Leslie F. Stone

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Leslie F. Stone and her dog, Funny Face, early 1930s. Photo courtesy Forrest J Ackerman.

(June 8, 1905 – March 21, 1991)

Leslie F. Stone was the penname of Leslie Francis Silberberg (née Rubenstein), who wrote short SF and fantasy for the prozines from 1929–51, including Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories and Weird Tales. She wrote some of the first stories that featured female and black protagonists.

In Before the Golden Age, Isaac Asimov cited one of her stories as an influence:

It was sometime in late 1936, encouraged, I believe, by my pleasure in “The Human Pets of Mars,” that I could finally resist no more. I had grown tired of the endless pages of my fantasy, which was getting nowhere, and I decided to try, for the very first time, science fiction!

Her novel Out of the Void, first published as a serial in Amazing Stories (AugustSeptember 1929), was printed in book form in 1967, and Stone attended some cons after its publication. Her speech at Balticon 8 in 1974 was printed as “Day of the Pulps”, later reprinted in Fantasy Commentator 50 (Fall 1997, p. 100–103, 152).

Despite her gender-neutral first name, she was always acknowledged as a woman.



Person 19051991
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