Ackerman - a big shot in the biz, known as “Mr. Marilyn was active in these give-and-takes, and her well-written letters caught the eye of literary agent Forrest J. At that time, the magazines had large sections for letters to the editor where people would write in about the articles, and others would write in about the letters - the online comment forums of yore. When she was 18, she married, moved to Texas and picked up her first sci-fi magazine in the grocery store. I was thrilled when Marilyn sent me a fun note at Halloween with a couple of spooky haiku, plus a humble mention of her background as a “sci-fi/horror writer of the 1950s and 1960s,” and as the author of “Time Enough.” So we set up a chat at her senior residence a few weeks ago. The episode aired in 1959, instantly becoming a cult gem, and it still tops lists of Zone favorites.īut most might only know the episode’s “male” author, Lynn Venable - Marilyn’s best chance at disguising her gender and getting published in the midcentury man’s world of sci-fi.Īs an extreme Twilight Zone fan myself (I’m always immersed in the New Year’s Eve/Day marathon that runs on SyFy Channel - this year “Time Enough” airs at 5:30 p.m.

Rod Serling later bought it and reworked it for his television series.

Yes, Marilyn is the author of “Time Enough At Last,” a semi-autobiographical short story and one of several she originally had published in the magazine, “IF: Worlds of Science Fiction,” in 1953. At the signpost up ahead, your next stop - one of the all-time classic episodes of … “The Twilight Zone.”

Then throw in a pair of shattered spectacles, rev up a truckload of irony and travel into another dimension, of sight, of sound, of mind. Trade “somewhere” for the bleak, black-and-white landscape of a man-made apocalypse, everything gone but the book stacks in the public library. If this scenario sounds vaguely familiar, replace Marilyn with Burgess Meredith as the bookish little character, Henry Bemis. A self-described loner with a passion for the printed page, burdened by thick glasses and a lifelong fear of breaking them somewhere, unable to get them repaired. A venerable woman of 85 living in a retirement community in El Cerrito.

Time enough at last lynn venable