Janet Catherine Johnston
Janet Catherine Johnston is a scientist, engineer, master costume designer and choreographer, dance teacher, singer, martial artist, private pilot, fortune teller, playwrite, and science fiction author and was born missing her left arm. She is a co-author on numerous scientific journal articles on space experiments as well as on geophysics and holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in astrophysics, planetary physics, seismology and civil engineering. She has traveled to 60 countries, including Outer Mongolia, India, South Africa, Egypt, East Germany, Japan and Svalbard and has lived in New York, Virginia, London and Moscow, but always returns to her spooky Plum Island, Massachusetts home. Her hard science fiction stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the oldest, most prestigious science fiction magazine on Earth and has had two one-act comedy science fiction plays produced in Boston (The Devil in the Details and The Corporate Bored). Her novellas, although tenaciously rooted in reality, have a haunting, isolated quality to them in which the setting presents as a dominant character. Her writing has been described as Lovecraft meets Arthur C. Clarke. Her current projects include a screenplay adaptation of her novella “Lune Bleue” and a memior of her travels.
Warwind Cottage–My home by the beckoning sea…
News:
- Invited speaker at World Science Fiction Convention Helsinki 2017
It was my privilege to speak on and moderate the panel on “The Right Stuff” with the astronaut Guest of Honor and the Director of the Vatican Observatory! Hundreds of fans attended the discussion!
- Thriller author Connie Hambley published an article by me on her website. You can find my thoughts on “The Risk of Success” here:
https://cjhambleyblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/risk-of-success-by-janet-cath…
- I was the guest speaker at the MIT Club of Hartford 2018
- November 2023: I was invited to speak at the Rice Public Library in Kittery Maine –“The Top Ten Discoveries and Mysteries in Astrophysics.” Great turnout!
June 2025–MIT 50th Reunion
Was thrilled to participate in my 50th year reunion as MIT alumna class of ’75. As a planning committee member, I gave the eulogy for the deceased members of the class and MC’d the TIM talks.
So hard to believe it was 50 years! But of course not all of us are still around. Here are my comments a the memorial service for the departed alumni:
The Open Heart
Janet Catherine Johnston ‘75
On a will-o-wisp gray Earth
The Lion-heart and the Fearful
Each by Destiny joined
Two sides of a coin
My eyes are sea-gray
Tears, my friend
Like the shadows that hide
Each search for the other side
Challenged by loss
Nurtured by memory
The seasons slide by
Our gardens endure
For, unknown, while they lived
They planted seeds, while they lived
That grow only in
The Open Heart
To the MIT classes
Who are we, who were we, and who will we be?
Time – as every day dies, every morning is a rebirth. A data point in space and memory, for the known and unknown universe–and for us.
For me personally deceased alumni included an ex-husband, three dear friends who who lived in Mc Cormick Hall with me, and my fiancé from an earlier class.
Our classmates with whom we stayed in touch, gracefully aged along with us, while those we waved goodbye to at graduation remain young in our mind’s eye. All the more shocking when we hear they have passed.
And then there are those who have been our close friends, even spouses, with whom we grew into adulthood.
I returned to MIT in 2015. Being here, and working here, brings up ghosts for me. I like to think they are cheering me on in my old age.
And they conjure up memories of Cali-burgers from 20 Chimneys, all-nighters in the Student Center Library, frappes at Pritchett, the interminable hours sitting on the hard wooden chairs in 10-250, 26-100, and 54-100.
The campus has not changed its face so much that we can’t imagine their footsteps along the infinite corridor, or recall the comradery of our friends so many years ago.
Who were we? Those undergraduates who sought out the challenge of MIT went on to excel in amazing careers, with accomplishments in all fields, often morphing into artistic endeavors—music, writing, dance, art, … –and some followed their own unique, imaginative paths, understood by few, or sometimes by no one at all, even themselves.
MIT springboards us into a kind of accelerated living, so at least for those who’ve passed, life was concentrated, and probably interesting.
Whatever they were, and whatever we are, MIT alumni, full of curiosity and imagination, were never dull. Nerdy, and geeky, yes. But dull, no.
But those who are gone, like the passing of great actors, will always be part of that unique stage of our lives, contributing to our daily rebirth and to our memories of
who we were,
forging who we are now,
and providing the backstory of who we will yet be.
Let’s not bury our ghosts, but allow them to be lively and inspiring.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
So, to the deceased alumni of MIT, I say rest in peace, and I hope for all of us who remain, encrusted with their memories–like jewels in an invisible crown–that we all will have many more miles to go–and adventures–and discoveries–and accomplishments—before we sleep.