Philip K. Dick's wife Anne Dick was his muse before becoming a writer in her own right. Her memoir, In Search of Philip K. Dick, delves into what it was like to live with him. He was an amazing writer, and he was no stranger to paranoia. Her story makes me think about the female writers of early science fiction and the challenges they may have faced.

What I discovered was somewhat surprising. Many early female science fiction authors employed male pseudonyms, and they were just as prolific as their male counterparts in the pulp era—who also sometimes employed female pseudonyms. Using a different name was one way to avoid saturating the market with your writing.

This popular misconception, that women weren't part of the early sci-fi landscape, comes from later on when popular science fiction anthologies began to leave out female authors. One work that covers some of the controversial choices made by the editors of these science fiction anthologies is Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee.

In contrast, the anthologies edited by James Tiptree Jr., the nom de plume of Alice B. Sheldon, (who also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon), highlight many of these works by early female science fiction authors. The biography James Tiptree Jr. : the Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon covers the origin of her pseudonym (a branded jar of marmalade at the grocery store, meant to be unassuming) to the end of her life, as does this NPR segment "The Secret Life of Alice B. Sheldon."

Below is a list of influential early science fiction female authors. The list is not comprehensive, but it gives you an idea of the wealth of science fiction work by women there is to explore.

• Andre Norton born Alice Mary Norton, also wrote under the pen names Andrew North and Allen Weston. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, SFWA Grand Master and to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. She worked as a librarian for two decades before becoming an author full time. Find some of her work in our collection here.
   
• C.L. Moore (Catherine Lucille Moore), Judith Merril (Judith Josephine Grossman) and Zenna Henderson (Zena Chlarson) were all pen names that were close to the author's birth names. C.L. Moore's most well-known story, "Shambleau" still encourages discussion in journals available through JSTOR [1,2]. She's one of the many authors discussed in Lisa Yaszek's Sisters of Tomorrow: the First Women of Science Fiction, available from home with an NYPL card as an electronic resource.
   
• Octavia Butler was a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards and the first science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. She didn't write under a psuedonym that I know of, but she learned from or participated in anthologies with other noted writers such as Samuel R. Delaney and Harlan Ellison. Though she wasn't a contemporary of the other early authors listed here, I'm including her because her contributions were so significant. For more about Octavia Butler, check out the Librarian is In podcast, The Parable of the Sower, ep. 177 and Where to Start with Octavia Butler.
   
• A glance at the seven women who have been named Grand Masters of science fiction by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America: Andre Norton (1984) Ursula K. Le Guin (2003) Anne McCaffrey (2005) Connie Willis (2012) C.J. Cherryh (2016) Jane Yolen (2017) Lois McMaster Bujold (2020)
• Some see the role of women in early science fiction starting even earlier, with authors that may be even more unexpected such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Shelley, as discussed in this article from San Diego State University.

To learn more about early female science fiction authors, check out the LOA anthology The Future is Female! Here's an interview by Library of America with the book's author Lisa Yaszek on how we get the history of women in science fiction thoroughly wrong.