C.L. Moore

With her first works published in Weird Tales in the early 1930s, Catherine Lucille Moore was one of the first female authors to publish professional in science fiction or fantasy, paving the way for further women in genre.  

Moore achieved instant fame with her first story, Shambleau, a femme fatale tale set on Mars that appeared in Weird Tales in 1933. Over the following decade, she continued to chronicle the exploits of the story's hero, Northwest Smith, often in collaboration with others, most notably author Henry Kuttner, whom she married in 1940. Moore’s other significant early series centered around the female warrior Jirel of Joiry, who first appeared in the story Black God’s Kiss in Weird Tales, October 1934.

Moore helped usher in the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” when she became part of the stable of writers working for John W. Campbell Jr.'s Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Stories such as Clash by Night (1943), which was set in cities beneath the seas of Venus after nuclear war has destroyed life on Earth, and No Woman Born (1944) about a badly burned dancer who is given a robot body and becomes a cyborg, are Moore's classics from this time.