Zenna Henderson

Zenna Chlarson Henderson (November 1, 1917 – May 11, 1983) was an American elementary school teacher and science fiction and fantasy author.

Henderson was born during 1917 in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Louis Rudolph Chlarson and Emily Vernell Rowley. She received a bachelor of arts in education from Arizona State College during 1940, and taught school, primarily in the Tucson area, mainly first grade. She also taught in a "semi-ghost mining town," at Fort Huachuca, in France and Connecticut, as well as in a Japanese internment camp in Sacaton, Arizona, during World War II. She married Richard Harry Henderson during 1943, but they were divorced seven years later.

Henderson was one of the first female science fiction authors, and never used a male pseudonym. Although her work could not be considered feminist, Henderson was one of the few writers during the 1950s and 1960s writing science fiction from a female perspective. She began reading science fiction at age 12 from magazines such as Astounding Stories, Amazing Stories, and fantasy from Weird Tales.

Henderson was born and baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though she never renounced her membership, after her marriage, she was no longer a churchgoing Latter-day Saint. In the standard reference Contemporary Authors, she listed her religion as Methodist, and according to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Volume 2, she was a member of Catalina United Methodist Church in Tucson. During her later years, she attended an independent charismatic fellowship. In an interview, she stated that she often included religious themes because her readers, particularly her young readers, liked them. She felt it was good to offer a word for "Our Sponsor" in her stories.

Zenna Henderson died of cancer during 1983 in Tucson, Arizona, and was buried in the St. David Cemetery in St. David, Arizona.

Most of her stories emphasize the theme of being different and the dangers therein, exemplified by the phrase "Different is dead". They often feature children or young people. Most are part of her series concerning the history of "The People", humanoid beings from a faraway planet who are forced to emigrate to (among other places) Earth when their home world is destroyed by a natural disaster. Scattered mostly throughout the American Southwest during their landing before 1900, they are set apart by their desire to preserve their home culture, including their religious and spiritual beliefs. Their unusual abilities ("Gifts") include telepathy, telekinesis, prophecy, and healing, which they call the "Signs and Persuasions". The stories describe groups of The People, as well as lonely isolated individuals, most often as they attempt to find communities and remain distinct in a world that does not understand them. This aspect of individuality was a common theme in most of Henderson's writing. New York Times reviewer Basil Davenport described the stories as "haunting". Brian W. Aldiss and David Wingrove noted that "As a sentimental portrait of the alien [the series] out-Simaks Simak."

While it is never explicitly spelled out in the stories, it is mentioned that very early in the history of The People, they had an expansive, colonial phase, and spaceflight had to be Remembered when the destruction of Home was prophesied, so Earth's humanity may well be their distant cousins. This would explain the similarity between the two species.

Beginning with Ararat (1952), Henderson's The People stories appeared in magazines and anthologies, as well as the novelized Pilgrimage: The Book Of The People (1961) and The People: No Different Flesh (1966). Other volumes include The People Collection (1991) and Ingathering: The Complete People Stories (1995).

Unlike the People stories, an angry style can be seen in stories collected in two volumes, The Anything Box and Holding Wonder, which in particular uses elementary teachers as narrators. She mentions mental illness in several tales, including obsessive-compulsive disorder in "Swept and Garnished", and agoraphobia in "Incident After". In "One Of Them", a woman's latent telepathic powers cause her to lose her identity as she unwittingly probes the minds of her co-workers. In "The Believing Child", a young daughter of a migrant worker believes so strongly in an imaginary magic word that its powers come true; she then uses her newfound powers to take revenge on her abusive classmates. And in "You Know What, Teacher?" a young girl confides in her teacher of her father's philandering, and of her mother's plan for revenge.

In the short story "The Closest School", a xenophobic school board president reaches outside himself to admit a gentle child who happens to be a furry, purple 14-eyed alien.

During 1971, Henderson's story "Pottage" was made into an ABC-TV Movie, The People, featuring William Shatner, Kim Darby, and Diane Varsi, and concerning the story of a group of humanoid extraterrestrials who live in an isolated rural community on Earth. It was the directorial debut for John Korty and was produced by his sometime partner Francis Ford Coppola. It has been released on VHS format by Prism Entertainment and DVD format by American Zoetrope.

Henderson's story "Hush" was adapted as an episode of the George A. Romero TV series Tales from the Darkside. The episode first aired in 1988.

Henderson was nominated for a Hugo Award during 1959 for her novelette Captivity. Her books were long out of print until the 1995 release of Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson, published by the New England Science Fiction Association Press.