Annette McComas (1911–1994)

Annette McComas, née Peltz, met her future husband J. (Jesse) Francis McComas at the University of California-Berkeley, in the 1930s. They were both active in theater, writing, directing, and acting in plays. They married in 1938 and had a son. They became members of the Mañana Literary Society formed by Robert Heinlein, which met at his home near Hollywood to discuss their interests in fantasy and science fiction writing. Other members of the group included L. Ron Hubbard and William Anthony Parker White -- better known by his pen name, Anthony Boucher. In 1949, Annette McComas, her husband, Anthony Boucher, and his wife Phyllis co-founded The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and worked on it together until 1955. Annette and her husband divorced in 1956. She became the editor of a book about the magazine, The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas's The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1949-54, and also wrote a memoir, Kansas and Me: Memories of a Jewish Childhood.