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Leigh Brackett was an early woman author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as of detective fiction and film scenarios. Her SFF short stories appeared mainly in Astounding, Planet Stories, and Thrilling Wonder Stories. She wrote many planetary romances, and was an influence on authors like Bradbury. After the 1950s, she worked mainly in film and television.
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Zenna Henderson was an American author and schoolteacher. She was an early woman writer of science fiction. Her work often presented aliens as the better selves of humanity.
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Robert Anson Heinlein is one of several authors given the name of Father of Science Fiction, and alongside Asimoc and Clark, called one of the "Big 3" of science fiction authors. His attention to scientific accuracy made him a pioneer of hard scifi specifically. He won four Hugos and seven retro Hugos. While he is criticized for his militarism, his writing explicitly rejected racism. He published under John W. Campbell, Jr. in the Golden Age of SF.
His most famous works are the novels Space Cadet and Starship Troopers and his Future History stories.
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Lyon Sprague De Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. One of John W. Campbell Jr.'s authors in the Golden Age of SF, he turned more to sword and sorcery stories in his later career. He also wrote nonfiction concerning SFF and authors in that genre. He often collaborated with his wife, Catherine Adelaide Crook, though she is not always given formal credit on works she helped to write.
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Nathaniel Schachner was an American chemist, lawyer, and author. He published as Nat Schachner, Chan Corbett, and Walter Glammis, and in his early scifi writing collaborated with Arthur Leo Zagat. His stories were published in Wonder Stories and Astounding; he also wrote one novel, Space Lawyer.
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Isaac Asimov was born in Russia and came to the US at three years old. He was an author of science fiction, popular science, and history, as well as a professor of biochemistry. His first published story appeared in Amazing Stories in 1939, and he was eventually mentored and published by John W. Campbell, Jr.
The influence of his Robot and Foundations series on science fiction as a genre would be difficult to overstate. His Three Laws of Robotics have greatly influenced any consideration of robots since. Asimov published prolifically and won dozens of awards for his work, including Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards. He published in many pulp serials, and eventually gave his name to Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (aka Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine).
His greatness as an author is tarnished by his sexual harassment of women at conventions and elsewhere (Wikipedia - Isaac Asimov).
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Alfred Elton Van Vogt was a Canadian author of metaphysical space opera. His first work, Black Destroyer, was published in Astounding and he was part of Campbell's stable of authors in the Golden Age of SF. He sometimes wrote with his wife, E. Mayne Hull before 1950.
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Hugo Gernsback was born in Luxembourg and emigrated to the US as a young man. His original interests and publications were in electricity. He was founder of Amazing Stories and served as editor from 1926-1929. He also founded Wonder Stories, aka Thrilling Wonder Stories, among other pulp serials. He also contributed stories to his publications. Gernsback had great influence over early science fiction, and the Hugo Awards are named in his honour.
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Wilmar House Shiras was an early woman writer of science fiction. Her first scifi story appears in Astounding in 1948; she continued to write scifi until the 1970s. Her most famous work is Children of the Atom, a novel about radioactively mutated child geniuses that inspired the X-Men.
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Farnsworth Wright was a contributor to Weird Tales, and was its editor for 177 issues from 1924-1939. Under Wright, Weird Tales published stories of lasting interest in horror, scifi, fantasy, and sword and sorcery.
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John W. Campbell, Jr. was one of the most influential editors of science fiction, as well as an author of stories for pulp serials himself. Ha has been called the Father of Science Fiction. He helmed Astounding Science Fiction (aka Astounding Stories, aka Analog) from 1937 until his death. The leader of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Campbell guided authors such as Asimov, Del Rey, Heinlein, Simak, Van Vogt, Kuttner, and Moore; Asimov credits him with at least co-creating his Three Laws of Robotics. Campbell won numerous Hugo Awards and his novella The Thing from Another World was adapted as The Thing (1982).
Campbell's racist views on slavery and segregation, as well as his interest in pseudoscience, led to some alienation from the science fiction authors and community in his later years (Wikipedia).
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Born Edward Hamilton Waldo, Sturgeon was an American writer of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories and novels. Sturgeon was one of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s regular writers. He often included themes of sexual diversity and adolescence in his work. He won Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy. International Fantasy, and Gaylactic Spectrum Awards.
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Henry Kuttner was a American science fiction writer admired for his wit and offbeat humour. He wrote extensively for pulp serials and also wrote many novels. He was an admirer of Lovecraft and contributed to the Cthulu mythos. His best known works were stories about Gallegher, a quirky inventor.
Kuttner wrote under numerous pseudonyms, including Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell, particularly after his marriage to C.L. Moore, when most of their works became joint ventures. He met Moore after writing her a fan letter.
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Catherine Lucille Moore was an influential and much admired writer of fiction for pulp serials; her first story appeared in Weird Tales in 1933. She worked extensively with John W. Campbell, Jr. She had two characters for whom she wrote multiple stores, Northwest Smith and Jirel Of Joiry (a female ruler of a land something like medieval France but with magic).
From 1940 until his death in 1958, she was married to fellow author Henry Kuttner. They wrote for pulp serials together under many pen names, including Lawrence O'Donnell and Lewis Padgett. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls her "the better half of their partnership."
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After "the great Blow-up" a hairless subspecies of human emerges with telepathic powers. One surviving telepath remembers Earth 200 years ago. First published 1953.
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The new human settlemt on Venus is run by Immortals with a human underclass. Sam Reed's father mutilated him as a baby so he would not be recognizable as an Immortal, now he seeks revenge. First published 1954.
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From the back cover: "Four humans from the twentieth century have been hurled forward a billion years in time... where the mutated remnants of humanity are making their final stand against the monstrous creations of a fading world." Originally published in 1943.
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A collection of Kuttner's short fiction on the character Gallagher. Table of contents: The Proud Robot; Gallagher Plus; The World is Mine; Ex Machina; Time Locker. Originally published in pulp serials in 1943, except "Ex Machina", 1948.
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This collection of seletced stories by Simak showcases his ten best works. Table of contents: A Death in the House; Day of Truce; Final Gentleman; Madness from Mars; Shotgun Cure; Small Deer; Sunspot Purge; The Autumn Land; The Sitters; The Thing in the Stone
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City is a series of connected tales, told by dogs around a campfire, in a future when humans have left Earth but given dogs speech and robots to help them live. Originally published serially 1944-1947.
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A collection of seven short stories by Sturgeon. Table of contents: Mr. Costello, Hero; The Touch of Your Hand; Affair with a Green Monkey; A Crime for Llewellyn; It Opens the Sky; A Touch of Strange; The Other Celia.
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From the back cover: 'You are about to enter fantastic worlds beyond your wildest imaginings - worlds of mystery and monsters, terror and ethereal love, sudden death and miraculous life, jet-propelled shivers and humor.
A collection of Sturgeon's short stories. Table of contents: "Essay on Sturgeon" by Groff Conklin; "The Silken-Swift"; "The Professor's Teddy-Bear"; "Bianca's Hands"; "Saucer of Loneliness"; "The World Well Lost"; "It Wasn't Syzygy"; "The Music"; "Scars"; "Fluffy"; "The Sex Opposite"; "Die, Maestro, Die!"; "Cellmate"; "A Way of Thinking"
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From the back cover: "From the stars, from the cosmos it came... the Medusa, the galactic man of war, the hive-minded creature that was a billion creatires. It dropped its wrinkled spore into one man on Earth, through him expecting to conquer mankind"
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Stories on Niven's the Warlock character collected, plus notes and an afterword by Niven. From the jacket: "It begins with a sorcerer known only as the Warlock, who has learned a secret too terrible to tell.... the Warlock must decide: will he use his secret - and throw his world into chaos?
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From the jacket: "Neuromancer is set in a future where teeming poverty coexists with great affluence. This is also a world where technology and artificial inteligence assume unimagined and sinister proportions; a world where a person can plug into the world of cyberspace and invade any computer system. Originally published 1984; this edition includes an introduction by Gibson. Neuromancer is Gibson's first novel.