Annie, Grannie. Grannie Annie was created by Carl Jacobi (Stephen Benedict) and appeared in “Doctor Universe” (Planet Stories, Fall 1944) and “Double Trouble” (Planet Stories, Spring 1945). Annabella C. Flowers is the well-liked writer of a long line of very popular science fiction novels. She enjoys traveling around the solar system doing research for her books, but more than research she enjoys stirring up trouble, especially when she can stop criminals who try to use the plots of her books to commit crimes. She is “a little wisp of a woman clad in a voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,” hence the name “Grannie Annie.” She is spunky and fearless, and is helped by spacer layabout Billy-Boy.
The Grannie Annie stories are fun–Jacobi was a skilled writer, albeit one whose work tended more towards hardboiled crime–and Annie herself is unique in being a Miss Marple-like figure in a science fiction environment. Too, heroines as protagonists were more common in the adventure and mystery and mainstream pulps than in the science fiction pulps–the sf pulps were about as sexist as you’ve heard–and so Annie is unusual not just in her age but also just by virtue of being a female lead in a sf pulp.