Katherine MacLean (1925- ) Katherine Anne MacLean is an American science fiction writer best known for her short stories of the 1950s. Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, MacLean received a BA in economics from Barnard College, New York, and did postgraduate study in psychology. Her first published short story was "Defense Mechanism", which appeared in Astounding in October 1949. Over the decades MacLean has continued to write whilst being employed in a wide variety of jobs - as book reviewer, economic graphanalyst, editor, EKG technician, food analyst, laboratory technician in penicillin research, nurse's aide, office manager and payroll bookkeeper, photographer and pollster, to name a few. Much of her later work features psi powers as a central theme.