Mari Wolf

Mari Wolf (born August 27, 1926) was an American science fiction writer and magazine columnist, born in Laguna Beach, California. She studied mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and later worked at aerospace institutions such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her 1952 story "Robots of the World! Arise!" is regarded as one of the earliest works to use the term "droid" for robots. Her short fiction appeared mostly in If magazine; she also wrote The Golden Frame (1961) and long contributed the fan column "Fandora's Box" to Imagination. Six of her works are held in this collection, including The Very Secret Agent and Homo Inferior. Her stories often explore robots, future societies, and human nature, with bold imagination and a concise style, and hold a modest place among readers of early science fiction magazines.