In publishing, the people who work behind the scenes rarely get their due. Yet for most iconic books, the editor is as vital as the author. Judy-Lenn del Rey was one of those editors.
Over the course of her career, del Rey earned a reputation as a superstar editor among her authors. Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey,” called her the “most brilliant editor I ever encountered,” and Philip K. Dick said she was the “greatest editor since Maxwell Perkins,” the legendary editor of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.A fan and regular attendee at science fiction conventions, she believed science fiction had great potential to be a mainstream category. She worked her way up the publishing ladder, starting with work at the science fiction magazine Galaxy.After moving to Ballantine Books, she was given her own imprint, Del Rey Books. Under her leadership, the imprint became a dominant force in science fiction and fantasy publishing, producing numerous bestsellers and significantly expanding the genres’ readership.Thanks to these efforts, Del Rey Books dominated genre publishing, producing more bestselling titles through 1990 than every other science fiction and fantasy publisher combined.Just some of her successes include: “Star Trek”,“The Princess Bride” and the rights to publish novels based on George Lucas’s then-unreleased movie Star Wars.
In 1986, she was posthumously awarded the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor. Her husband, Lester, refused to accept it, saying that it came too late. Words of Women
I knew of Del Ray the books but had no idea of the history.