Alfred Elton van Vogt was born on a farm in Edenburg, a Russian Mennonite community east of Gretna, Manitoba. Early in his career he wrote for true confession pulp magazines like True Story, but in the late 1930s he began writing science fiction, which he was more interested in. His first published SF story, "Black Destroyer" was published in 1939, and is considered to be one of the first works of the Golden Age of science fiction. In 1941 he left his job at the Department of National Defence to...
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
He is famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, widely considered to be one of the most influential films of all time. Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays,...
Chandler Davis is the author of The Golden Years of Science Fiction -- Fifth Series. This work explores the science fiction genre.
C. L. Moore is the author behind the classic sword and sorcery collection, Swords Against Darkness. If you enjoy tales of adventure and magic, you'll want to check out their work.
English science fiction writer
F. N. Waldrop is the editor behind The Golden Years of Science Fiction -- Fifth Series. This collection showcases some of the best science fiction from a particular era.
Fredric Brown was born in Cincinnati. He wrote science fiction and mystery fiction. His first novel, What Mad Universe, a popular parody of pulp science fiction, was published in 1949.
Henry Beam Piper was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1904, and died, an apparent suicide, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in 1964. Piper's first published story, "Time and Time Again" (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1947), was adapted for radio and aired on the NBC program Dimension X on 12 July, 1951, and again on the NBC program X Minus One on 11 January, 1956. His historical essay "Rebel Raider," published in True: The Men's Magazine in 1950, inspired the fictional teleplay Willie and t...
Henry Kuttner was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror.
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2. His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old. He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of...
John Stewart Williamson (April 29, 1908 – November 10, 2006), who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American science fiction writer.
John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania. He attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out to move to New York City, where he took menial to support himself. While attending the School of Management at Syracuse University, he met Dorothy Prentiss, and they married in 1937. He graduated from Syracuse the following year, and in 1939 he received an MBA from Harvard University. During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services in the Far...
John R. Pierce is a name you'll recognize if you're a fan of classic science fiction. He's the editor behind Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10, a collection that showcases some of the genre's best.
Judith Merril was a science fiction writer whose work, like her notable collection Galaxy, often explored the human side of technological change. She was a key figure in the science fiction community, known for her thoughtful and often challenging stories.
Lawrence L. LeShan is the author of Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales. He's a writer who clearly enjoys exploring the imaginative possibilities of science fiction.
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was also a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. -- Wikipedia
Martin Harry Greenberg (March 1, 1941 – June 25, 2011) was an American academic and anthologist in many genres, including mysteries and horror, but especially in speculative fiction. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. He was also a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel. Greenberg was also an expert in terrorism and the Middle East. He was a longtime friend, colleague and busine...
Murray Leinster was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.
British journalist and writer
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kr...
Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has changed the way people think. His more than five hundred published works -- short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse -- exemplify the American imagination at its most creative.
Once read, his words are never forgotten. His best-known and most beloved books, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, are masterworks that readers carry wi...
Theodore Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York. He changed his name in 1929, choosing Sturgeon to match his mother's surname after her second marriage, and "Theodore" to match his nickname, "Teddy." His mother, Christine Hamilton Dicker Sturgeon, was a well-educated writer, watercolorist, and poet who published journalism, poetry and fiction under the pseudonym Felix Sturgeon.
As an adolescent, Sturgeon wanted to be a circus acrobat, but then had an episode of r...
Thomas L. Sherred (August 27, 1915 – April 16, 1985) was an American science fiction writer and the author of a slim body of science fiction, consisting of a collection of stories, a novel, and the beginning of a novel that was completed by another author after Sherred's death in 1985. Sherred's stories were often set in Detroit and featured the down-to-earth laborers with whom the author was acquainted through his career in the automotive field, where he advanced from tool rooms to technical wr...
William Tenn is a science fiction writer whose work is celebrated for its wit and sharp observations. You'll find his stories collected in Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales, a great place to start if you enjoy clever, thought-provoking science fiction.
Wilmar H. Shiras contributed to Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 10, showcasing a talent for science fiction. This collection highlights Shiras's ability to bring imaginative worlds to life.