Marilyn "Lynn" Venable (born June 1927) is an American writer.

Early life

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Lynn Venable is from New Jersey.[1]

Career

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Venable's short story "Time Enough at Last" (If Magazine 1953)[2] was adapted for television as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1959, starring Burgess Meredith.[3] The story is frequently anthologized[4][5] and discussed by scholars, who note that it was published in the same year as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and includes similar themes about reading and books.[6]

Other stories by Venable include "Homesick" (Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine 1952), "Punishment Fit the Crime" (Other Worlds 1953), "The Missing Room" (Weird Tales 1953), "Doppelganger" (Mystic Magazine 1954), "Parry's Paradox" (Authentic Science Fiction 1955), and "Grove of the Unborn" (Fantastic Universe 1957). "Someone once asked me, 'Why do you write these things? Why do you like to scare yourself?'" she told a reporter in 2012. "I said, 'I don't scare myself. I scare other people.'"[1]

Personal life

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Venable married at 18 and moved to Dallas, Texas.[7] By 1988 she had moved again to Walnut Creek, California.[8]

In 2012, she was living in a retirement community in El Cerrito, California.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Angela Hill, "Give'm Hill: El Cerrito Woman Lends 'Twilight Zone' Inspiration" Mercury News (December 26, 2012).
  2. ^ Lynn Venable, "Time Enough at Last" If Magazine (January 1953).
  3. ^ Don Presnell and Marty McGee, A Critical History of Television’s The Twilight Zone, 1959–1964 (McFarland 2015): 39-41. ISBN 9781476610382
  4. ^ Forrest J. Ackerman and Pam Keesey, eds., Womanthology (Sense of Wonder Press 2003). ISBN 0918736331
  5. ^ Evelyn E. Smith, Ann Walker, Barbara Constant, eds., Women Resurrected: Stories from Women Science Fiction Writers of the 50s (Resurrected Press 2011). ISBN 9781937022068
  6. ^ Mercè Cuenca, "'The Most Dangerous Enemy of Truth and Freedom': 'Fahrenheit 451' and the Enforcement of Innocence in Early Cold War America" in Cynthia Stretch, Cristina Alsina Rísquez, eds., Innocence and Loss: Representations of War and National Identity in the United States (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014): 136-138. ISBN 9781443860697
  7. ^ Eric Leif Davin, Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (Lexington Books 2005): 412. ISBN 9780739158685
  8. ^ "Dear Abby" advice column, Northwest Herald (October 11, 1988): 13. via Newspapers.com 
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