author
Alice Eleanor Jones
1916–1981
A sharp, original voice in mid-century science fiction, she wrote stories that mixed speculative ideas with wit, social insight, and a close eye for everyday life. Her work is often remembered for the way it challenged assumptions about gender, family, and power.
1 Audiobook
The Happy Clown
by Alice Eleanor Jones
About the author
Born in Philadelphia in 1916, Alice Eleanor Jones was an American science fiction writer and journalist. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to earn a PhD in English, bringing a strong literary background to her fiction as well as her nonfiction work.
She is best known for a run of science fiction stories published in the 1950s, many of them appearing in leading magazines of the genre. Readers and critics have continued to value her fiction for its intelligence, humor, and its thoughtful treatment of domestic life, politics, and the pressures placed on women.
Jones later became known as Alice Eleanor Jones Nearing after marriage. Although her time in science fiction was relatively brief, her stories have endured and have been rediscovered by new generations interested in feminist and socially engaged speculative fiction.