As the Vietnam War raged on, science-fiction author and editor Judith Merril — disgusted with the violence hurled against anti-war demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — packed her books and bags and immigrated to Canada.

Already well-respected in the science-fiction writing world, Merril was in her mid-40s when she landed in Toronto in 1969 with an extensive personal collection of books and unpublished manuscripts of science fiction. She settled into Rochdale College, the 18-storey hippie haven at Bloor and Huron Sts. with her grown daughter, Ann Pohl. Merril taught nondegree subjects in exchange for room and board at the free university, which was an experiment in student-run education and co-operative learning.

Merril became known as Rochdale’s resource person in publishing and writing. She founded the Rochdale library, which later was called the Spaced Out Library.

She lived in Rochdale for a year. One year later, in 1970, she would donate the Spaced Out Library and its 5,000 items to the Toronto Public Library.

Merril, who became a Canadian citizen in 1976, was an active member of Toronto’s writing community. She organized and promoted science fiction in Canada and mentored its writers. She founded the Hydra North network of science fiction writers in Toronto and was involved in the Writers’ Union and the Canadian peace movement from the mid-1970s until her death in Toronto in 1997. She was also a commentator on radio and TV shows, including Dr. Who for TVOntario from 1978 to 1981.

Today the Toronto Public Library’s collection of speculative fiction is said to be Canada’s largest, as well as one of the finest in the world. It is Canada’s only collection of its kind that is open to general public as well as the academic community.

Judith Merril was born Judith Josephine Grossman on Jan. 21, 1923, in Boston, Mass. and moved to the Bronx, New York, 13 years later.

She was married three times and had two daughters: Merril Zissman with her first husband, Dan Zissman, and Ann Pohl with her second husband, award-winning science-fiction writer Frederik Pohl. They were married from 1949 to 1953. In 1960, she married Daniel W.P. Sugrue. They separated within two years.

She combined her first name and her eldest daughter’s first name to create her pen name.

Merril was already a celebrated science-fiction writer and editor when she crossed the border. She was one of the few women writers of the genre and her writing was recognized for taking on a women’s perspective and including strong female characters in a male-dominated genre.

She was one of the few women associated with the Futurians, a group of left-leaning, New York City-based young science-fiction enthusiasts, co-founded by Pohl, while he was still in high school, and including Isaac Asimov, James Blish and C.M. Kornbluth.

Merril’s pioneering work in science fiction and fantasy lead to the moniker “The Little Mother of Science Fiction.” She achieved almost overnight success in 1948 with the publication of That Only a Mother. Written from a female perspective, which was unusual at the time, and set during the Third World War, it tells the story of a woman who gives birth to a daughter who is seriously deformed because of radiation poisoning.

The subjects resonated with science fiction fans: the Second World War had ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima just a few years earlier in 1945.

Merril’s most popular fiction included Shadow on the Hearth (1950) and The Tomorrow People (1960). Her short story collections included Daughters of the Earth (1969) and Out of Bounds (1963). Her anthologies included the 12-year science-fiction series SF: The Year’s Best, and Tesseracts, a volume of Canadian science fiction.

By the time Merril arrived in Toronto, she had for the most part stopped writing and was concentrating on editing science-fiction anthologies. Along with teaching at Rochdale College, she helped U.S. draft dodgers settle in Toronto.

“At Rochdale, a lot of people were into science fiction. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I set up a common library space and get someone to tend the shops,’” Merril told Henry Mietkiewicz and Bob Mackowycz in the Star on Nov. 12, 1988. “And that’s what happened. Most of the stuff that was in there initially was mine. A couple of other people did put in smaller amounts, so it ended up being about half science fiction. And that’s where the named Spaced Out Library started.”

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The official opening of Rochdale’s Spaced Out Library in July 1969 was timed to coincide with a festival Merril organized to celebrate Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon.

The library had contained about 10,000 items of science fiction, fantasy and associated non-fiction but about half of the collection went missing or was never returned.

On Aug. 10, 1970, Merril donated her Spaced Out Library collection, by then about 5,000 items, to the Toronto Public Library. Sephora Hosein, the senior department head of the Merril Collection and a lifelong science-fiction fan, believes it was the renowned science-fiction writer’s love for the craft and genre that motivated Merril to donate her collection. In exchange, Merril took on a nonadministrative role as curator of her works and received a small stipend. Hosein says that the library found value in receiving items from the famous writer, as the collection was something rare and unusual for the city to have.

The Spaced Out Library was officially renamed the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in 1990. It includes an extensive collection of pulp magazines, printed on inexpensive paper made from wood pulp in a process invented in the 1880s. This magazine boom gave way to paperback publishing in the 1950s. Many well-known authors started out their careers writing for pulps — which paid less than other markets. These included Judith Merril as well as other science fiction and fantasy writers including Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells.

The Merril Collection was housed in the Toronto Public Library branch at 566 Palmerston Ave. for the first five years then moved to the Boys & Girls House at 40 St. George St., to accommodate the growing collection. It hit 17,000 items.

Since 1995, the Merril Collection has been at 239 College St., on the third floor of the Lillian H. Smith library branch.

Hosein says the items are available to the public but for reference only — they cannot be taken out of the library.

The Merril collection now consists of about 80,000 items, Hosein says. Over the years the library has accepted donations of science fiction books, magazines and periodicals or manuscripts. It has also purchased collections from global vendors, including some from the U.K., Hosein says.

The sci-fi and fantasy reference stacks include hardcover and paperback fiction: first and rare editions, fanzines, comic collections, pulp and later era magazines, research material and TPB (trade paperback) graphic works.

Among authors in the Merril Collection, in addition to Judith Merril, are Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl, as well as donated original manuscripts from Canadian authors such as Phyllis Gottlieb and Guy Gavriel Kay. Some of the more unusual items included are the first edition of Dracula, written in 1897; the only copy in North America of the Codex Serafinianus, a large and beautifully illustrated encyclopedia by Luigi Serafini chronicling a fictitious world written in a made-up language; as well as several first print editions of works by Jules Verne, says Hosein.

Judith Merril died of heart failure in Toronto in Sept. 12, 1997. She was 74 years old.

After her death, her granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary, co-authored Merril’s autobiography from the manuscripts, tapes and instructions her grandmother had left. The book, Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (Between the Lines, 2002), won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.

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