Roberta Rambelli (1928–1996)

Roberta Rambelli was the main pen name of Jole Rambelli, also known as Roberta Rambelli Pollini from the surname of her husband, Alfredo Pollini. She began her literary career as a translator of American and British science fiction writers, and moved on to writing her own novels and stories, using male pseudonyms as was common for Italian women authors in the 1960s. The best known is Robert Rainbell, but she also used the names John Rainbell, Rocky Docson, Hunk Hanover, Joe C. Karpati, and Igor Latychev, among others. As a pioneering and prolific editor, translator, and writer, she helped to revolutionize the Italian science fiction literary scene in the space of only a few years. She published numerous novels in the series The Novels of the Cosmo, and served as the editor of Galaxy, the Italian edition of the American magazine Galaxy Science Fiction, as well as of Galassia (1962-1965). She created the Science Fiction Book Club, which ran from 1963 to 1974, for the La Tribuna publishing house in Piacenza. She also wrote nonfiction for a series called La bussola (The Compass). Her novels Il Ministero della Felicità (The Ministry of Happiness, 1972), Il libro di Fars (The Book of Fars, 1961), La pietra di Gaunar (The Stone of Gaunar, 1966) and Perché la Terra viva (Why the Earth Lives, 1960) are still popular today.