to mention all the other amazing things!

      • You made mowing the lawn interesting an funny. I think you could do a fantastic job with this subject.

  23. Thank you so much for this history. I read ALL those books, and probably have a bunch of del ray books in my storage.

  24. I’ve been reading titles from Del Rey Books my whole life without knowing anything about this amazing woman. Thank you for this!

  27. Ah yes, the Gor novels by John Norman. I first saw them browsing my local mega bookstore (Powells, Portland Oregon) and was horrified after looking them over and reading the back of a couple. I was always browsing books then to see what was good and I’d never heard of him before. This was long before we could look up reviews online and I didn’t yet know about Locus magazine in the mid 80s.

    I’ll never forget Del Rey Discoveries and wish it had continued and more of those first time authors they selected for it wrote other books.

    Thank you for this great remembrance.

    • I actually bought and read a few of the Gor novels and in one sense enjoyed them for the world building yet was disgusted by the way women were treated and the sex slave culture and that your worth was based on how well you satisfied the man who owned you.

    • I first encountered the Gor books around the age of 14, picked up cheap second hand for me by a well-meaning relative because the covers looked like fantasy. Figuring out, at that age, how to explain why they made my skin crawl, took some doing. I respect Mrs Del Rey as much for cutting that author loose, as for finding so many others I liked so much better.

  28. This reminds me of DC Fontana (Dorothy Catherine) who was a script writer and story editor on the original Star Trek series. Dorothy used her initials DC to hide the fact she was a female and her work would be dismissed by folks in the film industry which is highly misogynistic.

    • It wasn’t any better in book publishing. There were reasons Alice Mary North wrote as Andre Norton and Catherine Moore as C. L. Moore, among others.

      • I read all of Andre Norton in school and found out that she was a librarian and used Andre Norton as her pen name because no one would take her seriously as a sci fi writer in the day. She was a Legend, one of the greats.

  29. I read the Star Wars book long before I even knew there was a movie coming. Still have my original paperback copy. Thanks for this, it was very interesting!

  30. Ms. Del Rey, a true visionary when it came to science fiction/ fantasy.

    I never understood why the movie critics gave Star Wars a thumb down. I went with my now husband to view its opening at our local theater.
    We both thought it was great at the time.

    • Because they were mostly white males too oblivious to their own biases who were trying so hard to look important, intelligent, and relevant they couldn’t see to remove their cranio-rectal impaction?

      See, I remember those days.

    • There has always been a bias against fantasy and science fiction writing as if it can never be as good as “the great American novel ala The Great Gatsby”. People also look down on comic books and manga and laughed and dismissed them being made into movies or TV series that only uneducated or illiterate people would read and or watch that genre.

      Notice how science fiction movies always won Oscars for Special Effects and the music score but not for anything else.

    • There was good reason for Siskel and Ebert to be a popular pair of movie critics. Siskel actually enjoyed comedies and Ebert had no difficulty with being an unabashed fanboy. My then-husband and I always checked to find out what Siskel and Ebert had to say about a movie, and if they disagreed, we went with Ebert.

  33. I read Anne Mcaffrey’s Dragonrider series as they were published. You named others that I read and treasured. Knew the Del Ray name because of the name, but NEVER heard about the founder.
    What an amazing woman, overcoming not only the roadblocks being a woman in a man’s world but dwarfism as well.
    Thank you for telling us about her!

  34. She and Lester got together back in the early 1960’s. Lester Del Rey always said that Judy Lynn would be the only woman for him. She was an amazing women.

  35. Thank you for sharing the story of an amazing woman who I knew nothing about until now. I loved many of the books mentioned.

  37. A new Del Rey release was always worth checking out. She had an uncanny sixth sense for what would sell, and the track record to make it stick, and the guts to say “no more of your 🐂💩”. She made space for SF and fantasy to stop being a “genre for teenaged boys”.

  38. Really not crying,😭😭😭😭😭.

    Thank you for sharing this. She will not know it, but this woman shaped my life. With the exception of Princess Bride, all of these books are my bookshelves. Mostly in hardback. My DH and I will be watching the PBS show tonight. With handkerchiefs nearby.

  40. Thanks for this , as a great fan of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon books from the start ,never knew about this marvellously insightful woman.

  41. Thank you for lifting up Judy-Lynn and her work to bring Sci-fi and fantasy to the world.

    I was a Del Ray reader. And I’m old enough to remember my high school English teacher recommending both the book and movie Star Wars.

    She was a big, but unknown to me, influence on my reading tastes.

  42. Excellent article. Although I didn’t read the Star Wars books, I read a LOT of the other ones she published. I loved The White Dragon, Ruth was the best.

  43. …. the titles mentioned read like a list of the main influential books I grew up with….. truly an unsung hero

  45. I knew about this. Hanging around serious fans will accomplish that. In fact, I cheered when I heard her husband refused to accept the posthumous Hugo. She should have had one at least a decade earlier.

  47. Wow I had no idea! Thank you for a fascinating post. Seems like I’ve always known the Del Rey name, since I’m a confirmed sci-fi/ fantasy reader, but nothing else about the publishing house.

  48. Thank you for educating us. When I graduated from a combination of Hans Christian Anderson/Grimms and Mills and Boons romances, the White Dragon was one of the first series fantasies that I read. I have replaced Sword of Shannara twice. I still have 3 Star Trek novels.
    Thank you Ms. Del Rey.

  49. Oh my! I did not even realize who I owed on being introduced to so many favorite authors whose ideas and concepts I enjoyed.

  50. I certainly read some of the authors mentioned above, but the Del Rey authors that remain on my shelves are Elizabeth Moon, Barry Hughart, Catherine Wells, and Patricia A. McKillip.

    My family lived in the Washington DC suburbs from the time my dad left active Navy duty in 1961 until he retired 30 years later. I was graduating high school in May 1977. The Washington Post’s review of Star Wars was almost entirely a rave, possibly because reviewer Gary Arnold had also loved American Graffiti. He called it “a new classic in a rousing movie tradition: a space swashbuckler” and noted the various genre sources, inside jokes, and what we now call Easter eggs. Needless to say, we saw it at the first opportunity.

    Thanks for bringing Ms. Del Rey’s story to our attention. Her efforts deserve much more recognition than they’ve had.

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