Author: Jad Smith
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094514
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934–1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology. In this first intensive review of Brunner's life and works, Jad Smith carefully demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, Smith approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including Brunner's uneasy association with the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960s and '70s. This landmark study shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction and between hard and soft science fiction and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.
Author: Robert A. Heinlein
Publisher: Baen
ISBN: 9781439133767
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Now in Mass Market. An Epic Battle Against Mind-Controlling Alien Invaders as Only Robert A. Heinlein, the Best-Selling Grand Master of Science Fiction, Could Tell It. “One of the most influential writers in American literature.” —The New York Times Book Review. First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed. Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the U.S. government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting in. And four more agents who were sent in also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control. Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the President of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand .
Author: Robert Sheckley
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528781783
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 38
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Book Description
This is a classic science fiction short story by Robert Sheckley, a Hugo and Nebula Award nominated author. The story deals with the subject of artificial intelligence and the questions that arise from allowing them to have the power to decide right from wrong. This work is part of our Vintage Sci-Fi Classics Series, a series in which we are republishing some of the best stories in the genre by some of its most acclaimed authors, such as Isaac Asimov, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Robert Sheckley. Each publication is complete with a short introduction to the history of science fiction.
Author: Howard Fast
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453235388
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 124
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Book Description
DIV“The General Zapped an Angel was written for fun, and offers me a chance to smile at the absurdity of human existence. Therefore, these stories of fantasy and science fiction are among the most serious writing I have done.” —Howard Fast/div DIVNearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “The Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Howard Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. Fast, one of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and profit-at-all-costs capitalism, issues that are still relevant today./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div
Author: Editors of Imaginefx Magazine
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565239500
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Traces the history of fantasy art in North America and the UK. Through interviews, guided tutorials, and tips, shows readers how to design, draw, and paint fantasy art using traditional and digital tools"--
Author: Gerry Canavan
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252099109
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers--informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction. Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon. The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.
Author: Clifford D. Simak
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504013247
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
Long before Under the Dome, this novel of a town trapped within an invisible force field earned a Nebula Award nomination for the author of Way Station. Nothing much ever happens in Millville, a small, secluded Middle-American community—until the day Brad Carter discovers he is unable to leave. And the nearly bankrupt real estate agent is not the only one being held prisoner; every resident is confined within the town’s boundaries by an invisible force field that cannot be breached. As local tensions rapidly reach breaking point, a set of bizarre circumstances leads Brad to the source of their captivity, making him humanity’s reluctant ambassador to an alien race of sentient flora, and privy to these jailers’ ultimate intentions. But some of Millville’s most powerful citizens do not take kindly to Carter’s “collaboration with the enemy,” even under the sudden threat of global apocalypse. Decades before Stephen King trapped an entire town in Under the Dome, science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak explored the shocking effects of communal captivity on an unsuspecting population. Nominated for the Nebula Award, All Flesh Is Grass is a riveting masterwork that brilliantly reinvents the alien invasion story.
Author: Robert Sheckley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781612870403
Category : Short stories
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
Armchair Fiction features the best in classic classic science fiction short story collections. "Masters of Science Fiction, Vol. Three" features the works of Robert Sheckley. He was born in New York in 1931 and passed away in 2005. Most of his life was spent concocting brilliant pieces of imaginative mind fodder. What would the perfect woman look like? He pondered what, if anything, would a man be able to eat on a distant planet? Would the end-all to financial worry and violence bring man the utopia he has always searched for? Unlock the answers to these questions and many more with this unmatched collection of Robert Sheckley stories...just waiting to be devoured.
Author: Gary Westfahl
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252095081
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Renowned scholar Gary Westfahl draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world. Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, Westfahl delivers new information about his childhood and adolescence. He describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as Westfahl performs extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.
Author: F. Brett Cox
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252052668
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Challenging convention with the SF nonconformist Roger Zelazny combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1960s. Yet many critics found his later novels underachieving and his turn to fantasy a disappointment. F. Brett Cox surveys the landscape of Zelazny's creative life and contradictions. Launched by the classic 1963 short story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Zelazny soon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with ...And Call Me Conrad and two years later won again for Lord of Light. Cox looks at the author's overnight success and follows Zelazny into a period of continued formal experimentation, the commercial triumph of the Amber sword and sorcery novels, and renewed acclaim for Hugo-winning novellas such as "Home Is the Hangman" and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." Throughout, Cox analyzes aspects of Zelazny's art, from his preference for poetically alienated protagonists to the ways his plots reflected his determined individualism. Clear-eyed and detailed, Roger Zelazny provides an up-to-date reconsideration of an often-misunderstood SF maverick.
