Talk:Katherine MacLean

Re: Major removal from article

Below is a rather large chunk of text purportedly written by the subject of the article itself. It was previously in the main article, but I've moved it here. Although there are no official policies specifically addressing the issue, there is a general feeling amongst many Wikipedians that an article's subject should refrain from editing their own article themselves, because it is almost guaranteed to be POV. (For an example of where this bias has come into play in the past, check out the article on Jimbo Wales.) It is also completely at odds with with the Manual of Style, and it could also be argued that it violates guidelines pertaining to verifiability, original research and what Wikipedia is not. This type of material truely belongs on the talk page, so here is where I'm putting it. -- Antepenultimate 20:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Katherine MacLean speaks (1/1/06)

Additional briefs on MacLean stories of the 1950s, added New Years night 2006 by Katherine MacLean

"And Be Merry" (Eat Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow We Die)

A lab biologist, female, takes advantage of her husband going off on an archeology trip, to use the privacy to experiment on herself for rejuvenation by a severe and dangerous method. Succeeding, she contemplates immortality, finding that safety from accidental death has become so valuable to her that she becomes a coward, cowering from all possible risk, seeing shelter in a hospital, and is only rescued from mindless panic by her husband finding her, realizing the source of her terror and rescuing her from immortality by claiming she has a slow growing tumor in an unreachable part of the body.

Finding she has no chance of evading eventual death, she immediately loses her obsession with safety, becomes interested in biochemistry again, and invents a new theory. (New at the time.) Mutation from background radiation does not just strike the sperm and egg making chromosome changes in the embryo and mutated progeny, it also strikes the chromosomes in each cell of any living creature, damages and mutates them also, and produces cancer. This cannot be prevented. She called it "somatic mutation" and used the new concept of body deterioration by slow radiation damage (age) to underpin her rediscovered recklessness, and be happy.

Even now most biotechs have not fully accepted the implication that every cell in the body can generate an entire copy of the person. But perhaps a copy will be changed and mutated for the worse by exposure to ambiant radiation and other mutagens. Perhaps a cell needs to generate a placenta around it to develop inro an entire body. Something like that is holding up the biochemists from successfully making copies of individuals from body or blood cells. Not for long!

I wrote three more stories with novel genetic ideas before 1953. Some have not been followed up by scientists yet.

In the 1930s and 1940s, scientists and boys planning to be scientists read Astounding (Analog) with close attention to the hottest, most promising ideas and took them up as soon as they could get funded lab space. They did not openly express their gratitude to science fiction, because the funding depended on keeping claim to have originated the ideas they had put so much work into testing and verifying.

A few years after the publication of my first written story, "Incommunicado," written 1947 and published 1950, I was taking a break from two weeks of typing, walking down Fifth Avenue, noticing vaguely that there were no coffee shops, and the storefronts were closed and it was dark. Passed a white granite entrance with signs announcing a convention of electronic engineers and turned in, hoping to find coffee and a demo of hi-fi advances, and found a deserted desk, with signs announcing that one must sign in with name, industry and invitation number. A bit unwelcoming to a stray writer with no credentials in heavily funded industrial research and no formal invitation. Being stubborn and not wanting to return to the typewriter so early, I hastily looked around for a door to a lecture hall where I could sneak some listening time and get a line on current research, and be out of sight before the desk was reoccupied by the guardian of the gate.

Too late, a man built like a fullback in a business suit was bearing down on me. "I see you don't have your badge. May I have your name? I'll look it up in the registry." He was huge, like John Campbell, the editor of Astounding. Just as intense and tight and unrelaxed. Wearing a formal suit. Behind him, chatting to each other and drifiting closer were two or three other impressive ambitious tense men in business suits. Definitely not the harmless willowy professor type. Industrial researchers were apparently built like Vikings and aggressive.

I became aware I had not showered or even combed my hair since god knows when. I felt sticky, but I bluffed it out, extended my sweaty hand with matching vigor and said. "Katherine MacLean, I came in because I am interested in--"

He interrupted. "Katherine MacLean! Are you that Katherine MacLean?" He gripped my hand and hung on. Who was that Katherine Maclean? Was I being mistaken for someone else?

"Are you the Katherine MacLean who wrote 'Incommunicado'?"

Speechless with relief, I nodded. I would not be arrested or thrown out if they would accept me as a science fiction writer. He kept his grip on my hand and turned around and bellowed to his group of chatting friends, "Guess who I've got here. The little woman who wrote 'Incommunicado'!"

He turned me around and wanted me to shake my sticky hand with all of them. I wiped it on my jacket and stepped back. My hair felt sticky. My face felt sticky. I was ashamed of being so disheveled and unprepared to discuss electronic theory. While they were suggesting coffee and sitting down to talk, I explained I had a hot story on the typewriter and had to get back to it before I lost the train of ideas and escaped. I had not been aware that my playing with communication ideas would attract the attention of prestigious Bell Telephone researchers. I had left radio and wavelength theory to my Dad as one of his hobbies and learned early that I could get a nasty shock from playing with his wiring. I could not account for their enthusiasm. I went back to the typewriter and lost myself in the story again.

The point is, that scientists not only read Astounding-Analog, they were fans of the writers and understood all the Ideas, even the obscure Ideas that were merely hinted at.

Signed.......

Katherine MacLean

It would be a shame to lose this entirely.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know exactly who was doing what, when, why, but the material that was removed was replaced by "Pepso". Not having checked here first, I just edited it down ... to avoid copyright infringement, if nothing else. It's not just that someone with a conflict-of-interest was perhaps adding it, it's that the language and material is unencyclopedic, and especially that, being an extended passage that effectively covers a whole topic, it's a copyright violation. Leptus Froggi (talk) 16:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

With more investigation, and intending to expand this article and post new articles, I'm discovering this really a mess. Editors "Pepso" and "Pepso2" are apparently the same person. (Both have a huge number of posted images removed because it didn't meet fair use.) This material, which I just removed, is copyrighted in 2005-6 by the Thompson Corporation:

"Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, MacLean concentrated on mathematics and science in high school. At the time her earliest stories were being published in 1949-50, she received a B.A. in economics from Barnard College (1950), followed by postgraduate studies in psychology at various universities. Her 1951 marriage to Charles Dye ended in divorce a year later, but during that time, one of her stories was published under Dye's name. She married fantasy writer David Mason (1924-1974) in 1956. Their son, Christopher Dennis Mason, was born in 1957, and they divorced in 1962.

−MacLean taught literature at the University of Maine and creative writing at the Free University of Portland. Over decades, she has continued to write while employed in a variety of jobs—as book reviewer, economic graphanalyst, editor, EKG technician, food analyst, laboratory technician in penicillin research, nurse's aide, office manager, payroll bookkeeper, photographer, pollster, public relations, publicist and store detective.

Without payment, to BookRags it's not possible to see how much of the rest of the Wiki article is copyrighted, etc. This is really a substantial misuse of Wikipedia, one way or the other. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/katherine-maclean-dlb/ Leptus Froggi (talk) 06:34, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

References

Kay MacLean

Wasn't "And Be Merry" ascribed to Kay MacLean, at least once? I think a Groff Conklin collection. If so, we should say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:03, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It's twelve years later, but... the only Groff Conklin anthology that has "And Be Merry..." in its contents is Omnibus of Science Fiction (according to ISFDB, see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?24853), and there's no note about misnaming the author. In any event, a typo or copyedit error is not the same as a pseudonym, assuming that's what you're aiming for. John Gamble (talk) 00:36, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Kate-MacLean.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:06, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Charles Dye

In the introduction to her story in a recent collection, Rediscovery, it is stated "Like a number of female writers, she published some of her work under a male pseudonym. In her case, it was Charles Dye, the name of her first husband". This article mentions that she published under his name.

Project Gutenberg lists Charles Dye as a pseudonym but also has two stories listed just by him - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/45153 - one of those was included in Maclean's second collection.

Was Dye also a writer ? Or were all the works publiished under his name actually by her ? -- Beardo (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Biography

http://womensf.loa.org/katherine-maclean/ states - "After a brief first marriage to Charles Dye, she married David Mason, with whom she had a son in 1957." and "In the late 1960s, MacLean moved to Maine to care for her invalid mother, and in 1979 she married fellow science fiction author Carl P. West." -- Beardo (talk) 22:51, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Then by all means, add this to the article since you can cite it. Sir Rhosis (talk) 00:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)