author
Elisabeth R. Lewis
A largely forgotten voice from 1950s science fiction, this author is best known for a single memorable story that turns an ordinary apartment house into a place of dread. Her work still stands out for its tense mood, sharp setting, and eerie sense that danger can hide in everyday life.
1 Audiobook
Know Thy Neighbor
by Elisabeth R. Lewis
About the author
Very little biographical information about Elisabeth R. Lewis is easy to confirm today, which gives her work an almost mysterious quality of its own. Reliable catalog and archive sources do show that she was a science fiction writer associated with the 1950s magazine era.
Her best-known work is Know Thy Neighbor, a short story published in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1953. Set in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, it blends suspense, horror, and speculative fiction in a way that still feels lively and unsettling.
Because so few confirmed personal details survive in readily available sources, Lewis is remembered mainly through that story rather than through a well-documented public career. Even so, her small surviving body of work has helped keep her name alive among readers interested in overlooked women writers of vintage science fiction.