Author | Arthur Charles Clarke |
---|---|
Publication date | 1989 |
ISBN | 9780575044463 |
Astounding Days: A Science Fictional Autobiography is a memoir written by Arthur C. Clarke in 1989. It was first published that year by Victor Gollancz Ltd. in London, England. Bantam Books published a paperback edition in New York City in 1990. [1]
In the book, Clarke recounts his childhood in rural England spent reading issues of the American science fiction pulp magazine Astounding Stories of Super-Science (currently published as Analog ), his early adulthood in London participating in activities (and serving as treasurer) of the British Interplanetary Society, and his later years in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. The book is divided into five sections, the first four organized around the tenure of each of Astounding's first three editors and the more recent publications of Analog. The final section is an appendix containing an index of Clarke's stories, letters and articles published in Astounding and Analog between 1938 and 1987.Clarkee recalls events of his own life interspersed with reviews of various stories published in the magazine and discussions of its first three editors, Harry Bates, F. Orlin Tremaine and John W. Campbell, Jr., and the contributing authors. He also offers detailed explanations of various scientific principles and advances as they applied to both the stories and his own experience as a World War II Royal Air Force military radar operator, and later as an author, explorer and scientist. Reminiscences of various well-known figures of his personal acquaintance are also featured, including Isaac Asimov, Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, and Stanley Kubrick.
A review from Kirkus described the stories as "charming" and "effortlessly informative", but criticised them as varying in quality, with some considered to be "less successful". The review also critiqued that occasionally "fiction outpaced fact". [2] The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction also stated that the book "consists of enjoyable reminiscences of his own literary life, with a good amount of material on other writers". [3] Mary Grace Butler, in The New York Times, stated that the descriptions of scientific fiction was "chatty" and "anecdotal". [4]
Edward Elmer Smith was an American food engineer and science-fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera.
John Wood Campbell Jr. was an American science fiction writer and editor. He was editor of Astounding Science Fiction from late 1937 until his death and was part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell wrote super-science space opera under his own name and stories under his primary pseudonym, Don A. Stuart. Campbell also used the pen names Karl Van Kampen and Arthur McCann. His novella Who Goes There? was adapted as the films The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011).
James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending some early years in Canada. After a few years working in the clothing industry, he worked at Short Brothers Ltd., an aircraft company based in Belfast, from 1965 until taking early retirement in 1984 as a result of diabetes. White married Margaret Sarah Martin, another science fiction fan, in 1955 and the couple had three children. He died of a stroke.
Encyclopedia Galactica is the name of a number of fictional or hypothetical encyclopedias containing all the knowledge accumulated by a galaxy-spanning civilization, most notably in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The concept of a "future encyclopedia" has become "something iconic among many lovers of the science fiction", and has been reused by numerous other writers.
Thomas O'Conor Sloane was an American scientist, inventor, author, editor, educator, and linguist, perhaps best known for writing The Standard Electrical Dictionary and as the editor of Scientific American, from 1886 to 1896 and the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, from 1929 to 1938.
In American science fiction of the 1950s and '60s, psionics was a proposed discipline that applied principles of engineering to the study of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy and psychokinesis. The term is a blend word of psi and the -onics from electronics. The word "psionics" began as, and always remained, a term of art within the science fiction community and—despite the promotional efforts of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.—it never achieved general currency, even among academic parapsychologists. In the years after the term was coined in 1951, it became increasingly evident that no scientific evidence supports the existence of "psionic" abilities.
Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknown's first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
Frederick Orlin Tremaine was an American science fiction magazine editor, most notably of the influential Astounding Stories. He edited a number of other magazines, headed several publishing companies, and sporadically wrote fiction.
A science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard-copy periodical format or on the Internet. Science fiction magazines traditionally featured speculative fiction in short story, novelette, novella or novel form, a format that continues into the present day. Many also contain editorials, book reviews or articles, and some also include stories in the fantasy and horror genres.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction, often identified in the United States as the years 1938–1946, was a period in which a number of foundational works of science fiction literature appeared. In the history of science fiction, the Golden Age follows the "pulp era" of the 1920s and 1930s, and precedes New Wave science fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. The 1950s are, in this scheme, a transitional period. Robert Silverberg, who came of age then, saw the 1950s as the true Golden Age.
The Ragged Edge of Science is a science book by L. Sprague de Camp, illustrated by Don Simpson. It was first published by Owlswick Press in 1980.
Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.
Tales of Tomorrow is an American anthology science fiction series that was performed and broadcast live on ABC from 1951 to 1953. The series covered such stories as Frankenstein starring Lon Chaney Jr., 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea starring Thomas Mitchell as Captain Nemo, and many others.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled Astounding Stories of Super-Science, the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William Clayton, and edited by Harry Bates. Clayton went bankrupt in 1933 and the magazine was sold to Street & Smith. The new editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, who soon made Astounding the leading magazine in the nascent pulp science fiction field, publishing well-regarded stories such as Jack Williamson's Legion of Space and John W. Campbell's "Twilight". At the end of 1937, Campbell took over editorial duties under Tremaine's supervision, and the following year Tremaine was let go, giving Campbell more independence. Over the next few years Campbell published many stories that became classics in the field, including Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, A. E. van Vogt's Slan, and several novels and stories by Robert A. Heinlein. The period beginning with Campbell's editorship is often referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Top Science Fiction: The Authors' Choice is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Josh Pachter, the second in his series of "Authors' Choice" anthologies. It was first published in hardcover by J. M. Dent in July 1984, with a trade paperback edition issued by the same publisher in 1985. The book has also been published in translation in the Netherlands, Argentina, Germany and Finland.
Science-fiction and fantasy magazines began to be published in the United States in the 1920s. Stories with science-fiction themes had been appearing for decades in pulp magazines such as Argosy, but there were no magazines that specialized in a single genre until 1915, when Street & Smith, one of the major pulp publishers, brought out Detective Story Magazine. The first magazine to focus solely on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, which was launched in 1923, and established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades; writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard became regular contributors. In 1926 Weird Tales was joined by Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback; Amazing printed only science fiction, and no fantasy. Gernsback included a letter column in Amazing Stories, and this led to the creation of organized science-fiction fandom, as fans contacted each other using the addresses published with the letters. Gernsback wanted the fiction he printed to be scientifically accurate, and educational, as well as entertaining, but found it difficult to obtain stories that met his goals; he printed "The Moon Pool" by Abraham Merritt in 1927, despite it being completely unscientific. Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, but quickly started several new magazines. Wonder Stories, one of Gernsback's titles, was edited by David Lasser, who worked to improve the quality of the fiction he received. Another early competitor was Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which appeared in 1930, edited by Harry Bates, but Bates printed only the most basic adventure stories with minimal scientific content, and little of the material from his era is now remembered.
Fantasy was a British science fiction magazine, edited by Walter Gillings, which published three issues from 1946 to 1947. Gillings began collecting submissions for the magazine in 1943, but the publisher, Temple Bar, delayed launching it until the success of New Worlds, another British science fiction magazine, convinced them there was a viable market. Gillings obtained stories from Eric Frank Russell, John Russell Fearn, and Arthur C. Clarke, whose "Technical Error" was the first story of Clarke's to see print in the UK. Gillings published two more stories by Clarke, both under pseudonyms, but Temple Bar ceased publication of Fantasy after the third issue because of paper rationing caused by World War II. Gillings was able to use some of the stories he had acquired for Fantasy in 1950, when he became editor of Science Fantasy.
Nebula Award Stories Eight is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in hardcover in November 1973, in the United States by Harper & Row and in the United Kingdom by Gollancz. The British edition bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories 8. Paperback editions followed from Berkley Medallion in the U.S. in September 1975, and Panther in the U.K. in the same year; both paperback editions adopted the British version of the title. The book has also been published in German.
Alec Nevala-Lee is an American biographer, novelist, and science fiction writer. He was a Hugo and Locus Award finalist for the group biography Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. His most recent book is Inventor of the Future, a biography of the architectural designer and futurist Buckminster Fuller, which was selected by Esquire as one of the fifty best biographies of all time. He is currently at work on a biography of the physicist Luis W. Alvarez.
Apeman, Spaceman: Anthropological Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Harry Harrison and Leon E. Stover. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in June 1968, with a paperback edition following from Berkley Medallion in March 1970. The first British editions were issued in hardcover by Rapp & Whiting in October 1968 and in paperback by Penguin Books in November 1972. The book has been translated into German.