author
Lu Kella
A little-known pulp-era science fiction writer, remembered today for sharp, energetic stories that turned gender roles and future societies inside out. The surviving record is slim, which gives the work an extra air of mystery.
1 Audiobook
Image of Splendor
by Lu Kella
About the author
Lu Kella is a very obscure science fiction author whose work survives more clearly than the biographical details of the person behind the name. Publicly accessible catalog and ebook records confirm at least one novel, Image of Splendor, and also point to The Dreamers as another story still in circulation.
Image of Splendor first appeared in Planet Stories in Summer 1955, placing Lu Kella in the world of mid-century magazine science fiction. The novel is a fast-moving pulp adventure with a social twist, imagining a future shaped by sharp reversals in gender expectations and power.
Because so little reliable personal information is available, Lu Kella remains one of those authors known mainly through the stories themselves. For readers of vintage science fiction, that can be part of the appeal: the work opens a small window onto the imaginative, provocative side of 1950s genre magazines.