Lilith Lorraine

(March 19, 1894 — November 9, 1967)

Lilith Lorraine, 1943.

Lilith Lorraine was a pseudonym for Mary Maude Dunn Wright, who wrote pulp fiction. She was also a poet, journalist, editor and Fortean. She contributed to the first issue of Cosmology, which some argue was the first fanzine, and belonged to the Golden Gate Scientific Association and the ISA.

Lorraine's feminist utopia novelette, The Brain of the Planet, was published as a chapbook in 1929. Other stories by Lorraine included "Into the 28th Century" (Science Wonder Quarterly, 1929), a time-travel story featuring artificial wombs, eugenics, inhaled nutrition, hovercraft, and a woman as President of the United States in 1955; "The Jovian Jest" (Astounding Stories, 1930), "The Celestial Visitor" (Wonder Stories, 1935), "The Isle of Madness" (Wonder Stories, 1935), "Books Hold That Line" (1935), "Entropy" (Orb, 1952), and "Ancestors" (The Avalonian, 1952).

There may be other stories of hers, under unknown pseudonyms. "Three of my pen-names are masculine," she explained to a reporter in 1965, "and if the editors and publishers knew I was a woman they wouldn't pay me more than half what they do now."

In the 1940s, she published an sf/fantasy fiction and poetry magazine, Different, which she promoted in Walter Gillings’s Fantasy Review and Walter Dunkelberger’s FANEWS[CARD]. A 1948 issue of Fantasy Review announced: “Different, journal of the Avalon World Arts Academy, Rogers, Arkansas, whose founder-director is Lilith Lorraine, one-time contributor to American science-fantasy magazines, will devote its Sept.–Oct ’48 issue to ‘The Conquest of Space.’ Poets and writers throughout the world are invited ‘to divert the minds of our readers from the minor dissensions that lead to war on this little planet by submitting poems and stories on this theme....”

She married Cleveland Lamar Wright in 1912. She had an unusual life.

• “Lilith Lorraine as a Fortean” by Joshua BluBuhs, From an Oblique Angle, February 10, 2015 (archived).
• Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

THE ACOLYTES

The Elder Ones are stirring as the red
Stallions of chaos champ their bits with rage;
And they have sent their messengers ahead
Proud with the knowledge of their alienage.

They walk apart from men, the Acolytes,
By stagnant pools and rotting sepulchers,
Whispering of dark, delirious delights,
As young gods die among their worshippers.

They dream of dim dimensions where the towers
Of Yuggoth pierce the decomposing dome
Of skies where dead stars float like evil flowers
Afloat on tideless seas of poisoned foam.

Black tapers glow on many a ruined shrine,
The patterns coalesce — the good, the bad —
The old familiar stars no longer shine —
And I — and I — am curiously glad.

    —Lilith Lorraine, The Acolyte 14 (Spring 1946)

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Person

1894—1967

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