Jane Rice

{{short description|American novelist}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Jane Dixon Rice

| image =

| alt =

| caption =

| birth_name = Jane Theresa Dixon

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1913|04|30}}

| birth_place = Owensboro, Kentucky

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2003|03|02|1913|04|30}}

| death_place = Greensboro, North Carolina, US

| nationality = American

| children = 1

| spouse = John Thomas Rice

| occupation = Writer

}}

Jane Rice (April 30, 1913 – March 2, 2003){{cite book | title=American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now | url=https://archive.org/details/americanfantasti00stra | url-access=registration | publisher=Library of America | editor=Straub, Peter | editor-link=Peter Straub | year=2009 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/americanfantasti00stra/page/699 699] | chapter=Biographical Notes| isbn=978-1-59853-048-3 }} was an American science fiction and horror writer.

Her fiction debut was with "The Dream" in the July 1940 issue of Unknown, edited by the legendary sf editor John W. Campbell.{{cite book | title=Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction 1926–1965 | publisher=Lexington Books | author=Davin, Eric Leif | year=2006 | isbn=0-7391-1266-X | url=https://archive.org/details/partnersinwonder0000davi| url-access=registration }}{{rp|145, 322}} During the war she published 10 stories in Unknown. Campbell purchased her first and only novel, Lucy, in 1943, and was holding it in inventory for a future issue when Unknown suddenly ceased publication late in 1943. Street & Smith held the manuscript for several years but after the war it vanished from their files, and Rice had failed to preserve a carbon copy. Despite efforts to trace it on the part of scholars and editors it has not been located.{{Fact|date=July 2024}}

Her stories in Unknown were well received. Her slyly sensual werewolf story "The Refugee" from the October 1943 issue was selected by Campbell for his best of anthology From Unknown Worlds (1946){{rp|146}} and it was also anthologized in Rivals of Weird Tales (1990){{rp|402}} and the Library of America's American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now (2009), edited by Peter Straub. "The Idol of the Flies" from the June 1942 issue has also been frequently anthologized; it concerns an evil boy named Pruitt who has been called "one of the most monstrous children in literature".{{cite news | title=Notes & Queries | work=The Guardian | date=September 3, 1990 }}

After the war she wrote for the slicks and women's magazines, including Colliers, Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, and Charm. After a hiatus lasting several years she wrote stories for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in the late 1950s, and in 1966 published the story "The Loolies Are Here", written in collaboration with Ruth Allison under the name Allison Rice in the anthology Orbit 1 (1966), edited by Damon Knight.{{rp|402}}

In the 1980s she resumed writing with a number of atmospheric mystery short stories for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

In 1995 Necronomicon Press published her horror novelette The Sixth Dog as a chapbook.{{rp|402}} She did not live to see the publication of her second book, a collection of her short fiction called The Idol of the Flies and Other Stories, published by Midnight House in 2003 as a limited edition of 500 copies.{{cite web | url=http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2011/03/refugee.html | title=The Refugee: Jane Rice (1913–2003) | publisher=Library of America | work=Story of the Week | date=March 18, 2011 | accessdate=July 28, 2011}}