Alice Eleanor Jones

Born in Philadelphia on March 30, 1916, she studied at the University of Pennsylvania, earning her bachelor's degree in 1936 and later a Ph.D. in English. She wrote under the name Alice Eleanor Jones, though some sources note that her legal surname later became Nearing.

Her science fiction career was brief but memorable. In 1955 she published a handful of stories, including Life, Incorporated, Created He Them, and The Happy Clown, works that have since been praised for blending domestic life, satire, and postwar anxiety in ways that still feel fresh.

Outside genre fiction, she had a much longer career as a journalist and magazine writer, contributing fiction and nonfiction to publications such as Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, American Girl, and Seventeen. She died on November 6, 1981, but her rediscovered stories have brought her back into view for modern readers of classic speculative fiction.