Childhood's End is a 1953 science fiction novel by the British author Arthur C. Clarke. The story follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious Overlords, whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.
Glen David Brin is an American science fiction author. He has won the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His novel The Postman was adapted into a 1997 feature film starring Kevin Costner.
Robert Silverberg is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.
Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine published by Penny Press and edited by Sheila Williams. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac Asimov's consent for the use of his name. It was originally titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and was quickly successful, reaching a circulation of over 100,000 within a year, and switching to monthly publication within a couple of years. George H. Scithers, the first editor, published many new writers who went on to be successful in the genre. Scithers favored traditional stories without sex or obscenity; along with frequent humorous stories this gave Asimov's a reputation for printing juvenile fiction, despite its success. Asimov was not part of the editorial team, but wrote editorials for the magazine.
Peter Douglas Nicholls was an Australian literary scholar and critic. He was the creator and a co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with John Clute.
Wayne Douglas Barlowe is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, painter, and concept artist. Barlowe's work focuses on esoteric landscapes and creatures such as citizens of hell and alien worlds. He has painted over 300 book and magazine covers and illustrations for many major book publishers, as well as Life magazine, Time magazine, and Newsweek. His 1979 book Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials was nominated in 1980 for the Hugo Award for Best Related Non-Fiction Book, the first year that award category was awarded. It also won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Art or Illustrated Book. His 1991 speculative evolution book Expedition was nominated for the 1991 Chesley Award for Artistic Achievement.
Shawna Lee McCarthy is an American science fiction and fantasy editor and literary agent.
Mission of Gravity is a science fiction novel by American writer Hal Clement. The novel was serialized in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in April–July 1953. Its first hardcover book publication was in 1954, and it was first published as a paperback book in 1958. Along with the novel, many editions of the book also include "Whirligig World", an essay by Clement on creating the planet Mesklin that was first published in the June 1953 Astounding.
Alien Planet is a 2005 docufiction TV special created for the Discovery Channel. Based on the 1990 book Expedition by the artist and writer Wayne Barlowe, Alien Planet explores the imagined extraterrestrial life of the fictional planet Darwin IV in the style of a nature documentary. Although closely following Barlowe's depiction of Darwin IV, Alien Planet features a team of scientists and science fiction figures discussing Darwin IV as if it had actually been discovered. Among the people featured are Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawking, Jack Horner, James B. Garvin and George Lucas.
Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV is a 1990 speculative evolution and science fiction book written and illustrated by the American artist and writer Wayne Barlowe. Written as a first-person account of a 24th-century crewed expedition to the fictional planet of Darwin IV, Expedition describes and discusses an imaginary extraterrestrial ecosystem as if it were real.
Jim Burns is a Welsh artist born in Cardiff, Wales. He has been called one of the Grand Masters of the science fiction art world.
Dougal Dixon is a Scottish geologist, palaeontologist, educator and author. Dixon has written well over a hundred books on geology and palaeontology, many of them for children, which have been credited with attracting many to the study of the prehistoric animals. Because of his work as a prolific science writer, he has also served as a consultant on dinosaur programmes.
Beth Meacham is an American writer and editor, best known as a longtime top editor with Tor Books.
The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science is a general guide to the sciences by the American writer and scientist Isaac Asimov. It was first published in 1960 by Basic Books. Revised versions were published as The New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (1965), Asimov's Guide to Science (1972), and Asimov's New Guide to Science (1984).
"Nightwings" is a science fiction novella by American writer Robert Silverberg. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1969 and was also nominated for the Nebula Award in 1968. It won the Prix Apollo Award in 1976. "Nightwings" is the first in a trilogy of novellas, the next two being "Perris Way" (1968) and "To Jorslem" (1969). These three works were later collected into a single fixup in three sections, also titled Nightwings. According to Silverberg's introductions, the changes required to turn the three shorter works into a novel were relatively minor.
Australia, unlike Europe, does not have a long history in the genre of science fiction. Nevil Shute's On the Beach, published in 1957, and filmed in 1959, was perhaps the first notable international success. Though not born in Australia, Shute spent his latter years there, and the book was set in Australia. It might have been worse had the imports of American pulp magazines not been restricted during World War II, forcing local writers into the field. Various compilation magazines began appearing in the 1960s and the field has continued to expand into some significance. Today Australia has a thriving SF/Fantasy genre with names recognised around the world. In 2013 a trilogy by Sydney-born Ben Peek was sold at auction to a UK publisher for a six-figure deal.
Hilary Agard Evans was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.
Space Stories was a pulp magazine which published five issues from October 1952 to June 1953. It was published by Standard Magazines, and edited by Samuel Mines. Mines' editorial policy for Space Stories was to publish straightforward science fiction adventure stories. Among the better-known contributors were Jack Vance, Gordon R. Dickson and Leigh Brackett, whose novel The Big Jump appeared in the February 1953 issue.
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is an American science fiction author and editor. He has edited twenty-two anthologies, and written a space opera trilogy, and an ongoing, near-future police procedural series set in Kansas City, Missouri, and a near future thriller novel being developed as a motion picture. He wrote a non-fiction book on how to write a novel. He was a finalist, with Jennifer Brozek, for the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor for the anthology Shattered Shields. His anthology, Infinite Stars, was nominated for the 2018 Locus Award for Best Anthology.
Snaiad is a speculative evolution, science fiction and artistic worldbuilding project by Turkish artist C. M. Kösemen, focused on a fictional exoplanet of the same name. Begun in the early 2000s and inspired by earlier works such as Wayne Barlowe's 1990 book Expedition, Kösemen has produced hundreds of paintings and sketches of creatures of Snaiad, with detailed ecological roles and taxonomic relationships to each other. The sheer number of invented creatures and lineages makes Snaiad one of the most biologically diverse fictional worlds.
