Harrison, Harry 1925 en 9 28916 Before becoming an editor, Harrison started in the science fiction field as an illustrator, notably with EC Comics' two science fiction comic books, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. A large number of his early short stories were first published under house pseudonyms such as 'Wade Kaempfert'. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, creating the 'Rick Random' character. Harrison is now much better known for his writing, particularly his humorous and satirical science fiction, such as the Stainless Steel Rat series and the novel Bill, the Galactic Hero (which satirises Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers). During the 1950s and 60s he was the main writer of the Flash Gordon newspaper strip. One of his Flash Gordon scripts was serialized in Comics Revue magazine. Harrison drew sketches to help the artist be more scientifically accurate, which the artist largely ignored. Not all of Harrison's writing is comic, though. He has written many stories on serious themes, of which by far the best known is the classic novel about overpopulation and consumption of the world's resources Make Room! Make Room! which was used as a basis for the science fiction film Soylent Green (though the film changed the plot and theme). Harrison for a time was closely identified with Brian Aldiss and the pair collaborated on a series of anthology projects. Harrison and Aldiss did much in the 1970s to raise the standards of criticism in the field. Harrison is a writer of fairly liberal worldview. Harrison's work often hinges around the contrast between the thinking man and the man of force, although the "Thinking Man" often needs ultimately to employ force himself. Source: Wikipedia Dick, Philip K. 1928 1982 en 6 29205 Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in mysticism and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences and addressed the nature of drug use, paranoia and schizophrenia, and mystical experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. "I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards," Dick wrote of these stories. "In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real." In addition to thirty-six novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, many of which appeared in science fiction magazines. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, nine of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly and Minority Report. In 2005, Time Magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith 1874 1936 en 8 25456 Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox." Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out." For example, Chesterton wrote the following: Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as political thinker, cast aspersions on both Liberalism and Conservatism, saying: The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify such a position with Catholicism more and more, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius". Carver, Jeffrey A. 1949 en 3 6302 Jeffrey A. Carver (b.1949) is an American science fiction author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Brown University. He currently lives near Boston, Massachusetts. His novel Eternity's End was a finalist for the 2001 Nebula Awards. Burroughs, Edgar Rice 1875 1950 en 68 218580 Edgar Rice Burroughs (September 1, 1875 – March 19, 1950) was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan, although he also produced works in many genres. Source: Wikipedia Bova, Ben 1932 en 1 1587 Benjamin William Bova (born November 8, 1932) is an American science fiction author and editor. Bova was a technical writer for Project Vanguard and later for Avco Everett in the 1960s when they did research in lasers and fluid dynamics. It was there that he met Arthur R. Kantrowitz later of the Foresight Institute. In 1971 he became editor of Analog Science Fiction after John W. Campbell's death. After leaving Analog, he went on to edit Omni during 1978-1982. In 1974 he wrote the screenplay for an episode of the children's science fiction television series Land of the Lost entitled "The Search". Bova was the science advisor for the failed television series The Starlost, leaving in disgust after the airing of the first episode. His novel The Starcrossed was loosely based on his experiences and featured a thinly veiled characterization of his friend and colleague Harlan Ellison. He dedicated the novel to "Cordwainer Bird", the pen name Harlan Ellison uses when he does not want to be associated with a television or film project. Bova is the President Emeritus of the National Space Society and a past President of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Bova went back to school in the 1980s, earning an M.A. in communications in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1996. Bova has drawn on these meetings and experiences to create fact and fiction writings rich with references to spaceflight, lasers, artificial hearts, nanotechnology, environmentalism, fencing and martial arts, photography and artists. Bova is the author of over a hundred and fifteen books, non-fiction as well as science fiction. In 2000, he was the Author Guest of Honor at the 58th World Science Fiction Convention (Chicon 2000). Hollywood has started to take an interest in Bova's works once again, in addition to his wealth of knowledge about science and what the future may look like. In 2007, he was hired as a consultant by both Stuber/Parent Productions to provide insight into what the world is to look like in the near future for their upcoming film "Repossession Mambo" starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker and by Silver Pictures in which he provided consulting services on the feature adaptation of Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon". Anderson, Poul William 1926 2001 en 4 7290 Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926–July 31, 2001) was an American science fiction author who wrote during a Golden Age of the genre. Poul Anderson also authored several works of fantasy. He received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married the former Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to the science fiction author Greg Bear. He was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. In addition, he was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. He died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Source: Wikipedia Norton, Andre Alice 1912 2005 en 13 36079 Andre Alice Norton (February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005), science fiction and fantasy author (with some works of historical fiction and contemporary fiction), was born Alice Mary Norton in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. She published her first novel in 1934. She was the first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1977, and she won the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the SFWA in 1983. She wrote under the noms de plume Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston. Source: Wikipedia Campbell, John Wood 1910 1971 en 5 9210 John Wood Campbell, Jr. (June 8, 1910 – July 11, 1971) was an important science fiction editor and writer. As a writer he was first influential under his own name as a writer of super-science space opera and then under the name Don A. Stuart, a pseudonym he used for moodier, less pulpish stories. However, Campbell's primary influence on the genre was as the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, a post that he held from late 1937 until his death. In that role he is generally credited with helping to create the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, which is often held to have started with the July 1939 issue of Astounding. Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in science fiction ever, and for the first ten years of his editorship he dominated the field completely." At the time of his sudden and unexpected death after 34 years at the helm of Astounding, however, his quirky personality and occasionally eccentric editorial demands had alienated a number of his most illustrious writers such as Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein to the point that they no longer submitted works to him. Source: Wikipedia Del Rey, Lester 1915 1993 en 5 7484 Lester del Rey (Ramon Felipe Alvarez-del Rey) (June 2, 1915 - May 10, 1993) was an American science fiction author and editor. According to Lawrence Watt-Evans, his birth name was actually Leonard Knapp. Source: Wikipedia Schroeder, Karl 1962 en 1 2709 Karl Schroeder (born September 4, 1962) is a Canadian author. He was born into the Mennonite community in Brandon, Manitoba, and now lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter. An author of far-future science fiction, Schroeder claims to present novel philosophical speculations in his work. One of his concepts, known as "thalience" has gained modest currency in the artificial intelligence and computer networking communities. His novels Ventus (2000), its prequel Lady of Mazes (2005), and the unrelated Permanence (2002) present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality and interstellar travel. Permanence won the Aurora Award in 2003 for Best Novel in English. Schroeder also wrote Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga, and co-wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction with Cory Doctorow. Brotherton, Mike en 1 4225 Brust, Steven 1955 en 1 3235 Steven Karl Zoltán Brust (born November 23, 1955) is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He was a member of the writers' group The Scribblies, which included Emma Bull, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly, Nate Bucklin, Kara Dalkey, and Patricia Wrede, and also belongs to the Pre-Joycean Fellowship. He is best known for his novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos. His novels have been translated into German, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Czech, French and Hebrew, as of 2006. Agyar has two different French translations. Most of his short stories are set in shared universes. These include Emma Bull's and Will Shetterley's Liavek, Robert Asprin's Thieves' World, Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Terri Windling's Borderland Series. Source: Wikipedia Herley, Richard 1950 en 7 20476 My external life has been uneventful and provides scant material for an exciting autobiography. I am of Anglo-Irish extraction and was born in 1950, at Watford in Hertfordshire, England. Except for a spell in Marin County, California, I lived in Hertfordshire until 1993, when increasing urbanization drove me away. My home is now a village in the Hampshire Downs. I was educated at Watford Boys' Grammar School and Sussex University, where my interest in natural history led me to read biology. As my course went on I found I was not really cut out to be a scientist, but I finished it anyway and graduated in 1971. I enjoyed my time in Sussex, where I discovered its coast and downland countryside. From my earliest years, English had been my "best" subject, and shortly before my final exams I decided to try to become a professional writer. The job of the artist - in whichever medium he or she works - is an important one, since, conscientiously practised, it helps us to make sense of ourselves and the world. Authorship is not an easy path to follow. I continue to work at the craft and marvel at its subtlety. I prefer a conventional storytelling framework. This offers the greatest potential for the writer: a reader who wants to know "what happens next" is the most receptive and stands to gain the most of all. Rosenbaum, Benjamin en 2 12624 Benjamin Rosenbaum is an American science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction writer and computer programmer, whose stories have been finalists for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the BSFA award, and the World Fantasy Award. Born in New York but raised in Arlington, Virginia, he received degrees in computer science and religious studies from Brown University. He currently lives in Basel, Switzerland with his wife Esther and children Aviva and Noah. His past software development positions include designing software for the National Science Foundation, designing software for the D.C. city government, and being one of the founders of Digital Addiction (which created the online game Sanctum). His first professionally published story appeared in 2001. His work has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Harper's, Nature, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. It has also appeared on the websites Strange Horizons and Infinite Matrix, and in various year's best anthologies. Source: Wikipedia Silverberg, Robert 1935 en 4 8407 Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. A voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines in his early teenage years. He attended Columbia University, receiving an A.B. in English Literature in 1956, but kept writing science fiction. His first published novel, a children's book called Revolt on Alpha C, appeared in 1955, and in the following year, he won his first Hugo, as "best new writer". For the next four years, by his own count, he wrote a million words a year, for magazines and Ace Doubles. In 1959 the market for science fiction collapsed, and Silverberg turned his ability to write copiously to other fields, from carefully researched historical nonfiction to softcore pornography for Nightstand Books. In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were starting to be more literarily ambitious. Frederik Pohl, then editing three science fiction magazines, offered Silverberg carte blanche in writing for them. Thus inspired, Silverberg returned to writing, paying far more attention to depth of character and social background than he had in the past and mixing in elements of the modernist literature he had studied at Columbia. The books he wrote at this time were widely considered a quantum leap from his earlier work. Perhaps the first book to indicate the new Silverberg was To Open the Sky, a fixup of stories published by Pohl in Galaxy, in which a new religion helps people reach the stars. That was followed by Downward to the Earth, perhaps the first postcolonial science fiction book, a story containing echoes of some material from Joseph Conrad's work, in which the Terran former administrator of an alien world returns after it is set free. Other popularly and critically acclaimed works of that time include To Live Again, in which the personalities of dead people can be transferred to other people; The World Inside, a look at an overpopulated future, which is still as relevant today, as when it was first published; and Dying Inside, a tale of a telepath losing his powers, set in New York City. In 1969 his Nightwings was awarded the Hugo as best novella. He won a Nebula award in 1970, for the short story Passengers, and two the following year (for his novel A Time of Changes and the short story Good News from the Vatican). He won yet another, in 1975, for his novella Born with the Dead. Silverberg was tired after years of high production; he also suffered stresses from a thyroid malfunction and a major house fire. He moved from his native New York to the West Coast in 1972, and he announced his retirement from writing in 1975. In 1980 he returned, however, with Lord Valentine's Castle, a panoramic adventure set on an alien planet, which has become the basis of the Majipoor series — a story cycle set on the vast planet Majipoor, a planet much larger than Earth, inhabited by no less than six types of planetary settlers. Following this release, he has kept writing ever since. In 1986 he received a Nebula for his novella Sailing to Byzantium, in 1990 a Hugo for the novelet Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, and in 2004 he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. In 1970, he was the Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention. Silverberg has been married twice. He married his first wife, Barbara Brown, in 1956. The couple separated in 1976 and divorced in 1986. Silverberg married science fiction author Karen Haber in 1987. The couple resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007, Silverberg was elected president of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. Source: Wikipedia Sheckley, Robert 1928 2005 en 10 9532 Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was an American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical. Sheckley was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001. There are those who were shocked he was not given the Grand Master Award instead. Commented one scholar, "Kingsley Amis' critical overview of Science Fiction named Sheckley as our field's brightest light. But Sheckley was a humorist, and nowadays this is how our Mark Twains are treated." Source: Wikipedia Watts, Peter en 4 41328 Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction author and marine-mammal biologist. His first novel Starfish (2000) introduced Lenie Clarke, a deep-ocean power-station worker physically altered for underwater living and the main character in the sequels: Maelstrom (2001), Behemoth: ß-Max (2004) and Behemoth: Seppuku (2005). The last two volumes comprise one novel, published split into for commercial considerations. Starfish, Maelstrom and Behemoth comprise a trilogy usually referred to as "Rifters" after the modified humans designed to work in deep-ocean environments. His latest book Blindsight, released October 2006, has been described by Charles Stross as "Imagine a neurobiology-obsessed version of Greg Egan writing a first contact with aliens story from the point of view of a zombie posthuman crewman aboard a starship captained by a vampire, with not dying as the boobie prize." Watts has also been the Supervising Writer on the animated science fiction film and television project strange frame. Watts made his first two novels, Behemoth and some short fiction available on his website under Creative Commons licence. Rucker, Rudy 1946 en 2 10763 Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (born March 22, 1946 in Louisville, Kentucky) is an American computer scientist and science fiction author, and is one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (Software and Wetware) both won Philip K. Dick Awards. Rucker is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. (Cf. the family tree of his mother's brother, Rudolf von Bitter.) Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earning a B.A. in mathematics from Swarthmore College, and a Master's and Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University. He taught at various universities, including Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1980-1982, before settling at San José State University in 1986, from which he retired in 2004. A mathematician with serious philosophical interests, he has written The Fourth Dimension; Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension; and Infinity and the Mind. Princeton University Press published new editions of Infinity and the Mind in 1995 and in 2005, both with new prefaces; the first edition is cited with fair frequency in academic literature. As his "own alternative to cyberpunk," Rucker developed a writing style he terms Transrealism. Transrealism, as outlined in his 1983 essay "The Transrealist Manifesto," is science fiction based on the author's own life and immediate perceptions, mixed with fantastic elements that symbolize psychological change. Many of Rucker's novels and short stories apply these ideas. One example of Rucker's Transrealist works is Saucer Wisdom, a novel in which the main character is abducted by aliens. Rucker and his publisher marketed the book, tongue in cheek, as non-fiction. Thanks to a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Rucker taught math at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, 1978-80. His earliest Transrealist novel, White Light, was written in Heidelberg. This Transrealist novel is based on his experiences at the State University of New York at Geneseo, where he taught from 1972 to 1978. Rucker often uses his novels to explore scientific or mathematical ideas; White Light examines the concept of infinity, while the Ware Tetralogy (written from 1982 through 2000) is in part an explanation of the use of natural selection to develop computer software (a subject also developed in his The Hacker and the Ants, written in 1994). His novels also put forward a mystical philosophy that Rucker has summarized in an essay titled, with only a bit of irony, "The Central Teachings of Mysticism" (included in Seek!, 1999). His recent non-fiction book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning Of Life , and How To Be Happy summarizes the various philosophies he's believed over the years and ends with the tentative conclusion that we might profitably view the world as made of computations, with the final remark, "perhaps this universe is perfect." Source: Wikipedia Doctorow, Cory 1971 en 25 309945 Cory Doctorow (born July 17, 1971) is a blogger, journalist and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is in favor of liberalizing copyright laws, and a proponent of the Creative Commons organisation, and uses some of their licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, Disney, and post-scarcity economics. Source: Wikipedia