Gateway Essentials: Katherine MacLean

Katherine MacLean was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in 1935. She received a BA in economics from Barnard College, New York, and did postgraduate study in psychology. Much of her work has taken the form of  short stories, and most – including her first, “Defense Mechanism” in October 1949 – appeared in Astounding Science Fiction.

Over the decades MacLean has continued to write whilst being employed in a wide variety of jobs – as book reviewer, economic graphanalyst, editor, EKG technician, food analyst, laboratory technician in penicillin research, nurse’s aide, office manager and payroll bookkeeper, photographer and pollster, to name a few. She won the Nebula Award in 1972 for her novella ‘The Missing Man’, which appeared in the March 1971 issue of Analog, and was shortlisted in 1972 for her novel Missing Man, expanded from that novella.

It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that Missing Man is the novel weve selected as a Gateway Essential title:

You can find more of Katherine MacLean’s work via her Author page on the Gateway website and read about her in her entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.