Julian Clare May (July 10, 1931 – October 17, 2017) was an American science fiction, fantasy, horror, science and children's writer who also used several literary pseudonyms. She is best known for her Saga of Pliocene Exile (Saga of the Exiles in the United Kingdom) and Galactic Milieu Series books.

Background and early career

Julian May grew up in Elmwood Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the oldest of four children. Her parents were Matthew M. May (originally Majewski) and Julia Feilen May; as a child she was known as Judy May. She became involved in science fiction fandom in her late teens, publishing the fanzine Interim Newsletter for a time. She sold her first professional fiction, a short story called "Dune Roller", in 1950 to John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction; it appeared in 1951, under the name "J. C. May", accompanied by her original illustrations. She met her future husband, Ted Dikty, later that year at a convention in Ohio. May chaired the Tenth World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1952, becoming the first woman to chair a worldcon, and married Dikty in January, 1953. After selling one more short story, "Star of Wonder" (to Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1953), she dropped out of the science fiction field for several years.

Period outside science fiction

May and Dikty had three children, the last of whom was born in 1958. Starting in 1954, May wrote thousands of science encyclopedia articles for Consolidated Book Publishers; after finishing that project, she wrote similar articles for two other encyclopedia publishers. In 1957 she and her husband founded a production and editorial service for small publishers, Publication Associates; the most notable projects May wrote and edited during this period include two episodes of the Buck Rogers comic strip and a new Catholic catechism for Franciscan Herald Press, a publisher associated with the Order of Friars Minor. Between 1956 and 1981 she wrote more than 250 books for children and young adults, most non-fiction, under her own name and a variety of pseudonyms; the subjects included science, history, and short biographies of modern-day celebrities such as athletes and musical groups. "Dune Roller" was filmed in 1972 as The Cremators, in which she was credited as "Judy Dikty".

Return to science fiction

Having moved to Oregon in the early 1970s, May began to get reacquainted with the world of fandom; in 1976, she attended Westercon 29 in Los Angeles, her first science-fiction convention in many years. She made an elaborate diamond-encrusted "space suit" for the convention's costume party, which started her thinking about what sort of character would wear such a suit. She soon began accumulating a folder of ideas for what would become the Galactic Milieu Series, and in 1978 she began writing what would become the Saga of Pliocene Exile. The first book in that series, The Many-Colored Land, was published in 1981 by Houghton Mifflin. In 1987, she continued the series with Intervention, finally followed in 1992 (with a change in publisher) by the Galactic Milieu Series: Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask and Magnificat. In August 2015, she was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention.

Bibliography (in alphabetical order of surname used as author)

Non-fiction under the name Lee N. Falconer

Adult fiction under the name Julian May

The Saga of Pliocene Exile

The Galactic Milieu Series

Trillium

The Trillium series began as a three-way collaboration. After the first book, each of the three authors continued the series on her own.

The Rampart Worlds

Boreal Moon

Juvenile fiction under the name Julian May

These books were written for Popular Mechanics Press in the late 1950s.

Works under the name Ian Thorne

Biographies

Citations

General sources