Diane Detzer (1930-1992) earned her first author’s credit at the age of 9 in The Ridgefield Press (Fall, 1939) in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The article was titled “Follow the Fleet”; while the newspaper and article were not archived, it is likely that she wrote about her father’s Naval commission. In May of 1938, her father, August J. Detzer, had been transferred to sea duty as Radio Officer on the staff of Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews, the latest in a series of Navy postings and transfers that resulted in the family regularly moving to a new home on or near his base posting. Diane and her family would eventually join her father at Pearl Harbor, where he served as Commanding Officer of the USS Dewey until January, 1942. Diane continued to write newspaper articles until the age of 16.
In 1958, Diane’s short story, “The Tomb” was published in Science Fiction Stories. Her first novel, “The Sea People” was published by Avalon Books in 1959 under the pen name Adam Lukens. Over the next four years, Avalon Books published six additional novels by Diane writing under the Adam Lukens name. In 1968, Avalon published Diane’s final two novels, one under her own name, and one under the pen name Jorge de Reyna.
Apart from the journalistic work in her teens, Diane only ever published science fiction stories. The novels generally fall into the genre of Space Opera, and her heroes are generally underdogs who champion the cause of the unfortunate and those rejected by society. All of her published stories share the same overall setting, an Intergalactic League of worlds where a civilized and prosperous veneer conceals societal flaws and failings. Diane’s works have been referenced in several studies on Utopian societies in literature and in a study of influential werewolf fiction.
