Leslie Francis Stone (1905–1991) was a US writer of science fiction who began publishing fiction as early as 1920 but published her first science fiction tale, “Men with Wings,” for Air Wonder Stories, in only 1929; she remained active in the field for the next decade, publishing about twenty stories. Stone’s first name, which she was given at birth, caused her to be mentioned by Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, and others as one of the early women science fiction writers who disguised their sex because of pulp science fiction’s male readership; she was, in fact, always known and recognized as female. Next to C. L. Moore, she was considered one of the most successful female writers of that time. Her last science fiction story, “Gravity Off,” was published in a 1940 issue of Future Fiction.
Her two science fiction books are When the Sun Went Out (1929), a far-future tale that appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s Science Fiction Series, and the Void sequence, comprising Out of the Void (Amazing Stories, 1929), a space opera set partially on the ninth planet Abrui, inhabited by various alien races, some of them telepaths, and featuring adventures in a planetary romance style; and a novel-length sequel, Across the Void (Amazing Stories, April–June 1931), was a fantastic-voyage tale, ending in the Alpha Centauri system.
Stone remains best known for “The Conquest of Gola” (Wonder Stories, 1931), in which the women who govern “Gola” (Venus) spurn the capitalist lures of intruding men from “Detaxal” (Earth), and later dismiss the Earthlings’ attempts at actual invasion; the feminism of the story is an early and explicit example in pulp science fiction. The story is particularly interesting because it is told from the point of view of the alien—and an alien completely different physically from human beings. It is thus also one of the earliest stories to provide a truly unique and nonhumanoid view of intelligent alien life-forms.